By: Capt Joshua J. Trebon
No space, no coordination, and a big safety mess. With over 28,000+ ISAF, U.S. military & civilian personnel, and contractors undisclosed Airfield, Afghanistan gets the mission done, and done well, but not without its share of safety issues. Built out of an old Soviet era airfield and an Afghanistan International Airport, undisclosed Airfield maintains a limited territorial footprint amongst Afghan farming communities, thus lack of space is a driving issue at the Airfield. The Airfield is comprised of one active runway (10,500’ x 180’), two emergency landing strips, and 32 parking ramps. A plethora of aircraft are represented throughout the Airfield, comprised of various fighters, cargo, helos, and ISR aircraft—including some unmanned platforms. Aircraft assigned to the Airfield are owned and operated by 7 NATO nations and 3 U.S. services, which further makes things problematic due to differing safety guidelines.
Space is a major concern of the Airfield. With 28,000+ personnel, the Airfield is running out of room to put everybody, not to mention the quantity of aircraft, which is expected to add 2 additional squadrons comprised of 24 additional aircraft—further populating the busiest airfield post-Vietnam War. At least in this instance we were made aware of the incoming aircraft, however, past experience at the Airfield has shown that aircraft would literally just show up without any prior planning. Thus, the airfield consists of 131 probable explosive safety violations, 17 DDESB site plan exemptions, multiple AFCENT waivers for people/equipment, and multiple risk of aircraft loss acceptances by the Wing Commander. For instance each parking ramp has on average approximately 52 safety concerns. Further most the ramps are not even close to K-30 requirements. Reasons for this massive number of safety issues are due to the following: space limitations with an ever-growing mission, lack of coordination between Airfield users, unclear citing authority, and unclear overarching guidance.
The safety communities at the Airfield are not in close coordination. As stated before, often aircraft show up with no prior planning. Thus, safety concerns are not pointed out and mitigated in advance. Site plans are created for each ramp, however, they are only for that ramp, they fail to look the next ramp over and see what implications that parking area may have on the surrounding ramps. Further problematic, since nearby ramps may be a different nation’s aircraft parking area, that ramp may have different standards IAW NATO site planning. NATO tends to use their peace vs. contingency site planning guidance ad hoc IAW what serves them best at the time. The Base Commander has implemented policy, however, it is very generic and is not directive at all. Thus safety reps from the different nations tend to be laxed and focus on the “waive vs. fix philosophy.”
Anymore it seems the military has more Chiefs than Indians, however, here it is the opposite. There is no clear or specific citing authority at the undisclosed Airfield. The Wing has a Weapons Safety Manager (WSM), however, NATO answers to the base commander, who has set generic safety requirements. And, oh by the way, those safety requirements are not to AFMAN 91-201 requirements, etc., which are followed by the Wing. Thus, the Wing strives to have their paperwork and safety plans in order, but they are still in violation because their NATO counterparts’ areas affect theirs. The current norm is find answers you want and then implement those without researching the effects you may have on nearby areas and other nation’s assets. I know the mission comes first, and the mission is ever-growing here, but I see a massive safety event coming down the pike if something doesn’t get done about it.
So how can this safety snafu of a base be rectified? The Wing has begun to take steps to help the situation, but those steps will not fully solve the problem. Mainly the Wing has pushed to move its assets to one consolidated geographic location of the Airfield to limit NATO site planning issues infringing on our site planning. However, as space becomes further limited as more airframes and further parking ramps are added to the airfield, the lack of prior coordination still needs to be resolved. The Base Commander needs to establish directive guidance to resolve differing site planning regulations, and establish one clear citing authority. Further he needs to appoint a Base WSM to manage the various representative pool of airfield user WSMs, and fully manage the airfield as a whole vs. individual fiefdoms. In addition, he must make coordination mandatory with WSMs prior to any construction project on the Airfield. Many people/equip waivers could be resolved if this step was implemented. Finally, he must look to nearby airfields which could support influx of additional airframes vs. jamming all airframes into an already overtaxed/overworked airfield. The task will not be easy, but it needs to happen. If Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam, on May 16, 1965 proved us anything, airfield safety cannot be taken lightly, regardless of mission requirements.
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