Supplies being airdropped to troops in Afghanistan

Afghanistan Special Delivery
Pentagon plans to continue air-dropping supplies to shrinking number of U.S. troops
TIME Swampland
By Mark Thompson
Jan. 12, 2014

The presumption in warfare — especially counterinsurgency — is that as you win the local population over to your side, things should begin to return to normal.

That has rarely been true in Afghanistan, where the volume of supplies air-dropped to U.S. troops — because ground support was too dangerous or difficult — soared from 2 million lb. (900,000 kg) in 2005 to 99 million lb. (45 million kg) in 2012.

The Pentagon’s U.S. Transportation Command is planning to keep up the effort, even as the U.S. pulls out, according to a revised solicitation issued last week for what it calls its Low Cost/Low Altitude Aerial Drop.

Delivering food, fuel and weapons to the remaining 38,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan isn’t easy. These clauses from the solicitation dated Jan. 8 read like a blueprint for retreat under fire
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