” … signs have emerged that the Afghan Air Force is already falling apart.
About one-third of the Afghan Air Force’s 160 aircraft can no longer fly because they lack spare parts since the United States withdrew its contractors from the country, Afghan lawmaker Haji Ajmal Rahmani reportedly said during a recent webinar sponsored by the State Department Correspondents Association.
The Afghan Air Force has also run out of laser-guided precision munitions, Rahmani said.
“It’s not low — it’s actually out of stock,” the Washington Examiner quoted Rahmani as saying at the July 23 event.
None of this is surprising. msn.com
I was there for roughly a year. From day one I knew as LT it was a lost cause. Dirt houses that looked like something from 2000 years ago with no windows. The kicker was seeing children implanting IED’s. Even mock ones just for fun. They had a couple of generations as backup before we even hit the ground. My goal at that point was to keep everyone alive. No more getting out of MRAP’s to piss. We piss in empty water bottles to eliminate ambushes 100%. Soldiers hated my guts but low and behold…they were hugging me when we ALL made it back alive. Other units, not so fortunate to have the leadership that understood these people want to effin kill you.
Babeltuap,
re: Other units, not so fortunate to have the leadership that understood these people want to effin kill you.
I am puzzled. What did the other sergeants expect “these people” to do? Why would they expect any other response from them? (non-rhetorical questions-not being a wise guy here.)
Thanks
Ishmael Zechariah
I doubt there’s any hardware in the US inventory that’s appropriate to Afghan conditions.
The connection between the talks in Vienna and the developing situation in Afghanistan is not being much talked about. If, in the near future, you have the United States embassy fortress and the Hamid Karzai International Airport being besieged at Kabul, what threats of civilizational destruction, such as by intense systematic bombing, can the US make to Iranian diplomats if talks drag on and then fail, leaving Iran apparently free to continue to make real progress towards developing nuclear weapons? Iran has the capability of hitting everything inside the Kabul perimeter with salvos of ground- to -ground missiles from Khorasan province. These missiles have a CEP of ten or fifteen feet. Some have a warhead of from 600 to 1,000 pounds, weigh several tons, and in their final phase into specific targets are hypersonic at 5,000 MPH.
Diplomacy, itself, is held hostage as long as that embassy remains in Kabul.