Pentagon to Stop Training Afghan Army Pilots in the US Because Half of Them Run Away

Would sooner take up honest work in the US than shower their countrymen with hellfires

The U.S. military may no longer track how much territory the Afghan government controls, but here’s at least one definite metric of success: Afghan AC-208 pilots are no longer trained in the United States because more than 40 percent of the students training to fly the aircraft end up deserting within U.S. borders.

This latest nugget is tucked within the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s recent report about the (lack of) progress in Afghanistan.

“Those students that did not go AWOL were pulled back to Afghanistan to complete their training: as a result, only one class graduated from the U.S.-based program,” the report says. “The second and third classes will continue and finish their training in Afghanistan.”

The AC-208 is essentially a Cessna that carries some Hellfire missiles. After the U.S. military withdrew from Iraq in 2011, the Iraq air force used a handful of the aircraft to take potshots at ISIS because it lacked adequate attack helicopters and jet fighters.

Aficionados of U.S. military efforts to train Afghan troops will find this latest revelation familiar. Two Afghan A-29 pilots disappeared in December 2015 while training at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. Before that, three Afghan officers who went missing in Cape Cod were found near Niagara Falls on the Canadian border. One of the officers was later granted asylum.

Afghanistan’s first female fixed-wing pilot was granted asylum in the United States in 2018.

Source: Task & Purpose

3 Comments
  1. CHUCKMAN says

    What a hellish idea, a Cessna with Hellfire missiles.

    But you can laugh at the idea of nearly half the Afghan pilots being trained going to ground in the good, old USA.

  2. thomas malthaus says

    Most of former President Hamid Karzai’s family resides in America.

  3. jm74 says

    A trend is definitely developing; everything that the yanks do or touch goes south.

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