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With the surrender of the Afghan government in Kabul, the Taliban is poised to inherit a substantial fraction of the Afghan Air Force (AAF) the United States spent over $8 billion dollars rebuilding since 2008. Photographs posted on social media and compiled by the Oryx Blog confirm that the Taliban has already captured intact at least twenty-four helicopters, seven Boeing ScanEagle drones, and two airplanes as of Thursday according to a count U.S. intelligence claims the full number may be closer to thirty to forty. But given the 211 aircraft in the AAF inventory, at least 167 of which were...

March 9 (UPI) -- Orbital ATK has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Air Force for services in support of aircraft for the Afghanistan Air Force. The deal, announced Thursday by the Department of Defense, is valued at more than $86.4 million under the terms of a firm-fixed-price, undefinitized contract. The agreement between the U.S. Air Force and Orbital ATK will provide the Afghan Air Force with an AC-208 Eliminator, an armed intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. The aircraft is equipped with AGM-114 HELLFIRE missile payloads. Work on the contract will occur in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected...

The administration of President Barack Obama has approved a project to train Afghan combat pilots in Syria. This is believed to be the first time that the U.S. military has included Syria in a training program. The United States has long refused to sell aircraft and combat systems to Damascus. The U.S. Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training & Instrumentation has drafted a tender in which military cadets from Afghanistan would undergo courses in English and pilot-training in several Middle East and other Muslim states. The countries included Syria, which is on the State Department list of terrorist sponsors....

Tuesday, January 11, 2005 · Last updated 12:01 p.m. PT Afghans ask neighbors to return warplanes By STEPHEN GRAHAM ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER KABUL, Afghanistan -- Twenty-one years ago, Capt. Mohammed Nabi Karinzai pulled down his visor and roared down the runway in his Soviet-made Su-7 jet for the last time - not for a bombing run against Afghan mujahedeen, but for a dangerous sprint into Western exile. Karinzai, now in the United States, never returned since that daring flight from then-communist Afghanistan to neighboring Pakistan, except for a brief incursion as part of a guerrilla unit fighting Soviet occupiers in...