• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

US, NATO Outta Afghanistan 2021

overflights by B-52s at 10,000' would do a lot to convince the TB not to be to stupid.
Honestly I'd put those in the reserve as the BUFF's can loiter around the Pakistan border...

The Little Birds at the Airport can do a ton of stuff in both urban and more open rural areas, without the massive issues of significant collateral damage. Plus the various coalition SOF have the ability to surgically strike TB - while the 82nd, Marine and British Paras can wipe out any TB near the airport and then expand the bubble -- plus I would assume there is a bunch of ISR assets around.

The TB seems to now have ensured most of their forces in direct contact are older (assumably less volatile) and no doubt have orders not to give Western forces any reason to go active.

It appears that from most reports there is no way in hell that the evac will be done by 31 Aug.
IF President Biden orders a pullout before all Americans are secure - I don't think he will survive till 1 Sept as President - the nation while definitely divided won't accept a CiC who cut and run leaving our citizens behind - and few would accept leaving our Afghan allies behind either.

So there is a rock and a hard place problem for both the TB and JB -- the TB drew a line in the sand - and its an unreasonable one that will have massive repercussions globally.
 
Provided people are already being killed, short of renewed war there's always the Soleimani Solution to apply pressure. To paraphrase, nothing concentrates the minds of leaders and generals as the knowledge that they are the cannon fodder.
 
I suspect he's trying to play the reasonable one on the MSM, and paint the TB as unreasonable.

They mowed down about bunch of TB - claimed to be between 600 and 60, and when asked what the number was Massoud says, "600 or 60, they are Taliban so its a good start"

I suspect that the gameplan just now is to hold on until the last plane has left HKIA and see what the Taliban does next. If they show signs of playing nice than Massoud will likely be an orphan. On the other hand, if the more radical TB youngsters slip the leash then Massoud could find himself with friends - friends that, perhaps, would prefer not to be seen.
 
Provided people are already being killed, short of renewed war there's always the Soleimani Solution to apply pressure. To paraphrase, nothing concentrates the minds of leaders and generals as the knowledge that they are the cannon fodder.
Thats was the Orange Man answer -- the Cadaver doesn't do that
 
Not promising when 3 of the #FiveEyes say, "don't go to the airport, m'kay?"
Australia has joined the United Kingdom and United States governments in warning citizens away from Kabul airport amid serious new terror threats.
Australians and Afghan visa holders have been urged not to travel to Kabul airport where rescue flights have been the only passage out of the war-torn nation.
While about 2650 people have been rescued from Afghanistan as part of Australian operations, the window is rapidly shutting for those still stranded in the country.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued new advice on Thursday as the situation deteriorated further in the Afghan capital ...
Edited to add: make that 4 out of 5.
 
View attachment 66198

Taliban seem to know how to mock their enemies atleast
Mocking their enemy is one thing. They clearly don’t know history very well.

For a group that claims to be religious, and loyal to what they believe are the true values of their faith — if they knew what the Japanese were doing both before and during WW2, they wouldn’t be mocking the US.


Plenty to mock. Poor taste on this one though
 
Question - keep reading on and on about the alleged grave threats to the Kabul airport by ISIS-K and how this is dictating that pressing need to wrap things up at the airport ASAP. Is this a legitimate concern or a fallback as to why the US et al won't attempt to continue the exodus up to or past the 31st to get out as many as possible? I mean if ISIS-K and the Tally are such sworn enemies as the press is trying to tell us, why doesn't the US share its intelligence about these possible attacks directly with the Tally and have the Tally take out ISIS-K - the old enemy of my enemy is my friend mantra? I would think that the Tally would jump at the chance to kill ISIS-K right in the heart of Kabul to send a strong message to them.
 
Well that’s that then. We’re done.


I don’t care what anyone says, this is not a good look for us.
So we left 5 days earlier than the 31st? If we are only flying 2 C-17's a day in/out of Kabul, then our presence on the ground was likely never bigger than 2 full plane loads of C-17's available seatbelts, 188X2. If it was that small, then why the rush to get out 5 days early? From where I'm sitting and based on the limited information available, this looks bad. I find it hard to believe that if we stay another 3 days that we couldn't have gotten more of our people out.
 
Well that’s that then. We’re done.


I don’t care what anyone says, this is not a good look for us.
So the deadline is not until Tuesday.

We still have citizens in country, along with people who are approved for visas/immigration here. We still have air assets available to us, including C-17s, a C-130 or two, a Polaris, and whatever civilian airliners have been contracted out.

Why are we wrapping things up today, and not on sat, Sunday?

(Unless it is at the US’s request as they prepare to end operations & depart Tuesday, and need the runway & taxi ways for their own aircraft. That I can understand and makes sense, as there is only one runway. They do have 6000+ military on the ground after all.)
 
So much for doing it alone with out the US. We don't even finish it. Maybe we are not taking enough on our flights to justify the runway space? It's a bad look though.

Our performance on this issue really necessitates a hard look at ourselves. If this is the best we can do? Hopefully the rest of the foreign nationals find their way out safely and we continue to work on a solution for those Afghans that we can.

Canada is not back it would appear
 
So the deadline is not until Tuesday.

We still have citizens in country, along with people who are approved for visas/immigration here. We still have air assets available to us, including C-17s, a C-130 or two, a Polaris, and whatever civilian airliners have been contracted out.

Why are we wrapping things up today, and not on sat, Sunday?

(Unless it is at the US’s request as they prepare to end operations & depart Tuesday, and need the runway & taxi ways for their own aircraft. That I can understand and makes sense, as there is only one runway. They do have 6000+ military on the ground after all.)
Let's say the US needs 85 C-17 flights to remove all personal and equipment over 4 days. That's 96hrs, now let's say, for whatever reason the US will only use the runway during daylight hours (currently its 13hrs/day), that brings it down to 52hrs. Now lets say that all of the Allies on the ground have the same amount of flights to perform, 85 flights - that's 170 flights in total over 52hrs. That works out to be less than 3.5 flights per hr. Sounds pretty doable to me. If so, our puny 2 flights a day are going to make much of a difference if we decided to stay another 2-4 days to get more people out.
 
Back
Top