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455th Air Expeditionary Wing opens new aircraft parking ramp on Bagram Airfield

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Richard Williams
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  On June 5, 2010, a ribbon cutting ceremony here officially opened a new aircraft parking ramp as one of six military construction projects to improve mission capability.

The addition of Sierra ramp, an 18-acre parking area with five in-the-ground fueling points will greatly increase the throughput and capability of equipment to troops in the field, according to U.S. Air Force Col. Christopher Pike, 455th Expeditionary Mission Support Group, commander.

"I have been an air mobility guy most my career and I understand the capability this brings to the airfield and the mission," Colonel Pike said.

"To those who have come in and out of here every day, the ramp has grown as the grass grows," Colonel Pike said. "A few days and another strip of concrete goes in and it just happens.

"Obviously everyone realizes that something like this doesn't just happen," he said. "This is engineers at their best. It isn't just one person or one organization; it took a whole team of people to get this done and to get it done ahead of schedule so we can bring more combat air power to the airfield."

Lt. Col. Mike Fitzgerald, Army Corps of Engineers, officer-in-charge of the Bagram Airfield area office, deployed from Kansas City, Kan., added, the long process to build sierra ramp came to a culminating point with the final opening.

"We want to thank everyone who worked on this project to complete it ahead of schedule," said Colonel Fitzgerald said. "We had a lot of environmental and security challenges to overcome but we adapted and overcame."

Major John Mazzitello, 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron military construction project manager deployed from the Minnesota Air National Guard, added the project constituted months of hard work on many people's parts but this massive project, which included more than 73,000m of concrete, 26,500 steel reinforcing dowel rods and more than 16 miles of saw cutting to create concrete expansion joints, could not have been possible without the cooperation between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Air Force, the contractor CH2MHILL and the hard work of the Afghan workers whose dedication say the project completed.

"There is an old adage in the military that MILCON projects never move," added Major Mazzitello. "I was very happy to see that with the Army Corps of Engineers and our contractors the projects here do move. We have a lot of progress and will keep it up and complete all of the projects done here soon."