The US military wants to spend US$1.3 billion on more than 100 construction projects at 40 sites across Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, the newspaper said that at the main US base in Afghanistan, Bagram, the military is planning to build a 30-million-dollar passenger terminal and adjacent cargo facility to handle the flow of troops.

Many of these troops arrive at the base north of Kabul before moving onto other sites, the report said.

Under the proposed schedule, those facilities will not be completed until late 2010 and go into operation early in 2011, The Post said, citing unnamed military sources.

Officials say such projects are absolutely essential given the inadequate and dilapidated nature of the existing infrastructure, the paper noted.

"The current facilities are inadequate to support the daily volume of approximately 1,000 passengers and 400 short tons of cargo each day," the paper quotes Lieutenant Colonel Dan Krall, the 455th Expeditionary Aerial Port Squadron commander, as saying.

The request comes as the US government reported Friday that it had closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit.

- AFP