The U.S. air force has made its first trip over the Arctic Ocean in support of its troops in Afghanistan, the fruit of negotiations over the last two years with Russia and Kazakhstan to steadily expand the Northern Distribution Network. From a U.S. military press release:
A KC-135 Stratotanker flew north until it started flying south, June 21 to 22 -- cutting a new pathway over the Arctic Circle and the North Pole between Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., and the Transit Center at Manas, Kyrgyzstan. It was the first time an Air Force air refueling tanker has ever flown this route.
The mission followed another historic flight that took place June 5 to 6 when a C-5M Super Galaxy traversed the Arctic Circle to fly the first direct delivery airlift mission from Dover Air Force Base, Del., to Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan.
A 2009 U.S.-Russia transit agreement helped make the new arctic routes possible, according to U.S. Transportation Command. The KC-135 flight over the North Pole alone saved the Air Force approximately 4.5 hours and $54,000.
So, with just 370,000 such more flights, this will be able to offset the U.S. military's expeditionary air conditioning bill!
It's worth recalling that this is something the U.S. didn't particularly want. From a post last April:
I spoke to Andrew Kuchins, a CSIS scholar who has interviewed many American, Russian and Uzbek officials about the Northern Distribution Network for a CSIS project. He pointed out that Pentagon officials were never especially interested in this polar route, that it was originally proposed by the Russians as a concrete "deliverable" that Obama and Medvedev could announce during their meeting in Moscow last July. The Pentagon would rather get permission to transit lethal cargo over its existing routes.
They still don't have that permission to transit lethal cargo. But they did get plenty of cool photos of the Arctic route, which you can see here.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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