Thursday, December 29, 2011

Setting up shop...

...and with anti-climactic results to readers here. The Obama Doctrine is humming along.

The military’s legendary expeditionary construction units, the Navy’s Seabees are set to return to their World War II roots this spring when a construction detail Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 heads to Africa to greatly expand the runways at a remote Kenyan airstrip to allow it to handle large cargo planes.
Sailors from the detail will haul their own heavy construction equipment, such as a a mobile concrete batching plant, pavers and steam rollers to a remote part of the African nation to expand an austere airstrip into one capable of handling large jet aircraft.
While the Seabees declined to comment on where the airfield is, how large the new runway will be or even the specific types aircraft that will be able to use it, they did tell DT that this is the largest project they’ve worked on in a long time. The project is so large that the sailors are bringing their own asphalt prepping [batching] plant with them; something the Seabees haven’t done in a long time.
“This is the first time we’ve set up a batch plant up, this is a newly procured system, the Seabees haven’t done their own asphalt batching — the process of making asphalt — for several years; its almost an extinct skill,” Lt. Cdr. Bill Wohead, Naval Construction Battalion 3’s operations officer told DT recently. “We’re the first (Seabee) battalion to go through all this training, we’re the first battalion to use this brand new equipment and we’re the first battalion that’s going to use it all in concert to create a project in the middle of nowhere.”

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