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Airlift to Afghanistan: An Invisible Bridge

ABOARD FLIGHT REACH 4060 – At a cost of $44,351 an hour, this venerable leviathan of a C-5 cargo plane has struggled off a South Carolina runway bound for Afghanistan, some 17 hours away, carrying a cargo of two. The payload consists of two very heavy armored trucks, known as MRAPs (Mine Resistant, Armor Protected vehicles). They are built specifically to resist the blast of roadside bombs, the main killers of American troops in Afghanistan. The huge trucks, each weighing 60,000 pounds, are lashed with webs of 25,000-pound test chain to the steel-plate deck of the C-5's enormous cargo ...

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