I’m sure the Taliban fully expected to find destroyed aircraft. That is SOP for any military that’s leaving equipment in enemy territory.
We should have disabled the humvees too. Destroy the electronics.
Yeah, I was thinking of describing MRAPs as the latest in trickle-down police militarization when I wrote that.
Sorry for thread drift but …I also believe that MRAPs are over the top when it comes to policing. Especially, from a practical standpoint. That said, they and other armored vehicles are defensive in nature and are not weapons in and of themselves. They might be “scary” looking but so what? There are occasions when the cops need to be able to defend themselves from gunfire, gasoline bombs etc. and free stuff from the military saves money for the local tax payer.
Having worked on them for a few years in my previous job I’m pretty sure they won’t be operational for very long.
Fear the might of the new Taliban Air Force.
Plaaaayin. Playing with the boys.
Which is?
For instance, a bunch of aircraft were given by the U.S. to the Vietnamese Air Force. See, for instance, https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/30/archives/74-saigon-planes-fly-2000-to-thailand-74-south-vietnamese-planes.html
The aircraft were said to include C‐47 transports and the C‐130 cargo planes that the American military has been using to ferry refugees from South Vietnam to Guam and the Philippines. However, all the aircraft were understood to be Vietnam Air Force planes, originally supplied by the United States.
We read that many originally American aircraft were given away to Vietnam (who asked for them back after they landed in Thailand). Substitute “Afghanistan” for “Vietnam” and this was mentioned right near the beginning of the thread.
If I had to guess, it’s because those planes are effectively worthless outside of a very short period before the spare parts become needed.
It’s not like the Taliban have extensive contacts throughout the world to get spare parts for all these planes we left behind, be they Afghan AF planes or abandoned US planes. So after a fairly short period, they’re just so much inert junk that the Taliban has to deal with.
The main point is more that these were given to other sovereign nations. The United States isn’t a street criminal that just smashes a hobo over the head with a brick and takes stuff back after gifting it to him. Where we had direct control of equipment we knew would fall into the Taliban’s hands, we destroyed it. Where it was in control of the Afghan National Army, we did not because it was legally their equipment and many issues would have arisen in attempts to destroy it.
FWIW not all of it is totally useless. Stuff like MRAPs are basically “trucks” and fairly maintainable. But they aren’t really game changers for the Taliban. There’s actually some fixed-wing aircraft and some helicopters that the Afghan National Army had that likely will be useful to the Taliban as well. There’s some fixed wing aircraft like the A-29 (a turboprop) that is made by Embraer and we know some of those were lost to the Taliban. It’s a common and not particularly difficult to maintain plane, sold to many countries around the world and with lots of information on how to pilot it.
There’s also the Russian made Mi-17s (helicopter), the Afghan National Army had some of those that will be fairly straightforward to use. It is questionable if the Taliban will be able to maintain any kind of serious pilot training, and they did a good job killing pilots in assassinations and given the survivors reason to flee the country, but they likely will scrounge up people capable of flying craft of that sort.
There were some sensationalist claims the Taliban had captured 4 C-130s, but there is little evidence that happened, and it most likely was a misinterpretation of the data (there were 4 C-130s in Afghanistan, total, and all 4 were controlled by the U.S. Air Force, it is unlikely the Taliban possess any C-130, and if they did it is highly unlikely it would ever fly.)
Also note that this sort of thing is normal. Stuff always gets left behind in withdrawals, even when the US wins. It’s just not practical within a withdrawal to take everything back or even to destroy everything.
The equipment left behind tends to be stuff already available, and not nearly enough to really make any significant impact.
And, yes, we only actually own our equipment. Equipment gifted or sold to others no longer belongs to the US. If we’re going to give that stuff out or sell it, then it’s not going to have any secret tech that can be exploited.