The Pentagon announced Sunday the activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which provides the Department of Defense with access to commercial aircraft.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the commander of the U.S. Transportation Command to begin the process, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement Sunday morning. The decision was made to provide additional “resources to augment our support to the Department of State in the evacuation of U.S. citizens and personnel, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and other at-risk individuals from Afghanistan,” Kirby explained.
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The Department of Defense has activated 18 aircraft, three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, and Omni Air; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines.
The Pentagon does not anticipate sending these aircraft to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, saying they will be used to carry evacuees from interim staging bases to other bases.
Activating the Civil Reserve Air Fleet “increases passenger movement beyond organic capability and allows military aircraft to focus on operations in and out of Kabul,” Kirby added.
The Biden administration is scrambling to protect Americans and Afghan allies who have found themselves at risk of violent persecution given the Taliban’s swift rise to power in Afghanistan, which caught U.S. officials off guard. Military and intelligence predictions said the Taliban could defeat the Afghan army, which had both greater numbers and nearly two decades of U.S. military training, in a matter of months or years. However, the Taliban conquered the country in less than two weeks.
There have been approximately 30,000 people evacuated since the end of July, with about 25,100 since Aug. 14, a White House official said on Sunday. The United States was able to evacuate 3,900 people from 3 a.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday on 23 military flights, while 35 coalition aircraft were able to evacuate roughly the same number of people over the same time period.
U.S. officials had previously said they weren’t able to help Americans who couldn’t safely travel to the evacuation point at the Kabul airport, but additional resources have now made that a possibility in some circumstances.
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“We’re gonna try our very best to get everybody, every American citizen who wants to get out, out. And we’ve got — we continue to look at different ways … to reach out and contact American citizens and help them get into the airfield,” Austin said Sunday on ABC’s This Week, while Kirby told reporters on Friday that with “additional capacity,” they can now “weigh the benefits versus the risks” of a rescue attempt mission.
This is the third time the DOD has activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, after it was used to support Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
