![]() The only way to learn just how many people were coming into Dulles was to spend hours making calls to lily pad locations, safe havens across the United States, and government agencies. No common dataset existed between the Homeland Security, Defense, and State departments. But how many refugees would be in those seats? The team had no access to the exact passenger manifests. On the first day of operations, USTRANSCOM reported eight Civil Reserve Air Fleet aircraft-airliners activated for military transport during a crisis-inbound for Dulles with a total of 2,000 seats. Overestimating the number would force aircraft to leave partially empty to prevent ramp and processing congestion. An underestimation could overtax the available beds, food, and medical capacities at safe havens, which would be followed by a refugee surplus at Dulles that could bottleneck operations. Getting it wrong could have cascading effects. The compilation was necessary for the timing and coordination of aircraft and ground transportation to ensure a smooth flow of guests, some still departing Afghanistan, some flowing through lily pads, and some already en route to Dulles. The team had to gather data from 15 government and non-government agencies on four continents. Weber’s team strived to manually compile data, poring through rows of disparate spreadsheets, sticky notes, and disconnected databases to keep tabs on the number of incoming guests and the remaining capacity at each location. These data, however, existed among various databases located in systems which were not compatible with one another, such as Department of State’s flight tracker and refugee list, DOD’s dataset of flight status for mobility aircraft, Army North’s refugee tracker, Customs and Border Protection’s Arrival and Departure Information System, Northern Command passenger data, Flightradar24’s lists of participating commercial flights, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather data, and DHS’s dataset of refugee information-some classified, some not. His team needed to know the number of Afghan guests per flight, the capacity of each safe haven, the visa status of each guest, the schedule of inbound and outbound flights, and more. ‘Our Job Is Not Done’: How Women Veterans in Congress Continue to Help Afghan Refugees Today's D Brief: Ukrainian DM at the Pentagon Afghan evacuee update '3 Amigos' at the WH Taiwan's new squadron And a bit more. It was critical that the number of incoming guests never exceed the capacity at Dulles or at the safe havens. The team would soon learn that their main challenge would be primarily one of reconciling and processing disconnected, stove-piped, unavailable, or incorrect data. Weber and his small staff of service members would live and work 16-hour days (or more) for the next three weeks. Instead, he and his team swiftly established a mobility command-and-control facility in the conference room of a hotel near Dulles, where an aircraft full of Afghan refugees was already inbound. He might have expected to fly to Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, where the 601st Air Operations Center usually coordinates logistics and mobility for humanitarian assistance and disaster response in North America. His team would direct the flow of aircraft and ground vehicles provided by the Air Force and Army components of U.S. Weber’s task would be moving refugees from Dulles International Airport in Virginia to the eight U.S. ![]() Transportation Command, Operation Allies Welcome (né Operation Allies Refuge) would fly fleeing Afghans to designated lily pads-temporary receiving and vetting locations throughout the Middle East and Europe-from which they would then be transferred to longer-term safe havens throughout the United States. Using military aircraft and commercial airliners contracted through Air Mobility Command and U.S. The overall effort belonged to the Department of Homeland Security, but the Defense Department would be doing much of the heavy lifting. Among other things, his experience would illuminate the need for better data sharing between government agencies. government had seen the trickle of refugees out of Afghanistan turn into a flood. ![]() Kabul had fallen to the Taliban one week earlier, and the U.S. Instead of taking charge of logistics movements as Hurricane Ida bore down on Louisiana, Weber was summoned to Washington, D.C., to lead a key part of the largest non-combatant evacuation operation in U.S. 22, it wasn’t the order that the chief of staff of the Montana Air National Guard was expecting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |