WNU Editor: Afghan president, U.S. general vow ambitious air war to defeat Taliban
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — With a just-delivered Black Hawk helicopter sitting on a military runway behind him, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, vowed Saturday that “a tidal wave of air power is on the horizon” in the war against Taliban insurgents and that “this is the beginning of the end for the Taliban.”
Moments later, a second new Black Hawk descended and hovered over the runway as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani praised the nation’s air force pilots as “the real champions” of the 16-year conflict. Now that a new Afghan-U. S. military effort will triple the country’s air force capacity and double its special operations forces, he declared, “terrorists will not triumph here.”
The elaborately staged ceremony at Kandahar Air Base marked the formal launch of an ambitious plan to modernize and expand the Afghan air force over the next five years. A variety of U.S. military aircraft including 159 UH-60 Black Hawks are being supplied by the United States, and a new cohort of Afghan combat pilots are being trained — or retrained after years of flying Soviet-era choppers — by American military and civilian advisers.
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WNU Editor: For the Afghans to stop losing this war, they have to stop this .... Taliban parades forces openly in Nimroz (Long War Journal). This will help .... Afghanistan Receives First Batch Of U.S.-Made Black Hawk Helicopters (RFE), but they are going to need far more drones and the air power waiting in the skies (working in tandem with ground forces) to make a difference.
3 comments:
Airpower stiffens infantry. It is a force multiplier.
Infantry is still the queen of battle.
Air power is no panacea.
between infantry and air power there are now drones, AI, and soon robots
The drones in the air would be airpower.
The drones on land would be infantry and armor depending on their function.
Both would have AI.
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