Why didn't the US Army destroy aircraft that fell into Taliban hands?

Factual Questions
1

The original idea was to leave Afghanistan and let the US-trained Afghan army take control of its own country, using the US equipment.Sounds logical…but obviously it didn’t work

So once it became obvious that the Afghan army had collapsed, why didn’t the US do something about the American equipment? The Taliban took over army bases quickly, of course, during the first few days., and everybody was shocked.
But surely as the US watched the Taliban expanding its area, the US air force could have returned to those same bases that were abandoned just a day earlier–and bomb the hell out of the hangars.
The Taliban may have already removed the small stuff, but surely some of the heavy equipment would have been left in place for a day or two, and the US Army knew exactly what was stored in which hangar and which warehouse. Why not destroy it?

(Mods–I put this in GQ because I’m wondering there are technical facts that I don’t know.If it turns out that the answer is less factual, and more about politics, then maybe move the thread)

2

Why did the Taliban not just place mortar and artillery on dominating positions outside the Kabul air port and shell away? The US military position there was untenable, would have surrendered in short order and given them a bigger propaganda coup of 6000 or so US POWs.

Well, one way for that to happen would have been to do what you suggest.

3

Is there an official/reliable text/synopsis of the U.S. withdrawal agreement? It might give better insight into what was negotiated.

Otherwise, generally, for the same reason they left a bunch of aircraft in Vietnam+neighbouring countries in 1975.

4

I think there’s a few logical reasons you would not have done this.

The chaos around the collapse was pretty comprehensive, I have read we actually did not have an incredibly accurate accounting of what equipment was where. So the idea of just bombing Afghan National Army sites that we suspect contained our gifted equipment, without knowing for sure if anyone is in those sites, seems questionable. It’s possible we’d be bombing our allies. It’s also possible we’d be killing Taliban fighters, which while we are literally coordinating with them in a deal to provide a safe exit for people out of the Kabul civilian airport, seems unwise.

Now the equipment that we had direct access to, has been reportedly “demilitarized” which means small explosives were detonated on key systems of the craft that basically render them unusable. You would need like an expert from the factory to rebuild them, which the Taliban won’t have access to the knowledge or the equipment to do so.

Additionally while some of the equipment left behind is likely to be used for years (small arms, trucks), much of the rest of the equipment, particularly the aircraft, is not really usable for more than what is said to be a couple of months without professional resupply and maintenance, which the Taliban will not have.

I saw today that a grand total of one Afghan Army helicopter was able to actually function the last couple days of the government’s existence.

5

We are trying to end a war, not continue one or start another fight.

6

Yeah, getting wound up about ANA equipment falling into Taliban hands seems a bit ridiculous to me. We had the option of trying to at least equip them properly, even if we couldn’t really mold them into anything resembling a Western military. And when they folded to the Taliban, all that equipment went over to them.

I’m not sure exactly what we could have done specifically for the ANA equipment. We were expecting (apparently rather absurdly) that the ANA would fight the Taliban, and when they didn’t, what were we supposed to do- go mount up missions to go recover rifles, Humvees and some light aircraft? Hardly worth the trouble or risk. Like others have pointed out, anything with any degree of technology or maintenance needs will be junk in short order, and anything else isn’t particularly valuable.

7

Four-page PDF here on the State Department website.

8

Thanks— that is what I was looking for. Anyway, there you have it, in black and white:

Blowing shit up would seem to go against the letter of the agreement.

9

According to the chief of US Central Command, the US left behind “up to 70 MRAPs [armored vehicles], 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft.”

As @Martin_Hyde notes, the abandoned vehicles were reportedly made useless.

I wonder if even disabled US planes would attract interest from Russian or Chinese “technicians” hoping to look under the hood.

10

Absolutely. And Iranian and Pakistani ones as well as Indians.

11

The Taliban will eventually have some sort of air force. That will not be due to a bunch of demilitarized airframes the US left behind, it will be because a wealthy and generous ally wished it so.

12

I think there’s probably a distinction to be made between equipment the US military gifted to the ANA, and equipment the US military abandoned during its evacuation. AIUI, it is the latter that was “demilitarized”, which still leaves a lot of functional ANA hardware that was taken over by the Taliban. As has been noted though, the fancier pieces of equipment won’t be operational for long without parts and expert maintenance, so there was little incentive for the US to risk anything or violate the withdrawal agreement in an attempt to disable that stuff; it will be inoperable soon enough.

13

Anything valuable was almost certainly taken with us or destroyed to the point of unusability and/or analysis, and anything we left was either old (UH-60 Blackhawks) or not technologically advanced (MRAPs). And all the Afghan military equipment was almost certainly not advanced- the helicopters they had were all 45+ year old designs(UH-60A Blackhawk, MD 530F Cayuse Warrior (low-tech export version of the MD 500), and A-29 Super Tucano turboprop light strike aircraft. The ground vehicles and weapons were either old, ex-Soviet vehicles like BMP-1s or T-55s, or more “modern” ones like MRAPs and Humvees.

List of equipment of the Afghan National Army - Wikipedia

None of that is going to enlighten the Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians or anyone else in any way.

14

Yeah, keep in mind a lot of the equipment we gave to the Afghan National Army is equipment we sell to lots of countries, the reality is most of it has probably been studied by spies from our enemies already, you can only keep things so secret if you’re selling them to countries like Turkey and etc. There’s also “packages” for these weapon systems, with varying degrees of complexity. Like the base Blackhawk helicopter is nothing technologically special, it has varying different load outs, some of which contain technical stuff that is deeply classified. The more advanced stuff is frequently only sold to extremely close allies like Israel or the United Kingdom. There’s a version of the Blackhawk that has stealth technology that I do not believe is sold/shared with anyone, we used two of them in the bin Laden raid and we made sure the one that crashed was destroyed by the SEAL team before they evacuated.

15

Everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off seems to think the Taliban is Al Qeda reborn. Keep in mind this is actually a liberation army, taking back their country from foreign invaders and their local puppet regime - nothing different that they haven’t done since the British invaded almost 200 hundred years ago (or since Alexander the great 2400 years ago). (Mind you, they did want to take it back… to the twelfth century…)

Also remember, in 2001 Bin Laden was their buddy who had spent a decade previous helping them do the same liberation gig against the Soviets. He was their great friend, the “mother of all friends”, so to speak - so they were not going to turn him over whatever the provocation. Do they have as strong a commitment for the current Al Qeda, 30 years after the Soviets and probably almost nobody left from that original jihad? Or are they more concerned about fitting in in a world where they need heavy outside help to simply feed the 6 million in Kabul and pay to maintain the massive infrastructure - cellular, electricity, and even roads and water systems, I presume, not to mention air traffic control systems - that are a feature after 20 years of American largesse? Their behaviour will determine if they get international recognition, World Bank aid, etc. Mind you, at this time their main force is a collection of illiterate irascible undisciplined hillbillies toting guns - so coherent policy may at times be missing. They don’t seem to have a coherent top-down command structure like a regular army.

They were happy to have a tacit agreement, generally they didn’t attack the Americans in Kabul Airport as long as they weren’t attacked and as long as the Americans seemed to be packing up and leaving in short order. They apparently even gave some assistance in rounding up busloads of people within Kabul wanting to leave.

I can’t think of a better way to change that semi-peaceful arrangement (as AK84 points out, possibly involving mortars as a result) than to start dropping random bombs all over the countryside, particularly in military bases where Taliban forces might be holed up. The Taliban were a wee bit pissed that the US hit without warning a few targets that were enemy of the Taliban themselves, especially a car full of explosives inside Kabul.

I agree with the above posts - the ANA probably had nothing that wasn’t already available on the open market - not just because it could have fallen into Taliban hands, but because there was a possibility that someone in the government would have sold it to them. Also, anything too technical would need technicians to maintain, and that would require highly trained Afghans or highly exposed Americans.

(I saw a recent picture of the Kabul airport and one of the large aircraft left behind appeared to have a distinct tilt. Something was missing. In one of the interminable news conferences during the evacuation, a Pentagon official did include a list of assorted small items, including Humvees, rendered inoperable.)

So what’s an MRAP? “Meal Repurposed As Poo”?

16

Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected. There are so many excess to needs that

The Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency is charged with off-loading 13,000 MRAPs to 780 domestic law enforcement agencies on waiting lists for vehicles. The DLA does not transfer property to the agencies, so the vehicles are allocated to the agencies with costs picked up by them or the state, while the vehicles remain the property of the Defense Department. To receive an armored vehicle, a requesting agency has to meet certain criteria, including justification for use (such as for shooting incidents, SWAT operations and drug interdiction), geographical area and multi-jurisdiction use, the ability to pay for repairs and maintenance, and security and restricted access to the vehicle.

Man that makes me feel old, I still think of the Blackhawk as sorta ‘new’, I forget just how old it actually is.

17

I read somewhere the ANA wanted more Russian helicopters and stuff because things like the Mi-17 are much eaiser to maintain, and one of the reasons the US insisted on Blackhawks was so that if something like what happened indeed happened, then the choppers wouldn’t be much use for long without maintenance and parts etc.

Pretty much everything else the Taliban acquired seems to be more or less “Commercially available”, with the possible exception of the Super Tucano which, being a turboprop plane, isn’t going to be that complicated, and some of the armoured personnel transport vehicles, which they will be able to source equivalents from elsewhere if needed anyway.

18

I think handing out things like MRAPs to civilian police is a bad idea and contributes to the militarization of them. It’s part of the reason for the antagonism between civilians and police.

19

The Afghan airforce did evacuate planes and pilots. That reduced the number that got captured.

The US military disabled aircraft left behind at the airport.

Anything still flying will require maintenance and parts that the Taliban can’t easily obtain.

20

All I hear when I read about the Taliban feeling ‘betrayed’ by the US because we destroyed a bunch of stuff rather than let them have it is this: