SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (Aug. 25, 2022) – United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) provided incredible capability over a critical period, in which the world witnessed America’s unique ability to respond to a crisis during Operations Allies Refuge.
Over this period, the men and women of USTRANSCOM, Air Mobility Command (AMC) and commercial airline carriers assisted with the largest-ever non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO). Their immediate action provided leaders with the ability to evacuate more than 124,000 people and marked the final mission to end two decades of operations in Afghanistan.
“I am a proud member of the logistics community because I believe that unlike other forms of
military power, logistics presents the rare opportunity to achieve strategic effects by saving lives,” said Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of USTRANSCOM. “In our profession, nothing is more noble than delivering aid or transporting someone to safety. It is a much more human operation than perhaps any other action you can take in uniform.”
The operation began with USTRANSCOM delivering immediate response forces into Afghanistan to secure the Hamid Karzai airport, and ended covertly when the last C-17 Globemaster lifted into the night sky carrying the acting U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson and Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of ground operations and the 82nd Airborne Division.
“The Afghanistan NEO was really a capstone event for this enterprise,” said Van Ovost. “Our entire warfighting framework was put to the test; global posture, mobility capacity, global command and control.”
“Whether you are talking about our Contingency Response personnel who operated Kabul International Airport, our enablers who provided our enroute support, our aeromedical evacuation teams providing lifesaving medical care, our aerial refueling crews extending our reach, our global operations and air operations centers providing command and control, our air mobility crews and maintainers, or our Civil Reserve Air Fleet. This incredibly dedicated team of mobility professionals are the best in the world,” she said.
Covering nine countries, eight times zones and more than ten temporary safe havens, AMC positioned a large fleet of aircraft in United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) area of operations and began flying what would become a historic, round-the clock, strategic airlift operation across three continents.
“This evacuation could simply not have been done without the amazing flexibility of U.S. Transportation Command and the airlift provided by the United States Air Force,” said retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of USCENTCOM at the time. “No other military in the world has anything like it.”
To succeed, the mission required a total of 2,627 sorties, involving 1,927 military flights and 700 commercial flights.
In order to move so many people over a short period of time, USTRANSCOM would look to the commercial industry for additional assistance. On Aug. 22, The Secretary of Defense approved a USTRANSCOM request to activate the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) to augment support to the Department of State in the evacuation of U.S. citizens and personnel, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and other at-risk individuals from Afghanistan.
CRAF is a National Emergency Preparedness Program, created after the Berlin airlift of 1952, designed to augment the Department’s airlift capability and is a core component of USTRANSCOM’s ability to meet national security interests and contingency requirements. Under CRAF, the commercial carriers retain their Civil Status under FAA regulations while USTRANSCOM exercises mission control via its air component, Air Mobility Command. This was only the third CRAF activation in the history of the program.
At the height of airlift operations out of Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), military aircraft were departing the airport every 34 minutes. While AMC managed operations at HKIA in Kabul, the CRAF activated aircraft flew the evacuees from temporary safe havens in the Middle East to their eventual destination in their new host nations.
In the midst of the mission, on Aug. 26, a suicide bomb, detonated in the vicinity of the airport in Kabul. The attack was followed by several gunmen of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) opening fire on civilians and military forces, causing multiple casualties at HKIA.
Minutes later USTRANSCOM, designated as the DOD’s single manager for global patient movement, coordinated the dispatch of three U.S. Air Force C-17s carrying aeromedical evacuation (AE) crews and Critical Care Air Transport Teams from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, and Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.
USTRANSCOM coordinated the movement of the U.S. Marines and Navy Sailor killed during the attack, as well as transport the wounded to medical facilities to get the necessary care. As AE crews moved patients out of Kabul, NEO flights continued, and at the height of the operations.
“Your leadership understands these unprecedented circumstances, and we will empower and support you as you continue to transport Americans and Afghan partners out of harm’s way,” Van Ovost told the audience at the Airlift/Tanker Association Convention last October.
To achieve this historic airlift, USTRANSCOM, with its component commands and partners, used creativity, determination, and professionalism to overcome the mission’s exhausting pace and significant trials.
“This operation was by far the most difficult problem set the enterprise has faced,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Corey Martin, USTRANSCOM’s director of operations at the time. “The scope of the problem, ambitious timelines, number of constraints, and contested environment combined to present a highly unique event. I am very proud of the men and women in the operations directorate and across USTRANSCOM who successfully rose to this unprecedented challenge.”
USTRANSCOM exists as a warfighting combatant command to project and sustain military power at a time and place of the nation’s choosing. Powered by dedicated men and women, USTRANSCOM underwrites the lethality of the Joint Force, advances American interests around the globe, and provides our nation's leaders with strategic flexibility to select from multiple options, while creating multiple dilemmas for our adversaries.
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