A Predator drone takes off into the harsh sunlight against a backdrop of dusty mountains on the outskirts of Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan.
Drones are just one of the 60 types of aircraft that Alex Marsha has to deal with as air traffic manager at Kandahar Airfield, overseeing what must be the most diverse air traffic control operation in the world.
“The biggest challenge obviously is operating in a combat zone, we’re handling a vast number of military and civilian aircraft here,” he said, looking out from the new control tower which went into operation just days earlier, replacing the old makeshift tower perched on top of a couple of shipping containers.
“The different types of aircraft that we have, ensuring the safety for each and every one of them, trying to expedite the fighter aircraft that are supporting the guys on the ground, that’s a big challenge when you’ve got the volume of traffic that we work here,” he said.
With 5,300 flights a week, Kandahar is busier than London’s Gatwick Airport, previously the world’s busiest single runway airport, and, says Marsha, more challenging than Heathrow.
“At a facility like Heathrow, you have the air carrier aircraft — Airbuses, Boeing aircraft — that are flying at approximately the same air speeds, they have the same flight characteristics. Here you’ve got 60 different types of aircraft that are flying 60 different types of air speeds and their characteristics are different, so our control room staff have got to ensure that they take all that into consideration,” he said.
In addition, military aircraft must retain tactical room for maneuvers as they come in since it is a combat zone, which means less of the crowded air space can be allocated to other aircraft.
“It just makes it very challenging to keep the traffic flowing as efficiently as possible,” he said.
An average day would also see F16s, F18s, A10s, Mirages, C17s, C130s and a lot of civilian aircraft, Marsha said.
Marsha is understandably proud of his 42 staff, most of whom, like himself, are ex-military.
“Being prior military helps them adapt to the environment and to understand the complexities of working in a combat environment,” he said.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS