Over the years I know you’ve come to expect a certain cheerful disposition to the blog, but my natural optimism flickers when looking at the Afghan Air Force (AAF). It’s a topic I’ve covered before, and since I’ve already got my eye on a liver donor, more scribbling about the AAF can’t hurt. In light of the pressure Afghan ground forces are feeling this spring, it’s worth looking at the state of Afghanistan’s airpower again.
Since I last wrote about the air force in October, the US changed some of its plans for the AAF. While delivery of A-29 Tucano aircraft is still on schedule, the Americans have started delivering armed versions of the MD-530 helicopters the Afghans already use for pilot training. AAF leaders worry that they won’t be enough, and today’s leap into the wild blue nowhere starts with a January Reuters story about desperate measures the AAF is taking to turn “flying tractors” into gunships.
“…late last year, they began fitting machine guns and rockets to Russian-made Mi-17 transport helicopters, dubbed “flying tractors”, to bolster their air power…as a stopgap measure…”
This is a solid pitch for an Afghanistan-themed MacGyver/A-Team mashup. The AAF turns an aerial agriculture metaphor into a war machine, improvising on a level that would make any honorary Olympic coach or mohawked aviophobic beam with pride. Delays in the delivery of US-funded air support aircraft are the driving force behind this effort, as the air force learns what Afghan good enough” looks like.
It’s the ideal everything is awful narrative, as American bureaucratic delays force the Afghans to fend for themselves. Nothing tugs at first world heart strings like developing world ingenuity left to its own devices by callous imperialism. It helps our white guilt to know that other white people are doing things that make brown people sad.
It’s a horror story reeking of Western patriarchy: Arming Mi-17s didn’t happen until late 2014, which couldn’t have been part of American plans for the AAF because guns and rockets don’t belong on a “flying tractor.” If true, it would make a fantastic documentary. The truth is less sensational: the Afghans have been doing this since 2010, it was part of the American plan all along, and that tractor has more gun racks than an NRA convention.
Pity the fool that can’t go back in time
Either Lt. Col. Mohammad Arif carries a sonic screwdriver, or the Afghans have been using armed Mi-17s for years. Because according to the Americans, Arif was firing rockets from an Mi-17 over a Kandahar range in March of 2011, almost four years before the Reuters report. And Mi-17s launching rockets in 2010 in Kandahar happened nearly five years before the Reuters scoop.So unless Arif got himself a Tardis or a Delorean, this wasn’t a 2014 phenomenon. Which means it was likely a part of US plans for the AAF from the beginning.
Love it when a plan comes together
The Americans had planned to arm the Mi-17s all along, and didn’t just start doing so toward the end of combat operations. From an April 2010 report to Congress, here’s part of the projections for the AAF, then known as the Afghan National Army Air Corps (ANAAC):
The ANAAC also has battlefield mobility provided by 22 MI-17 helicopters, with three additional MI-17s for presidential lift. In addition, the ANAAC has an additional nine MI-35s for rotary-wing close air support. The MI-35s are projected to be replaced with close air support-capable MI-17s.
Half a decade ago the US planned to equip the air force with Mi-17s to provide close air support (CAS). Five years of American planning and Afghan operations later, arming these Mi-17s is a “stopgap measure,” according to Reuters.
If you’re not first, you’re last
It’s a “stopgap measure” if “stopgap measure” is Russian for “part of the design.” As an American, I’d like to think we pioneered the arming of AAF Mi-17s, the first to figure out how to put guns and rockets on a lumbering farm implement. But it looks like the Hungarians, Venezuelans, Czechs, Indians, a whole bunch of other countries already turned Mi-8/17s into the stuff of John Deere’s nightmares.
So if rockets and guns are a temporary fix, more than a few militaries all bought the same roll of duct tape.
The Mi-17 was built when anything Russian with rotors did more than one thing. The Soviets were exporting military equipment faster than The Bachelor contestants file for divorce, selling to militaries that didn’t have the budget for single purpose helicopters. Even the Mi-24/35, the gunship that terrorized Afghanistan, could carry troops in addition to a crap ton of firepower.
The Mi-17 is a flying tractor, so called because of its reliability, simplicity, and lack of aerial grace. But when it’s been armed, which is one of the variants of the aircraft, it’s a tractor that would make Mad Max proud. And it’s an aircraft the Afghan are comfortable using, making it an ideal fit for the CAS mission.
So how’s that air force coming?
Using the Mi-17s to provide close air support makes sense, since it’s a platform the Afghans already know how to use. That’s also the same theory behind adding weapons to the MD-530s and using them to fill the CAS role. Armed platforms already familiar to AAF pilots make it easier to provide air support to Afghanistan’s ground forces.
“It takes a long time for them to learn the Western style of fighting and being organized,” said Glenn Sands, editor of Air Forces Monthly.
Orientalist patriarchal undertones about fighting styles aside, Sands makes an important point, that standing up an effective air force takes time. Just being able to fly the helicopters is one thing. Flying and hitting targets on the ground is another.I’d submit that the Afghans need more time. As evidence, I give you Exhibit A: The dust trail in the GIF is .50 caliber rounds being fired from an AAF MD-530 in broad daylight on a range outside of Kabul. This inspires a lot of feelings. None of those feelings is confidence.
April 2015, AAF Gunnery
The air force the Afghans need is one focused on transport and evacuation, not firepower. Nasty terrain combined with the IED threat makes long ground movements difficult in certain parts of the country, so aerial troop movement is critical. What they want is more aerial fire support, something the current American commander, General John Campbell, is trying to fix.
“So when I get a request that says, ‘Hey, I need close air support,’ the first thing I ask them is, ‘Do you have a Quick Reaction Force out there? Have you fired your mortars? Have you fired your artillery? Have you taken your Mi-17 (Russian helicopters) that have forward-firing machine guns on them? You have a few Mi-35s. Have you used them?’”
All of those were better questions several years ago when the Americans started the security transition process. It makes for a great soundbite during congressional testimony, but dodges questions about why the US waited so long to start training the Afghans on artillery. Or why the Tucanos haven’t arrived yet.
What now?
It’s true that the AAF, like the rest of Afghanistan’s defense and security forces, has challenges ahead. But they’re not insurmountable. In the spring of 2015, the AAF faces three main problems:
Americans had all the air support they needed for more than a decade. The Taliban are still here. Airpower alone can’t defeat an insurgency. That takes time, and time is something the Americans and Afghans don’t have much of anymore. No matter how good you are at close air support, until your people decide you’re the better option, you’ll always have a fight on your hands.
The one thing that’s working in the AAF’s favor is the fact that Americans aren’t coming home in boxes. That’s making it possible for Obama to prosecute a growing counter-terror war while still declaring an end to combat operations. If the White House continues to see the SOF/drone campaign as key to national security, the Afghans will see more support for their air force beyond 2016. Until then it’s up to a bunch of flying tractors (armed with rockets and machine guns) to get the job done.