SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — The official center of the U.S. military airlift world in Europe is shifting from Frankfurt’s crowded airport to the cow pastures of western Germany.

Along with Ramstein Air Base, 70 miles to the east, Spangdahlem Air Base is now where the action is — the future stop for resupply, troop transport and humanitarian flights between the United States and Southwest Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

And that future seems limitless.

On the tarmac Friday sat a tableau of Spangdahlem Air Base’s new dual capabilities — an A-10 “Warthog” and an F-16 fighter in the foreground, dwarfed by mammoth C-17 and C-5 “T-tails” behind.

“Living in the center of the universe is not too bad,” said Col. David Goldfein, commander of the host unit, the 52nd Fighter Wing, between greeting U.S. Air Forces in Europe brass and local VIPs during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Spangdahlem’s new Air Mobility Command expansion.

The ribbon-cutting marked the completion of construction that allows airlift operations from Rhein-Main Air Base, next to Frankfurt International Airport, to move to Spangdahlem under the huge Rhein-Main Transition Program. Under the program, funded by Germany and the United States, the Germans get space to expand Frankfurt airport and Americans get additional air mobility infrastructure.

The formal arrival of the 726th Airlift Support Squadron at the end of this week adds about 127 active-duty airmen to Spangdahlem’s population of about 5,000 troops. About 80 of those extra airmen are transferring from Rhein-Main.

A look back at the seven-year journey to relocate Rhein-Main’s immense capabilities here inspired normally circumspect Air Force officers and German officials to superlatives. So evolved was Rhein-Main that it’s taking two bases to replace it, say German and Air Force personnel.

When Americans lower the Stars and Stripes on Oct. 18 at Rhein-Main, it will mark the end of the largest German/U.S. military project, unprecedented in complexity, “completed in record time and within budget,” said Karl Peter Bruch, interior minister for the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz.

The Spangdahlem piece is “a masterpiece of logistics and cooperation,” Bruch added, noting that the 52nd Fighter Wing F-16s still flew missions while construction crews built runways and ramps. For the new airlift ramp, which can park 13 C-17s, contractors laid 100,000 cubic meters of concrete, the size of 18 soccer fields, Bruch said.

It took $500 million and 63 major projects at Ramstein and Spangdahlem to replace Rhein-Main’s capabilities, said Lt. Gen. Robert D. Bishop Jr., USAFE vice commander. At Spangdahlem, the construction includes everything from a small passenger terminal to a special underground refueling system that can fill C-17s in one-third the time of conventional systems.

Air Force officials were firm that there are no new plans for the base. But no one could come up with any limiting factors, either.

Fighters are here for the foreseeable future, Bruch said, “and larger aircraft offer great prospects.”

The crucial factor for Spangdahlem’s success is local support, Bishop said, recalling a memorial last month for two airmen who died in a traffic accident in Belgium.

“All three mayors were here for that,” Bishop said. “That never would have happened” at stateside bases.

Time and again, locals have shown support, Goldfein said, from “adopting” single soldiers and mayors helping with base land acquisitions to contractors’ extra efforts.

“Tell me anyplace else where contractors would do [quality assurance] on their own nickel,” Goldfein said. “I saw contractors come in and redo [work] because it didn’t meet their standards.”

Migrated