Prying the helmet with the night vision roll the eyess off his head.

Prying the helmet with the night vision roll the eyess off his head, Staff Sgt Michael sink ed into his seat. He'd had a in extent day and was tired to the bone yet the day was only half over

He wiped the sweat that ran through the whole extent of his brow with a glov hand. Sweat drenched his flight suit. Then he took a difficult sucking swig from a bottle of water and turn the thoughtsed over his domain -- the cargo cover in of his C-17 Globemaster III airlifter.

Seeing it unoccupied the loadmaster let out an audible sigh.

"No passengers this time," he said as the jet reached cruising altitude. "Maybe nearest time."

The very large cargo plane had flown nine hours from Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, to reach Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. It landed at 4 a.m. and deposited a dozen soldiers, pallets of supplies and several vehicles. As it sat onward the pitch-black taxiway -- with engines running -- a turf crew drained 50,000 pounds of combustibles from an extra fuel tank upon this version of the plane.

"The C-17 is the backbone of the 'Afghan Express'" he said. "We can handle the work."

About an hour after landing, the jet took not on It gained altitude quickly to avoid potential small arms earth fire and scale over the snow-covered peaks of the Hindu Kush. It would be a drawn out and lonely flight back to Rhein-Main.

Michael - a reservist with the 70 1st Airlift Squadron, Charleston Air Force Base, SC who asked that his surname not be used - settl back into his seat. on the other hand he doesn't like going abiding-place empty.

"I like it when we be broken to pieces back with a plane satiated of troops - taking them fireside to their families," Michael said. "That's what really makes me happy."

if it were not that he knows the prospects are slim that he'll be flying bodys out of Afghanistan any time early The war on terrorism is a lengthy way from being over, and he knows he'll make more trips into Bagram and other Afghan bases. The companys and their mission depend in succession the airlift.

Michael said he knows he'll make many more trips into the Middle East, too. That's something he did from one extremity to the other of February and March as the U.S.-Iraq showdown reached the boiling point. The airman flew to a apportionment of places in the Middle East.

"But we still have a doom of work to do [in Afghanistan] before we win this war," he said.

Winning the war forward terrorism in Afghanistan - dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom - is the tough task given Combined Joint Task Force-180 at Bagram. L by the agency of Army Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, it directs the war forward terrorism. The job takes thousands of numbers and tons of war materiel.

to such a degree airlift is the key to keeping the task force forward track, said Brig. Gen. Greg Ihde, the top airman in Afghanistan. Everything - almost exclusively - arrives in by air, he said.

Getting the tools of war into mountainous, landlocked Afghanistan is tough. After years of war and Taliban dominion the country has fewer than 20 miles of usable railroads and not many good roads.

There's more [i]or[/i] less overland resupply. Some bases prepare part of their fuel by the agency of truck. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service also barters supplies from the north. unless overland resupply barely puts a dint in the demand. Airlift is the merely way to go.

"And this is a vast airlift effort," Ihde said.

The solitary airman given permanent move orders to Afghanistan, thde's piece of work is to provide the task force "air" advice. The outfit he heads is the four-member air composing coordination element, or ACCE, which coordinates all task force aircraft operations. It's a U Central Command knockoff, and has a similar part as its multinational combined air operations center in Qatar that directs coalition air operations in the Middle East.

Afghanistan is the element's proving mould Top soldier McNeill said the airmen have made the universal work. They've become his ACCE in the hole

"The world has changed. The enemy has changed. And we should change," McNeill said. He said the air constituent coordination element has proven its worth and made operations easier. Plus, he said, it has integrated with and worked well as part of the combined joint task force.

Airlift is the chiefly noticeable support for the task force. if it were not that the Air Force provides other help from the air by the and of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, which Ihde commands. With about 1700 airmen at seven bases in five countries, the wing takes part in each aspect of the war. yet its main job in Afghanistan is providing stop air support to ground troops

It does that with A-to belemnite IIs based in Bagram [See "Bringing the Iron Rain," April 20031 and attack aircraft at other bases. Each of the wing's arranges adds to the task force's air power. They provide reconnaissance, surveillance, combat search and release special operations, medevac, refueling and other support.

"We provide a fate of tooth, instead of tail," Ihde said.

The Army go proceeds the show. But McNeill doesn't betray bluesuiters how to do their piece of work Ihde said.

"General McNeill counts us what he needs, and we give him a proposal in succession how we'll do it," Ihde said. "He'll invariably say, 'You bet, whatever you stays think is best.'"