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Comment by hnpolicestate | Hacker News Reader

There's this awful semi-famous photograph online of a previous African famine that depicts a man walking past a child who he stole U.N supplied foodstuffs from.

This might be naive but what's stopping the U.S, Russia, E.U, China or any capable world power from just air dropping tons of food onto Sudans population centers? You can't tell me Sudan's military has the ability to shoot down advanced aircraft. Am I missing something? The country has no government currently so claiming it's a violation of sovereignty would also be questionable imo.

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> just air dropping tons of food onto Sudans population centers?

Super inefficient, but makes for great photos. Good piece on NPR US airdrops of food into Gaza here:

"the first thing to understand about airdrops is they are probably the most inefficient possible way to deliver aid. So they're used very, very sparingly and only when there is truly no other way to get aid in.

"...ballpark eight to 10 times as expensive logistically to deliver by air as by overland transport"

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236019060/gaza-israel-airdro...

Basically because of the logistical nightmare it is to airdrop food, there is no way that you can feed millions in famine with it. You need trucks on the ground bringing in food.

Air drops might be cheaper than boots on the ground, if that's what it really takes.

I'm not seriously advocating anything. It's a pretty hard problem to solve. Famine in itself, is not so hard, we can solve that with money -- the civil war thing is difficult though.

Airdropping "tons of food" wouldn't move the needle.

Airdropping thousands of tons of food per day, every day, for years on end would temporarily reduce famine. It wouldn't prevent famine (armed groupings who would gain control over of the airdrops wouldn't necessarily share), and would destroy local farming, and would be horrendously expensive but it's possible (see e.g. Berlin airlift) if someone major really wanted to dedicate all their airforce (again, see e.g. Berlin airlift for what it takes) to that.

The US Air Force Air Mobility Command is the only organization in the world which has a significant number of long-range cargo aircraft and the associated logistics train capable of delivering large amounts of food into contested territory. Russia, the EU, and China have only a tiny fraction of the capability and wouldn't be able to sustain it beyond a temporary symbolic effort. The Russian military is also otherwise occupied at the moment.

While the AMC has the capability it isn't unlimited. They are already stretched thin delivering on other taskings, so if they have to pick up a new humanitarian aid mission then other missions will have to be postponed. Perhaps you should ask the Houthis and Iranians to suspend their terrorist activities in the Middle East in order to reduce the current workload.

Thousands of tons if you intend to do it over a meaningful time.

And this way of distributing food is virtually worthless without corresponding ground operations.

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