U.S. Army parachute riggers at two bases in the Central Command region
are assembling pallets of food and water for humanitarian air drops in
the vicinity of Sinjar, Iraq.
The aid was assembled after the Iraqi Government sent a request for
humanitarian assistance to displaced citizens through the Department of
State. As of today, U.S. military aircraft had delivered more than
74,000 meals, ready-to-eat, known as MREs, and more than 15,000 gallons
of fresh drinking water, to displaced Yezidis seeking refuge from
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists.
"When you need something like this, you need it right now," said Chief
Warrant Officer 2 Robert Schwarz, deployed from Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, serving with the 11th Quartermaster Company, 264th Combat
Sustainment Support Battalion, 82nd Sustainment Brigade. "Air drop of
the aid bundles allows U.S. forces to deliver those supplies to people
who are in a land-locked environment, or the main supply routes are not
open or available to them."
The food and water is placed in a Container Deliver System, or CDS,
which is a cardboard container placed on a dampening material called a
"honeycomb." The supplies are tied together with webbing and fixed to a
self-deploying parachute. These one-time-use containers are designed to
be quickly opened to deliver supplies as fast as possible after they are
dropped from cargo aircraft.
Making quick work of the project, the 18 riggers from the 11th
Quartermaster Company can assemble 40 CDS bundles of water in two hours.
"The most challenging portion of the operation is placing these halal
meals, which are MREs, on the pallets," said Spc. Jonathan Echaves, who
is from Queens, New York. "It's like playing Tetris."
The aid assembled for the air drop came from existing stocks of food and
water that the Department of Defense maintains in the region for rapid
distribution if needed for a natural disaster or other crisis.
Once properly loaded in a C-17 or C-130, the CDS bundles can be flown to
where they are needed and rapidly dropped by parachute into the area.
An entire aircraft's worth of bundles exit the aircraft in less than 10
seconds. The three aircraft on the Aug. 8 mission were able to drop
their cargo in less than 15 minutes.
"It was so important we did this, because these [refugees] were
starving, cut off," said Staff Sgt. Justin Wright, 816th Expeditionary
Airlift Squadron loadmaster. "Having all this come together was
challenging, but it was definitely worth it."
http://www.army.mil/article/131599/Riggers_support_air_drops_in_northern_Iraq/
By Staff Sgt. Shawn Nickel
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