I'm missing something about Puerto Rico.

[Lee-Lee]

48. A few things

First, most USAR and National Guard units are not sitting in a readiness posture that allows them to be activated in a couple days.

For most USAR units the minimum standard for a no-warning mobilization is 2 weeks to leave their Reserve Center and head to a mobilization station. And even that is a stretch in capabilities. Most NG units are the same. When you hear about NG units deployed fast to a disaster those are ones that were designated by that state to be on a higher state of readiness for that and had taken steps to keep that posture.

The heavy lift capability of the Air Force is actually pretty small compared to what it had been. When I was doing logistics on Afghanistan the majority of the supplies that came in to use were not flown on US military aircraft but on civilian contracted planes- a whole lot of the Russian and Ukrainian. The Air Force couldn't handle the demand.

There are about 180 C-17s in the Air Force inventory. About 40 of them will be unavailable at any given time for maintenance reasons. Of those 140 left probably 100 are tasked right now with supporting current military deployments and movements of supplies in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan and other locations.

That leaves about 40 left that must support this mission plus all other airlift needs of the US Military globally.

That said, the gap probably isn't in airlift. You can't just airlift supplies and dump them on the flight line, there has to be distribution in place on the ground to manage that. And right now that seems to be the logjam. Until that is straightened out it will be a choke point. Until that is straightened out it is where the focus needs to be. And that will be officials in PR with the local government there taking the lead and managing that portion as they are the ones who know the people, the locations and the needs.