Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Murphy's Law in Action Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: What Defeated The Afghan Air Force
SYSOP    7/19/2012 5:33:09 AM
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Chris       7/19/2012 9:42:20 AM
We should've let the USSR keep the place.  They would've had to leave when they went broke anyway, but would've left behind an infrastructure,  two generations of educated people, and terrorists would've been tried and killed off with an assembly line - hence - the Taliban and Al Qaida wouldn't even exist today.
 
Hindsight is always 20/20. 
@import url http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Load.ashx?type=style&file=SyntaxHighlighter.css);" target="_blank">link
 
Quote    Reply

trenchsol       7/19/2012 10:51:09 AM
If Soviet Union controlled Afghanistan, they would have had Pakistan squeezed between them and India, and they had decent relation with India. The next step would be elimination of Pakistan.
 
While it doesn't sound like something that I could lose sleep for, that would provide Soviet Union with free access to Indian Ocean. It was something  that would worry any US administration I could think of.
 
DG
 
 
Quote    Reply

AA2010       7/19/2012 4:15:55 PM

Having been there and helped train & equip the Afghan Air Force, you've got some of the issues correct but you are wrong on a particular point: NATO controls the money for buying the spare parts -- the Afghans don't have any money -- so there parts that are purchased eventually arrive.  Unfortunately, that is a very slow and painful process that can take weeks at best, months typically, to acquire particular parts from either the Russian or Italian aircraft manufacturers.

One of the issues is that the technical orders are not in a language native to Afghanistan.  There are a few (old) Afghan mechanics and aircrew (trained during the Soviet occupation or prior) who read Russian and can understand the tech manuals for the Russian built helicopters.  The C-27A tech manuals are in English and it can be problematic to find aircrew or mechanics who read that well enough on their own. 

Eventually we'll get there...but the old adage about "How long does it take to give someone 10 years experience? -- 10 Years" remains true whether you are teaching an Afghan or someone from any other country or job.

My experience was positive - most genuinely appreciate the service and sacrifices the NATO personnel make and the donations of aircraft, equipment and more to help bring safety, security and stability to Afghanistan.  Unfortunately thought, there are no shortages of challenges...but Afghans are survivors, and survivors are smart and ingenious.  There are things they do that make no sense to us without an understanding of context or their version of risk management...they would take an aircraft into the air (if we let them) that we wouldn't... 

 (The C-27A itself is a problem...yes, they are old and there are parts obsolesence and other mechanic and structural problems associated with old aircraft...I'm not a big fan of the company that made it...but it is basically underpowered for the high density altitudes and payloads for which Afghans operate and need to move.)

Sure it easy for them to say, "Buy us new stuff" (just like our kids). One of the greatest challenges for them is to build & retain the institutional knowledge and skills associated with acquisition and logistics, not because they are inherently corrupt or uneducatable, but rather they lack the fiscal & other resources to be self-sustaining without NATO or America's assistance for the near-term plus.  Until those foundational elements exist (whether in Afghanistan or in other underdeveloped or war-torn countries in which NATO or America's military is trying to improve the ability of the local military forces to appropriately support their governments), the educational deficits and lower-order Maslow needs will remain the problems you accurately describe.   

 
Quote    Reply

Reactive       7/19/2012 7:08:22 PM
Excellent post ^^  
 
Quote    Reply

HeavyD    @AA2010   7/20/2012 4:39:12 PM
Yes it takes 9 months to make a baby, but it can take years of trying and miscarried attempts to get those 9 months consecutively.
 
so...do we need to pull an entire air corps over here to the US for 3-4 years and train the pilots, maintenance crews, basically an entire organization (using US Army terminology) from G1 (personel) G2 (intel) G3 (ops) through G4 (supply)?  Then once functional cohesive, transplant this unit back to A-Stan as a clean build and into new facilities?
 
 
 
 
Quote    Reply

Heorot       7/22/2012 9:42:58 AM
On the education point, remember that the usual script used in Afghnistan is the Arabic cursive script that reads from right to left.

So to be able to work from western and Russian manuals, an engineer would not only have to be trilingual, but also able to read manuals written in western and cyrillic scripts. You’re not going to find and keep too many of those is a country with such a poor education system.
 
Quote    Reply

cwDeici       7/26/2012 12:17:54 PM


If Soviet Union controlled Afghanistan, they would have had Pakistan squeezed between them and India, and they had decent relation with India. The next step would be elimination of Pakistan.

 

While it doesn't sound like something that I could lose sleep for, that would provide Soviet Union with free access to Indian Ocean. It was something  that would worry any US administration I could think of.
 
DG

Afghanistan would've cost money, and so would a hypothetically successful invasion of Pakistan and the creation and deployment of an Indian Ocean blue water fleet. The economic benefits would not exceed the costs, and the SU would not have collapsed later, and possibly sooner. There's always the butterfly effect over longer periods of time, but it's honestly surprising the SU didn't collapse earlier and that was because they found a lot of natural resources in their hinterlands in the 70s.
 
Quote    Reply



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics