Drop Goals

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has provided lifesaving food assistance and nutrition support to more than 750,000 people in South Sudan since the latest crisis began a year ago.

This includes aid to more than 430,000 people displaced or directly affected by conflict, as well as to another 335,000 people from pre-existing caseloads, who are either refugees or members of other vulnerable groups.

The WFP aims at scaling up its assistance to support 2.5 million conflict-affected and food- insecure people in South Sudan over the coming months.

 

In order to achieve this objective, it is airdropping food into areas that are unreachable because of flooding and a lack of security. This method of air delivery is usually avoided because it is costly, but many people in isolated refugee camps need food urgently as stocks have dwindled.

When areas are inaccessible, WFP Aviation may consider using helicopters to deliver food. But they are expensive and their payload is limited. A more cost-effective option may be delivering food by large cargo aircraft. However, this requires the availability of an airfield that can accept them. Often airdrops are the only realistic answer.

The WFP has a history of food drops that goes back to 1999, when many were completed successfully in East Timor. This saw the delivery by two C-130 cargo planes of desperately needed food and blankets to tens of thousands of people hiding in the mountains from political violence. The Australian Defence Force lent the aircraft to the WFP.

The WFP also executed the first ever ‘snow drop’ delivery of food, a unique system developed in conjunction with the South African aviation company, Safair. A C-130 was deployed to drop 350,000 plastic 200gm packets of high-energy biscuits. They were packed in such a way that they floated and circled as they fell to ensure a soft landing. It is a less dangerous operation than the conventional airdrop and does not require a special drop zone.

In November 2009, the WFP began to parachute food aid into isolated areas of conflict- ridden southern Sudan with the aim of reaching more than 155,000 people cut off from road access by heavy rainfall. The airdrops lasted two-and-a- half months, providing some 4,000 tonnes of food to people hit by conflict, high food prices and poor harvests in three of the 10 states in southern Sudan – Jonglei, Upper Nile and Warrap.

The few roads that exist in this vast area were impassable during the rainy season and a spike in tribal fighting also blocked road and river access to some areas.

The WFP chartered an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo aircraft from Transaviaexport Airlines, a Belarusian national airline based at Minsk, with a hub at the Sharjah International Airport, in the UAE. They made airdrops on 22 different locations across the three states, where trained teams collected the food from the drop zone and organised distribution.

Pochalla was one of the 22 locations where the WFP airdropped food in response to the urgent needs of 5,000 people living in six villages.

Yida sits near the northern tip of South Sudan’s Unity State, near the border with Sudan. It is a remote region in one of the world’s least developed countries, where a refugee camp was completely cut off by road during the rainy season in 2012.

Before the rains began, the WFP pre- positioned food stocks in Yida to assist 36,000 refugees until the end of the year, which, at the time, was nearly twice the camp’s population.

However, just as the rains were beginning, a sudden influx of refugees tripled the camp’s population in less than three months. The sharp rise meant those food stocks were being exhausted faster than expected.

To overcome the camp’s inaccessibility by road, the WFP used a combination of airdrops and airlifts with a Mi-26 cargo helicopter using an airstrip near the camp.

To replenish cereal stocks, the WFP also began a series of airdrops, which lasted for two months, to allow uninterrupted food distributions to the refugees. By the end of the operation, the Il-76 cargo aircraft had unloaded up to 3,000 tonnes of food that should have fed more than 60,000 people for three months.

At the height of the southern Sudan operation, daily sorties were being flown from Nairobi and Lokichoggio in Kenya, as well as Khartoum and El Obeid in Sudan.

Aerial drops require a well-prepared and safeguarded dropping zone under supervision of at least one monitor, who can communicate with the aircraft.

Airdropping is only suitable for dry food, unless more expensive parachute systems are used to stabilise and decelerate the load before impact. Not all air carriers can perform these types of parachute operations.

In most cases, considering all the associated costs of airlifts, normal airdrops will turn out to be the most cost-effective option for food transport if large quantities are to be transported.

WFP Aviation charters aircraft from the list of accredited carriers, which are licensed for this type of operation by the Civil Aviation Authority of the country of aircraft registration.

Preparation is the responsibility of the carrier and the aircraft used are normally equipped with roller system to allow loading and gravity extraction of pallets in flight. The aircrew and cabin drop team are required to hold necessary training and flight experience to be able to perform air drop operations. Both air carrier and WFP personnel adhere to related applicable manuals and standard operating procedures.

The ground team marks a large area with a giant white cross, made from old WFP grain sacks, to show emergency aircraft where to drop the food.

Two banners are also set up at either end of the drop zone, which the pilot uses to line up the aircraft on his final approach.

The size of the drop zone (DZ) depends on the type of aircraft making the drop, but generally it’s 200 metres by 1,000 metres, marked out by white food bags, with a cross dead centre. The area is secured – with a 200-metre perimeter outside the DZ – at least one hour before the scheduled drop, and it’s the ground controller who clears the aircraft to release its cargo.

 

Airdropping is specialised; it is normally only former military pilots that have the training and experience. They generally drop from just over 200 metres above the ground to reduce impact on the food bags.

Two loadmasters supervise the cargo and release on the pilot’s command. The dropping system used is down to the operator, with the cargo arranged in either a single or double row configuration. If it is single row, it is released in a single drop.

On final approach to the DZ, the pilot keeps speed down to around 185kph and lifts the nose by 8 to 10 degrees. When the loadmasters release the bands holding the food in place, gravity takes over and the bags drop to the ground.

In November (2015), the United Nation relief wing announced that continued violence in South Sudan, with clashes in southern and central Unity State, had “intensified with grave consequences for civilians”, leaving at-risk populations food insecure and vulnerable to diseases.

“Civilians have also suffered the grave consequences of killings, sexual violence and forced displacement,” the report said. “Food insecurity in these hard-hit regions has deteriorated and has seen an 80% increase compared to the same period last year.”

In order to address this ever-worsening problem, emergency airlifts of food, and airdrops in particular, are set to continue for the foreseeable future.