Good Lord:
As many of you are aware, Afghanistan has become CENTCOM's main effort, thanks to the recent successes in Iraq and Syria. This has allowed CENTCOM to shift more assets our way, which will significantly improve our ability to assist the Afghans.
Here are three examples of air assets now available to our mission in Afghanistan. We have increased our close air support capabilities significantly by adding an A-10 squadron in Kandahar Air Force Base. We now have 50 percent more MQ-9 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. And we're adding an additional combat search and rescue squadron.
How is it possible that in our large military that we required the winding down of a conflict in Iraq, where we had a relatively small commitment of troops, to provide a single A-10 squadron, an increase of 50% in MQ-9 drones, and a single search and rescue squadron to Afghanistan?
How is it possible that we didn't have that small slice of assets uncommitted and ready to fight located in the United States?
I fear that a very tiny percentage of our assets are usable on any given day. I find it horrifying that things have gotten to this state.
But we started on this path years ago when we assumed we wouldn't need to fight a war and established our version of the old British ten-year rule.
I just hope I'm right that other countries who may be our enemy are worse off.
