75,000 vehicles

[George K]

https://www.openthebooks.com/the-national-desk-75000-us-military-vehicles-now-in-the-hands-of-the-taliban/

Since 2001, the U.S. has spent $83 billion on Afghan security forces, through training and equipment.

“We built them a pretty amazing war chest and now all of it is in the hands of the Taliban," said Open The Books' Adam Andrzejewski to Jan Jeffcoat on The National Desk. “We know that last month, as late as July, seven new helicopters were being delivered in the capital city of Kabul.”

How much U.S. military equipment does the Taliban now control?

“We've made the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade,” said Andrzejewski. “They now control 75,000 military vehicles. This is about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers.”

According to Andrzejewski, there are also about 208 airplanes and helicopters. Some U.S. equipment given to Afghan security forces is currently unaccounted for, including missing military drones.

“We found a Federal Audit that detailed up to $200 million worth of drones that had disappeared,” said Andrzejewski. “We don't know where 600,000 weapons are within the country.”

[Copper]

Wow, a couple thousand people will be a lot easier to replace than 75,000 vehicles.

[Loki]

How long will they be able to keep in service? Will it be easy to get parts?

[George K]

@loki said in 75,000 vehicles:

Will it be easy to get parts?

That's the first thing I thought of when I read these stories about two weeks ago.

Maintenance on these high-tech aircraft is ridiculous. Flight-time/maintainence-time is a fraction less, much less, than one.

[Copper]

Maybe we didn’t leave the keys

[kluurs]

There will certainly be a few books printed about all of this. The Afghan special forces commander said that we taught the Afghans to fight a high tech war, but then removed all of the support for the tech - game over.

[George K]

[Copper]

A friend posted this on Facebook, he owns a company that builds some very nice high-end sim software

In my company’s role of building flight simulator software, we had the great pleasure of sometimes creating simulators to help our fighting forces train better. In order to do that, we sometimes needed to get eyes on to the actual aircraft and systems we were simulating. This was often a challenge due to security clearance requirements, meaning sometimes we had to build things that we never got to see in person.

And yet now, our government has allowed the Taliban to get eyes and hands on our most sensitive equipment that I wasn’t always allowed to see. They have their grubby hands on the same equipment that many of my colleagues and close friends operated when they were there. What the hell is going on?

I am sick to my stomach thinking that some Taliban or ISIS fighter has their hands on the same control stick in the same aircraft that my friends handled on behalf of our country. I am sick. This is sick.

[George K]

[George K]

[George K]

Not the Bee:

The Taliban say they are 'angry and disappointed' and feel 'betrayed' after America left so many inoperable helicopters and planes because 'the aircraft belong to Afghanistan'

Taliban fighters have been left feeling 'angry' and 'betrayed' after discovering the US had disabled military helicopters and planes before their departure from Kabul.

US troops 'demilitarised' 73 aircraft before their departure this week according to the commander of the US evacuation mission, Gen. Frank McKenzie.

That left up to 48 aircraft in the hands of the terror group, although it was not known how many were operable.

But the Taliban had 'expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use', according to an Al Jazeera reporter who toured the airport after the withdrawal.

She said: 'When I said to them, "why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you?" They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us.'

She added: 'They are disappointed, they are angry, they feel betrayed because all of this equipment is broken beyond repair.'

[89th]

It really highlights how out of sync their mentality is with ours. Almost as if there are tribal ethics to follow.

[Mik]

This is one of the few bright spots.

[Rainman]

I wonder what they did to the equipment, where the taliban could not use the parts off of one machine to repair another identical machine.

[89th]

@rainman said in 75,000 vehicles:

I wonder what they did to the equipment, where the taliban could not use the parts off of one machine to repair another identical machine.

I'm sure half of it was the destruction of the engine or at least computer components that run the vehicle.

[LuFins Dad]

@rainman said in 75,000 vehicles:

I wonder what they did to the equipment, where the taliban could not use the parts off of one machine to repair another identical machine.

They took the keys…

[Horace]

There's wires under the dashboard where if you rip them out and connect two of them, the engine starts. Don't tell the Taliban that though.

[Doctor Phibes]

They're probably trying to fix them with tools left behind by the Soviets, which would have completely incompatible thread-types.

[Copper]

because the soviets would never use technology from the west

[Catseye3]

“We've made the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade,” said Andrzejewski. “They now control 75,000 military vehicles. This is about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers.”

And:

"I am sick to my stomach thinking that some Taliban or ISIS fighter has their hands on the same control stick in the same aircraft that my friends handled on behalf of our country. I am sick. This is sick."

This. Want to weep.