Once the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan’s airfield in Kandahar on Friday, it didn’t take long for photos to appear on social media showing Taliban fighters posing with military helicopters such as U.S.-made Black Hawks and Soviet-made Mi-17s.
After the group took over Mazar-i-Sharif airport this weekend, more photos followed, this time of Taliban members standing next to an A-29 attack plane and MD-530 utility helicopter.
Now, with Afghanistan under Taliban control, the question is no longer whether the organization will gain access to the Afghan air force’s inventory of U.S.-provided planes and helicopters, but what it plans to do with them — and what the U.S. military can do in response.
The Afghan air force operated a total of 211 aircraft, with about 167 planes and helicopters available for use as of June 30, according to a July report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Bradley Bowman, a former Black Hawk pilot who served in Afghanistan and has sharply criticized the U.S. withdrawal, told Defense News “there’s no doubt that they’ve captured hundreds of Humvees and artillery and other equipment — and aircraft.”
The Afghan air force operated 23 A-29 attack planes, four C-130 cargo planes and a total of 33 militarized versions of the Cessna Caravan, some of which were configured for a light attack mission, according to the special inspector report.
It also flew about 150 helicopters, which included the American-made UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter and armed MD-530s, as well as the Soviet Mi-17, which the Afghan air force was in the process of retiring.
Of the Afghan air force’s inventory, perhaps the most advanced is the A-29 Super Tucano, a turboprop attack plane built by Brazilian aerospace manufacturer Embraer and modified by Sierra Nevada, an American defense firm that integrates the aircraft with U.S.-made sensors and weapons.
Unlike a fighter jet built for speed and maneuverability in a dogfight, the A-29 is optimized for counterinsurgency missions where an aircraft needs to fly slow and low to strike targets on the ground. The aircraft can be flown by relatively inexperienced pilots and operated in austere environments.
Those characteristics made it a great fit for the Afghan air force, which was being built from the ground up, but it’s not technology that can threaten the U.S. military in future engagements with the Taliban, according to Gen. Mark Kelly, who leads Air Combat Command.
“It’s understandable for people to be concerned about any capability falling into the hands of folks where we don’t know exactly how they’re going to use it, who are going to use it against, whether that’s an M16 [rifle] or whether that’s an A-29”.
American experts believes that now Taliban will get an access to number of aircraft that is bigger Estonian Air Force. The main question is what they will do with all this military staff.
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