Inside Defense
Dec. 7, 2009 -- A set of newly established overland supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan is expected to play an increasing role in orchestrating and sustaining the surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to that country, announced by President Obama earlier this month, according to officials and documents.
Military logistics planners spent the past year designing what is known in Pentagon jargon as the “Northern Distribution Network,” or NDN. The network consists of four routes on which commercial freight companies transport troop supplies in 20- and 40-foot containers across much of the Eurasian continent, from Europe to Afghanistan.
The effort began last year in an attempt to relieve stress on the two-pronged land route leading from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to Afghanistan's east and south. That route still is, and probably will remain, the primary conduit for transporting the vast amounts of material needed to sustain U.S. forces, according to officials. But as the Afghanistan war dragged on for years, officials began looking for a more diversified supply network capable of tolerating the collapse of individual legs.
Two of the NDN lanes approach Europe from the Atlantic via ship, according to a Sept. 25 briefing from the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, U.S. Transportation Command's ground component. One route then veers north, traversing the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to Latvia and Estonia. From there, containers continue their journey via rail -- and later by truck -- past the Moscow area (which is described in the briefing as a “key node”), through Kazakhstan and the Uzbek town of Termez into Northern Afghanistan.
The southern Atlantic lane crosses through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to hit land at the Georgian port city of Poti, according to the SDDC briefing slide, which is marked “for official use only.” Cargo containers are then transported overland to Baku, Azerbaidjan, at the Caspian Sea. From there, ferries take the containers north across the water to Aktau, Kazakhstan. The route then stays north of Turkmenistan -- the regime has rejected U.S. calls to allow NDN traffic through its terrority -- and turns southeast once in Uzbekistan toward the Afghan border at Termez, according to the briefing.
The two remaining NDN lanes originate at the Defense Distribution Depot Europe, located southwest of Heidelberg, Germany, according to the SDDC briefing. The routes roughly parallel the lanes coming in from the Atlantic, with access provided through the port of Antwerp, Belgium, and a subsequent curve around the Iberian Peninsula for the southern leg, and the German North Sea port of Bremerhaven for the northern leg.
Notably, the southern route originating in Germany makes a stop at the Romanian Black Sea port city of Constanza, according to the briefing.
During the past months, traffic on the NDN has increased, and officials said more containers are expected to go through the system as the troop build-up in Afghanistan gets under way. A Sept. 25 SDDC advisory quoted a Sept. 1 U.S. Central Command order stating that logistics planners should use the NDN and its commercial carriers “to the maximum extent possible” for sustainment cargo.
Sustainment cargo represents a sizable percentage of material flowing into Afghanistan. It includes food and clothes, but also fortification materials and mobile housing units.
Personnel, vehicles, weapons and other sensitive goods are usually moved by military cargo ships and aircraft.
The SDDC advisory also authorized the shipment of cargo under the Foreign Military Sales program as well as hazardous material.
Mitch Chandran, an SDDC spokesman, said only “non-lethal, containerized” FMS goods are eligible for NDN shipping. He said the government of Afghanistan has received 33 containers of FMS cargo through NDN channels since October.
“The containers . . . contained cargo classified as 'troop issue,' which means support-type items” like flashlights, web belts or uniform accessories, Chandran explained.
While officials went to some lengths to orchestrate the NDN, the network is still underutilized partly because the shorter land supply route through Pakistan is less expensive to use by a factor of more than two, according to experts. Security on that route matters to officials only in the sense that cargo may not arrive on time because “not one U.S. soldier” is involved in the operation, according to a military official. “Third-country nationals,” many of them Pakistani, constitute the bulk of the workers and truck drivers, the official said.
As of September, the NDN had delivered over 3,100 20-foot equivalent (TEU) containers, according to the SDDC briefing. A TRANSCOM briefing of the same month notes a throughput rate of 5,000 containers daily for the Karachi route.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials still hold out hope for an additional Afghanistan supply route through China that would enable shipping lanes across the Pacific Ocean.
CENTCOM logistics chief Army Maj. Gen Kenneth Dowd described the idea in an interview published in the August edition of Military Logistics Forum.
“We are currently working a route with the State Department through China, where we might be able to bring things in through the Pacific, working with PACOM, to bring gear and vehicles in through that route,” Dowd said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Air Force Maj. Maureen Schumann declined to comment on the status of the negotiations. She also declined to say whether the issue would be addressed at the U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks scheduled for mid-December in Hawaii. -- Sebastian Sprenger
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