And all the other weapons and equipment left behind.

That is all.

Stone age idiots that can barely do a jumping jack won’t be too great at flying them or doing maintenance on them.


My old man had a hell of time teaching Kenyans to fly MD-500s. And I think Kenyans are probably a little smarter than dune coons.

We did not leave anything over there that was worth a crap. If we left a Blackhawk, it was one with a bent airframe and burnt-up engine - something we probably thought wasn't even worth bringing home.

Taliban Fly Abandoned Blackhawk Helicopter at Celebrations After US Exit

Staggering Costs – U.S. Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan

I don’t understand why we didn’t burn them or bomb them, just leave scrap metal.

When I was in the service over 50 years ago there were procedures on how to render stuff inoperable so your foe can't use it and I bet they still have those. Their excuse now will be that they didn't expect the Afghan government to collapse so quickly and that equipment was for the Afghan government. I call B.S. on that . They knew this was gonna happen. It was all planned. We just established a new nation...... Talibanistan. With one of the founding fathers named Biden. Only problem is they aren't on our side. But then; neither is our so called "president". If we wanted to, we could still decommission a lot of that stuff with a few drones & hellfire missiles, but Noooooo. That may cause diplomatic friction.

I have several friends that spent serious time there. They didn't care for their culture or hygiene but were awed by their toughness, resilience and ability to quickly learn and adapt.

Never, ever underestimate your enemy.

In Vietnam we struggled against peasants w/ nothing more than a rice ball and an AK. True Believers are very dangerous. You can't succeed by bombing them back to the stone age when that is their comfort zone.


mike r

If I read things correctly, we did leave some of the Pilatus intel airplanes with all their top secret intel gathering equipment. Please correct me if someone knows that this is not correct.

Should have booby trapped enough stuff to make them afraid to go near them

I spoke to a former marine at the Crematorium a few days ago who knew a few involved in the Djibouti pull-out and understood how much worse this was...
We were discussing his brothers lost as a result of the mismanagement of the exit...

Those were not Blackhawks that the US military left behind. They were sold to the ANA through the Foreign Military Sales program. (like Dutch F-16's, Columbian Blackhawks, etc). Also, they were old rebuilt A model airframes, several generations behind the current production UH-60M US Blackhawks.

Was it a waste? Of course, but it's not like some US Army unit left leaving their helicopters behind.

I have personally been in a MH60 flight simulator wit my son when he was in training. He turned over the controls to me and I crashed in a matter of about 5 seconds.
There is no possable way they can train competent pilots without a fleet of small birds and and simulators
Those things are difficult beyond comprehension to fly
I couldn’t ever even begins to keep level flight.
Not to mention the maintenance they take.
There will be no danger for them.

The Blackhawk is the easiest helicopter to fly that I've ever flown.

"if you can start it, you can fly it"

In fact, there are civilian helicopter outfits that won't hire pilots with only US Army Blackhawk time... (+TH-67 time). They're so easy to fly and have such excess power, that it makes a complacent pilot who doesn't manage power as delicately as most other helicopters require.

I think because Joe Biden and his team want to have some good relations with the Taliban. It's just his gift to the Taliban. At some point in the near future you are going to see Joe and his team give up the 9 billion dollars we are keeping in the bank for Afghanistan. Money that belongs to the people and not to the taliban.

kwg

Getting the -60 started is the hardest part. I agree, the SAS system and all of the electronics make it easy to fly. Managing those systems is the hard part. The engines do make a $hit ton of power. Don't let the battery on the APU get under 20 volts or someone will be pumping up an accumulator on the APU. I'll bet the first thing the Afghans break is the tail wheel lock if it hasn't been broken already.

kwg

... but they've contributed so much to civilization:

Bull-Sheet. The missiles weren't worth bringing home, neither were all the small arms and all the ammunition for them. We didn't need the pallets of greenbacks either I guess, using your logic.

This is my thought. They will run out of parts and tech knowledge pretty fast.

my son is was a blackhawk crew chief and then pilot for several years and he assures me that the ones we left are JUNK and rendered not airworthy but i think the army brainwashed him somewhat!! he also said he never met a "ha-jee" or " ha-beeb" that was capable of even starting one

he did tell me once while we was drinking beer on his leave after being in iraq that he helped destroy munitions and parts etc before they loaded their stuff up to head back, claims the engineers had dug a huge hole in the desert and they literally threw everything in it and dumped JP-5 on it and lit it up. he said he was ashamed of the crap they destroyed but was told it was cheaper to destroy it than bring it home

once stateside, he called me and said he had a small crate they were told to make disappear. he asked and got in writing from his ranking officer to take it home. a few weeks later he shows up with a 8x8x10 plywood shipping crate full of the old style camo gear. i mean jackets pants anything and everything. in the back was a pile of outdated comm gear and headsets and vietnam era butt stocks for m16s.

the waste theh government is capable of only is surpassed by the poor decisions they make

The Pakis and Chinese will probably give them a hand.

Until recently Iran was still flying F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantom IIs, and F-5 Tiger IIs that we sold them decades ago. I believe they still have a few airworthy F-4s to play with, So just because it is old doesn't mean it wont work. They will find the parts to keep our abandoned property flying.

It stands to reason that the Afghan pilots trained by our military may have new jobs with the Taliban today. In regards to demil'ing all of the 35-45 UH-60 Black Hawks left behind, not sure we had access to all of them during our hasty drop and run strategy. I would not be surprised to see more flying above Kabul in the very near future.

Obama - Father of ISIS
Biden - Father of Taliban 2.0