Taliban seized 40 aircraft, thousands of armored vehicles and guns, DOD officials say: Report

/ August 20, 2021

By Thomas Catenacci

The Taliban has seized dozens of aircraft and thousands of weapons, vehicles and pieces of high-tech equipment in Afghanistan that was funded by the U.S. government, Reuters reported.

Billions of dollars worth of military equipment that the U.S. gave to the now-defunct Afghan military has been obtained by Taliban insurgents, officials with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. The massive weapons stockpile left behind in the Middle Eastern nation includes valuable technology such as night-vision goggles, unmanned aerial vehicles and Black Hawk combat helicopters.

“Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,” an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday.

Current and former officials said the federal government is increasingly concerned the technology could be obtained or sold to U.S. enemies like Iran, China and Russia which have vowed to maintain a diplomatic relationship with the insurgents who now possess the weaponry, Reuters reported. The Taliban invadedAfghanistan’s capital city Kabul on Sunday, triggering the sudden collapse of the Western-supported Afghan government.

Officials estimated the Taliban, which controls the vast majority of the war-torn Middle Eastern nation, is in possession of 2,000 armored vehicles and up to 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks and pricey ScanEagle drones, according to Reuters. Since 2003, the U.S. has given more than 600,000 infantry weapons like rifles, 162,000 pieces of communications equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles to the Afghan security forces.

“The ability to operate at night is a real game-changer,” a congressional aide with knowledge told Reuters.

Other officials noted that the aircraft are incredibly difficult to maintain and operate, Reuters reported.

“The Biden-Harris administration has failed to provide an accounting of U.S. equipment now in the hands of the Taliban,” House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Mike Rogers said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday.

Rogers said he and his Republican colleagues on the committee would soon introduce legislation requiring the Biden administration to provide details on the Taliban’s stash of U.S. weaponry. In addition, 25 Senate Republicans wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday, demanding more information about the equipment taken by the Taliban.

The Pentagon referenced public statements made by Defense Department officials when asked for comment on the Reuters report. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said Wednesday that he “preferred not to discuss” operations related to the seized equipment.

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11 thoughts on “Taliban seized 40 aircraft, thousands of armored vehicles and guns, DOD officials say: Report”

  1. Here’s your history lesson; To the fake* historians and other assorted on TNR with love for my country:
    Exclusive
    Includes original document:
    EXC: Joe Biden’s State Dept Halted a Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan Aimed at Avoiding Benghazi-Style Evacuations Just MONTHS Before Taliban Takeover.
    August 18, 2021 · Raheem J. Kassam
    https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/bidens-state-dept-halted-trump-era-crisis-response-plan/
    Podcast:
    https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/how-bidens-state-dept-canceled-trumps-crisis-plan/

  2. Strange that we’ve left billions of dollars worth of premium weapons and equipment for the bloodthirsty taliban, but don’t even think about driving to NH to buy a 30 rd magazine for the ‘AR-14’ that Dementia Joe wants to ban.

    Does anybody actually care what this corrupt, incompetent, disgusting administration does from this point on?

    • The leftest regime of the incompetent joke byden has put a import restriction on 7.62 x 39 ammo from Russia.. They won’t be renewing import licenses for them. So buy before Dec when it takes effect or find a new E Euro supplier.. Don’t you miss the good ‘ol days when the
      President use to work in your interest instead of the globalist interest???

      • I believe the ban goes into effect in 16 days – on 07 Sept. Bet the suppliers can get their material to Yugoslavia or Romania and change names faster than our current nincompoops can change their executive orders.

  4. Biden and his administration is in blatant violation of ITAR regulations which they stringently hold others to.
    The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is the United States regulation that controls the manufacture, sale, and distribution of defense and space-related articles and services as defined in the United States Munitions List (USML). ITAR-controlled items are closely monitored, and as a result, the State Department applies severe penalties for any company found to be in noncompliance. Criminal penalties can reach $1 million and ten years in jail, but ITAR violations most commonly result in civil penalties.
    Will the Biden administration be held accountable? Is this an impeachable offense? If not, it should be. This administration has put the world at risk with their incompetency. They put arms in the hands of terrorists.

  5. The Afghanistan fiasco happened, because Biden and his posse of Dem/Prog extremists seized power, after perpetrating widespread, massive fraud, with help of the Media, Facebook and Twitter, etc., committing selective, biased blocking of user accounts, a la China, Russia, etc.

    To be sure, there is fraud during every election to “swing” close elections, such as the well-known STANDARD fraud practices of:

    1) Ballot box stuffing while no one is looking
    2) Voting dead people
    3) Voting moved-out-of-state people, etc.
    4) Voting temporary, out-of-state students
    5) Folding mail-in ballots so machines cannot read them; these ballots are “adjudicated” in back rooms, staffed with Dem/Prog operatives.
    6) The “Postman’s Hack”, i.e., having a small hole in the front of the envelope that shows the vote.
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/california-rigging-governo…

    NOTE: JFK was elected with major such help from Mayor Daley, of Chicago, in 1960.

    Additional fraud can be committed by “processing” vote totals with Dominion, etc., voting machines, that can be connected to remote computers and local WI-FI systems, i.e., accessible to other computers and iPhones, etc., as proven by forensic examinations in Arizona and elsewhere.

    During the 2016 Election, Dem/Progs did not have the advantage of COVID, and the additional fraud possibilities afforded by universal MAIL-IN voting.
    Plus, Hillary, a very poor campaigner, was predicted, by the blind-sided Media, to win by about 10%
    Plus, Trump, as a newcomer, proved to be an excellent campaigner
    Plus, Dem/Progs likely did not perpetrate sufficient STANDARD and/or “Dominion” fraud to “win”
    The result was a a stinging loss, much to the dismay of Hillary, etc.

    Dem/Progs vowed not to let this happen again in 2020.
    When COVID came, poor countries effectively used existing, much-less-costly, “off-patent” drugs, to treat the disease.
    But that was not allowed by the vested interests in the US, which immediately pooh-poohed these drugs.

    1) Dem/Progs wanted to exploit COVID, for election purposes; wear masks, restrict people contacts and movement, vaccination cards, $trillion-dollar aid “packages” for suffering folks, etc.
    2) Drug companies wanted to make $billions of highly profitable COVID drug sales.
    3) New drugs had to be invented, costing months of time and many $billions, while people were dying.

    All that, plus “phony impeachments”, “investigations”, and the fast-growing economy in free-fall due to COVID, were bad optics for Trump.

    But it still took a lot of STANDARD and/or “Dominion-type” fraud, and stopping the counting on Election night at about 10 PM, in most swing states, to “swing” the election towards hiding-in the-basement Biden.

    Here are some very unusual happenings:

    1) Ballots were received after Election Day and counted in Dem/Prog-controlled counting centers, with no outside observers.
    2) Never had various states stopped ballot counting at the same time; done likely top access the “situation”.
    3) Never did the US people go to bed with one candidate having huge leads in almost all swing states, only to wake up to find that lead was magically gone in all these states.
    4) Dem/Progs, using COVID as an excuse, 1) scuttled voter ID rules, 2) flooded unsupervised drop boxes with ballots, and 3) limited poll watching and vote-count observations.

    Per RNC report by the Committee on Election Integrity:

    “The COVID brought chaos and comprehensive changes to voting processes beginning in the spring primaries and lasting through the post-election process,”

    “Dem/Progs, including some public officials, used the COVID as a pretense to achieve long-sought policy goals, such as 1) expanded mail-in voting. 2) elimination of key safeguards, specifically for absentee voting, such as witness and ID requirements,”

    Dem/Progs, RINOs, and career bureaucrats did not like Trump (the grass-root US people liked him much more), and big-tech scammed JUST enough votes, in each swing state (days after the election), to give Biden folks the win.

    All this had never happened before

    It needs to be corrected so it can never happen again, because, if the other party figures out how to cheat, what good is an election?

    P.S., Biden did not even campaign and got the most votes in the history of any POTUS
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/georgia-s-elections-ar…

    The frail Biden, 76, became President-In-Name Only, PINO.

    The results were:

    – The US is no longer energy-independent
    – Wide open borders with millions of unskilled, semi-literate, diseased, impoverished illegals from about 160 Third-World countries. They will vote Dem/Prog. Biden folks need them to implement their “BUILD BACK BETTER” fantasy
    – Rampant federal deficit spending by the $TRILLIONS, and high inflation
    – Disastrous ending of the 20-y, $80+ BILLION, black-hole-fiasco of Afghanistan. Withdrawing US forces, BEFORE evacuating civilians, is insanity on steroids, malfeasance in office, an impeachable offense.
    – China, Russia, etc., are laughing.
    – The mercantilist EU has RECOGNIZED the Taliban.

  6. Yes, your government not worrying about the cost, as it’s already been paid for by
    ” your tax dollars” and secondly leaving all this hardware behind to be used on our
    troops, as they try and recover US Citizens, left behind……….what a disaster !!

    This is what happens when you have a feckless old fool in charge, pretty pathetic
    when an illegitimate administration is only worrying about their agenda, and not the
    lives of its citizens

    The US is the laughing stock of the entire world, we don’t have a Commander in Chief,
    we have a Head clown in the circus called the Biden Administration

    Watch what happens next, on the world stage ……….

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