Did the U.S. train a Taliban Air Force?

Most of the 'taliban' that get in on the 'kill the trainers' bandwagon aren't exactly high-level guys. As part of the force-building, US and other ISAF forces train Afghan mortar crews, artillery batteries, anti-tank teams, rocket artillery units, snipers, machine gunners and demolition crews. Plus crewmen for attack and transport helicopters, and old-and-stripped M1 battle tanks.

Yet every time we hear of an Afghan ANA/ANP recruit who turns on his trainers, it's some guy with an AK just a couple of weeks after they first turn up. No rogue mortar crews, helicopter pilots or tank crews have yet turned on ISAF forces. I think we're reasonably safe in training Afghan helicopter pilots to fly helicopters.

The Taliban had several dozen helicopters at their disposal while they were in power. They killed the crewmen who knew how to fly them, and couldn't fly them themselves, so they sat in Kabul until the US liberated the city.

@BrandonTWebb Yeah I can see that happening...and China gave them more money then we for their loyalty anyway. #GimmieYourOilRights

Mark, totally agree.  S/F.

OFF TOPIC

Was over at B5 a few minutes ago.  Former SEAL Froggy attended Ty Moore's funeral and quotes Mrs. Moore from her eulogy of Ty:

"To all the Operators here today I give you this charge: Rid the world of those savages.  I'll say it again, RID THE WORLD OF THOSE SAVAGES!"

Thought you all might be interested in her words.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2012/09/rid-the-world-of-those-savages.html#comments

Froggy was lamenting the fact that he wasn't able to record the eulogy.  Did any of the fine olks here attend and have the ability to round out his report?

Don't know Froggy's reputation in the SEAL community, but he has always had an interesting perspective.

Alot in this article is speculation. The taliban are a bunch of retards with aks. trying to train afghan commandos on the golden rules of firearms is hard enough. imagine trying to train a jihadi on how to fly a fucking helo. lmao.....almost impossible.

I'm scratching my head as to why Yon would put this out.  I have nightmares on what terrorists can do in malls, theatres and college/HS sporting events.  I don't talk about them.  I don't bounce the different approaches and ways to pull it off. 

Seems pretty irresponsible.

I recently read an article about how General Electric is moving their appliance production back to the US from China, in part because they finally learned the hard way that by outsourcing their production to China they were ultimately teaching their suppliers to become their competitors.

The situation in Afghanistan is similar to that of GE IMHO. 

still dont understand why we would supply weapons, vehicles and training to forces that would go on to aid our enemy, did no one see this coming?

I know very little about Yon. But, I was in close proximity a while back when he was (i have a concussion right now and am slower than molasses today-sorry) doing an article about medivac helos. In my opinion, he gave out awesome points. but on further examination, some of the guys around me went "heh, uh, SHIT, there is stuff in print that is not open source" I went to bat for Yons theory, then backed away because I thought too much was said. It left us vulnerable.

Attacking Harry would take some pretty good inside intel. I can't see it. More propoganda? Correct me if I am OFF track.

When I read the title of the post I thought there was going to be a new report about the Paki's or Saudi's giving the T's surplus birds and the infrastructure to support them. I suppose it is a possibility that they could go all Airwolf, (anyone remember that 80's show with the Apache strafing bad guys in cities what a cool show I used to think that was when I was a kid,) with the Mi-17's we gave and trained em on. But I'm sure they thought of that the first time they learned of that capability and don't need any help.

One thing the article's title made me wonder  about the Bastion attack was that maybe they were trying to "steal" one of the birds, but the chances of anyone stealing an aircraft is about zero bc of all the pre-flight checks etc. that only a pilot rated for that equipment could know. Maybe someone on here that has  military aviation expertise could comment on that and let me know if that's accurate. I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than turning it over and pulling away.

Somebody's been reading a bit to much Dalton Fury.  Additionally, while this potentially might be a real threat, let's talk about the couple hundred (probably thousand) other aircraft in the Afghanistan airspace.  Many of them are civilians.  Many are operated by PMC's such as Blackwater.  Blackwater has a contract to provide ordnance services to CIA/SOF components in the loading of air delivery munitions onto Predators formerly (currently?) based in Pakistan, at Shamsi.  And we are worried about Afghan pilots, probably the most thoroughly vetted technical specialists in their entire force?  Are we worried about Blackwater flying fuel birds?  Are we worried about civilians with access to heavy weapons?  Are we worried about somebody crashing an aid/resupply bird contracted out into a COP/FOB/whatever current naming convention we are using?

This is the final level of "threat warning."  The enemy we face in Afghanistan is resilient, experienced, and intelligent.  It does not need to read Yon's website to get ideas.  It has always thought big.  It does not need to kill Prince Harry, the effect the attack had is much bigger by destroying aircraft that have not been manufactured in about 10 years now.  With each one that either falls from the sky or is wrecked by enemy action, the Marine Corps is literally down a bird until the JSF comes online.  But they are wily enough to exploit this for media consumption to talk about the Prince.  We keep pretending like books, movies, video games are giving away the farm, when as Hershel over at Captainsjournal.com keeps pointing out "the enemy knows our TTP's better then 99.9% of all American's because they face our warriors daily." 

Ahh, good ole Mike "I rabbit punch people and get kicked out of SF 5 months after I earned my tab" Yon. Please don't sully this site with that dude's name. His conspiracy theory bullshit about how people in the milblog circles are trying to discredit him are really old.