Rather than going in and out of the capital, the planes will transport people from American bases in Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to European countries and, in many cases, to the United States.
Washington, which has thousands of soldiers trying to secure the Kabul airport, has set a deadline to complete one of the largest evacuation missions the Pentagon has ever done before Aug. 31.
But Austin did not rule out asking President Joe Biden to postpone this deadline.
“We are going to continue evaluating the situation. And, again, we will work all we can to get as many people as possible. And as we get closer to that deadline, we will make a recommendation to the president,” he said.
Some 15,000 Americans must be withdrawn from Afghanistan, according to Biden, who says his government wants to remove at least 50,000 Afghan allies and their families from the country.
Widely criticized for the chaotic exit after the Taliban’s sudden victory, Biden has warned that the frantic effort to get Americans, other foreigners and Afghan allies out of Taliban-occupied Kabul is dangerous.
Amid allegations that the Taliban have intimidated and beaten people trying to get to the airport, Austin said those militants had safely let those with a US passport through.
The Pentagon said on Saturday that it had so far evacuated 17,000 people since the operation began on August 14, and that many of them had first flown to Qatar or Kuwait. The total included 2,500 Americans.
And US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the US military and its allies had removed another 7,900 people in the past 24 hours.
The CRAF has only been activated twice: to transport troops in the 1990-91 Gulf War and again in 2002-2003 for the invasion of Iraq.