Taliban crashes UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Taliban crashes UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter in Kabul, Afghanistan.
58 comments
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Not only was the piloting bad, so was the camera work. Holy fuck, keep the thing in the centre of the shot.
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Allah wasn't very Akbar that day...
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Or was he...?
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Trying to fly is somehow not a blaphemy but pictures of people are.
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"I'll bet I could fly that thing! How hard could it be?"
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Narrator: it was very hard
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I know nothing about helicopters, but can't you autorotate down and increase your chances of not dying in a situation like this? I thought that's what they were doing before they pitched forward and immediately died.
OK helicopter nerds, destroy me.
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This idiot fucked up a perfectly operational helicopter in clear conditions at a safe altitude. There is exactly zero chance he could have safely managed an autorotation landing. And he wouldn't need to anyway, autorotation helps if the engine fails, but it was clearly still under power.
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I also know nothing about helicopters but I bet the answer is "yes... If you know how" with a follow up of "and they did not"
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Yup, to be fair it is entirely possible the damaged part made maintaining the proper descent impossible.
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To be fair it actually was Auto rotating down until the nose pitch down and it lost all the lift that it was generating and it wasn't until then that it then pitched straight down and slammed right into the ground face first
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Cut him some slack, it was his first (and last) flight.
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What clif said. Autorotation isn't just something that happens. You still have to balance the helicopter (for lack of a better term in my head.) They did not.
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The US sabotaged any equipment left behind. My guess is that they fixed that Black Hawk using parts off of multiple and some controls failed during their test.
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Probably not. We only destroyed the classified stuff, there's no reason to make them unsafe and endanger people when you can buy them used for a couple hundred thousand anyway.
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My cousin was civilian DOD in charge of Bagram during the exit. Orders were to decommission anything useful and it was like Christmas for the Marines. Break everything was the rule. Everything.
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A new UH-60L is around $10-$20 million depending on avionics and weapons, and I am under the impression that even an old 1990s A-variant would still cost upwards of $2 million.
One example: https://www.hangar67.com/aircraft-for-sale/turbine-helicopters/sikorsky/uh60a-black-hawk
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Black Hawk Down 2
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2 Down 2 Furious
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Not really into war films but BHD is great as it’s more realistic in showing the USA getting spanked at the start and not just winning the whole time.
I’m not sure when they’ve won a war in recent times, if anyone can actually win at war.
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The US "won" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rather quickly and handily, but they lost the subsequent peace. Turns out that's the hard part.
Has anyone here read any persuasive articles or books explaining why Japan and Germany accepted and flourished under US occupation but Iraq and Afghanistan did not?
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Haha, they died terrified.
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Maybe God is punishing them for being terrible.
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Some kind of "careful, Icarus" thing?
Right. Wrong God. But still. Yes, the wrong wrong God, I get that. But still...
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Uh … that’s the wrong god?
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🤣
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How did the Taliban get their hands on helicopters? I thought the US limited what armaments they gave the Afghan military to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands
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There was a lot of leftover equipment due to the unexpected speed of the takeover. At the time there were discussions about destroying any remaining equipment but I believe they ended up figuring that things will naturally degrade and it isn't like they have anyone trained in using/repairing American equipment. No classified info unlike Trump's bathroom.
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A lot of maintenance is required for the equipment left behind. Sure, it looks good on their recruitment posters temporarily, but then 4 years later you get videos like this. Silly Taliban probably should have left some of those women studying engineering alone.
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We gave the ANA helicopters.
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I think they didnt manage to evacuate all the materials from bases when they pulled out
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Free Blackhawks for the Taliban.
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58 comments
It's a matter of time before it happens to all of them. Helicopters require a ton of periodic maintenance, adjustments and upkeep. The Taliban don't have the culture, knowledge or access to parts to keep those air worthy.
Parts inside of the transmission alone, which have manufacturing tolerances in the thousandths and up, are only good for a couple thousand hours of run time at most.
Some parts for these machines are made, at least in the US, on machines that could be one of less than 3 in existence. They're that specialized of parts, costing upwards of $750k+ per part. I'm sure they'll be able to source knock offs from other countries (China I'm sure has the means and probably blueprints), but they won't be within the tolerances, and idk how long the Taliban can shell out almost a million dollars per part for each helicopter.
Source: have family in the industry of machining helicopter parts for the government.
1,000s of hours seems like a lot to me. I've had my riding mower for a couple of years and it's only got like 37 hours on it.
Flying one also requires a ton of training, which this "pilot" obviously didn't have.
The taliban took over a lot of American equipment when the pull out happened.
When the Military abandons equipment, they often sabotage it in some way so that it’s not useful to the enemy force.
Likely this helicopter had its tail rotor fucked with. It would have started and taken off okay in calm weather, but the moment the pilot attempted any kind of rotation, or got hit by a strong gust of wind, he was doomed.
This may have been the best pilot in the world, but once you’re in an out of control helicopter, there’s very little even the best pilot can do. It’s like if the stabilizer fell off a plane, there’s just not much you can do.
Just a little more training and he could have found the ejection seat in time.
True, they were probably better off selling these to China or Iran. Liquid assets and some degree of goodwill from regional powers will go a lot farther than whatever this was.