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Afghan Army Air Corps set to reintroduce Mi-35
Afghanistan’s National Army Air Corps is preparing to transition its Mi-35 Hind helicopters into an operational attack role for the first time with planning underway to allow their use in overwatch and convoy support missions.
Brigadier General Walter Givhan, head of the US Air Force’s 438th Expeditionary Wing and the Combined Air Power Transition Force (CAPTF) in Afghanistan, says that the aircraft are currently being readied for more capable strike operations.
“By the summer you will see them actually employing in an escort and overwatch role, but with an attack capability that they haven't had.”
Givhan told a Pentagon Briefing on 26 May that upgrade work has now been completed on the nine aircraft. “We just got these refurbished Hinds in. They were donated by the Czech Republic. We have nine of them now, total; and six donated by the Czech Republic, three were already here.
“We refurbished the helicopters. We're doing a very deliberate approach to getting them into battle now”.
Preparation training for operations is currently being carried out at live fire ranges in Afghanistan with the support of Us and Czech military instructors. “We've only begun now to take them out to the ranges and start checking the Afghans out with the weapons - first time they fired them in eight years for some of these Mi-35 pilots.
The Air Corps Mi-17 transport helicopters are taking on an increased lift role in support of Afghan forces Givhan says. “The basic capability that we are focused on right now is mobility, and that's both fixed wing and rotary wing.”
Three Mi-17s are being used for presidential airlift with that unit achieving initial operation capability in October 2008.
Givhan says that the air corps helicopters are expected to be able to provide an independent combined air insertion and fire support capability within months.
He says operations in the summer of 2008 saw the air corps deploy an entire battalion by fixed and then rotary wing into positions in the Kandahar region. “It was a huge success.
So they're keen on that. And that's one of the reasons they're really excited about getting their Mi-35s up in the air, so that they also have that attack capability to support their forces as well.”
The bulk of Mi-17s have been assigned out to Afghan national army regional commands with detachments located at Kandahar, Herat and Mazari Sharif, but with centralised control remaining in Kabul.
“They're supporting the different corps sectors. So, for example, 209th Corps in the north at Mazar-e Sharif; 207th Corps in the west at Herat; 205th Corps at Kandahar in the south. Kabul is close enough to 201st and 203rd Corps ...in the east that we can support most of that out of Kabul. So again, centralized control, decentralized execution. With the limited number of assets that we have right now, that's really important for us to get the maximum out of the aircraft.”
The air corps now has 125 qualified rotary wing pilots.
CAPTF is part of the NATO-led Combined Security Transition Command in Kabul, responsible for training and mentoring the Afghan military as part of long term handover plans.
The Afghan army air corps currently fields a combined fleet of 35 aircraft in fixed and rotary wing configurations. NATO plans to expand this to 128 aircraft, again mixed between fixed and rotary wing.
Givhan says CAPTF has been taking an aggressive approach over the past two years to “getting the air corps in the air and into this fight, and they are in the air and in this fight right now, making a contribution.
“We did that by two ways. One, we took pilots, the older pilots, average age about 45. And we got them back up flying the aircraft they knew, which were primarily Russian-type aircraft, the workhorses being the An-32 fixed-wing transport and the Mi-17 helicopter, familiar platforms. We're able, with our mentors and by providing equipment and actually acquiring more of those actual platforms for them, get them up into the air and getting them into this fight.
“At the same time, we're building towards the long term...Building an air force in the middle of a war is sort of like building an airplane in the middle of a flight. But we got to do it.”
Givhan says development of the fixed wing capability is “going to take a while....They're very excited about the Mi-35s, because, you know, just talking to them, they really want this fully autonomous Afghan operation. They've already got their own lift assets, but to have their own attack assets as well, they want that. And we want to give it to them
“It'll be a couple more years before we get the first fixed-wing assets in, at a minimum. And it'll take us a while to get the training done on that side. So, you know, three years down the road before we're really getting in it heavily on the fixed-wing side. We can always see that accelerated, possibly, but they take a little while to stand up. So our plan, though, all along, has been by 2016 to have an Afghan National Army Air Corps that is sustainable and capable of independent operations to meet the security requirement.”
By Peter La Franchi - Asia Pacific Editor
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