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| India-Pakistan |
| U.S. helicopter engines stolen en route to Pakistan port |
| 2008-06-19 |
| More on the Great Helicopter Heist... KABUL (Reuters) - Four U.S. helicopter engines worth more than $13 million have been stolen while they were being trucked from Afghanistan to a port in Pakistan to be shipped home, the U.S. military said. Most supplies for the U.S. military in landlocked Afghanistan, including fuel, are transported through Pakistan, and militants in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have been stepping up attacks on shipments. A U.S. military spokesman said the engines were being transported by a Pakistani trucking company when they went missing some time in the month before April 10. It was not known if the shipment went missing on the Afghan side of the border or in Pakistan, Sergeant Mark Swart said on Thursday."We don't have the information on exactly where it disappeared. We just know that it did not get to the port," he said. The U.S. military declined to say what type of helicopters the engines were for but said the shipment was a part of a routine redeployment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Militants in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan regularly attack trucks carrying supplies for foreign forces in Afghanistan and the dependence on routes through violence-plagued northwest Pakistan is a concern for foreign forces. Most supplies go through two crossing points on the Afghan-Pakistani border, one at the Khyber pass and the other to the southwest, at the Afghan town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province. NATO and Russia signed a land transit agreement in April allowing the Western alliance to use Russian land to deliver non-lethal supplies to its troops in Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #12 C-5's use both Bagram and Kandahar. No need to ship a helicopter over land. Any idea how rugged that terrain is? Can you imagine a truck with a helicopter trying to navigate roads that are little more than paved goat trails? I am sorry but I am just not buying it. It would be a major load to transport one on a truck over a US highway, let along the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-06-19 14:45 |
| #11 I don't buy that either. I would only send things by that route that I *wanted* to fall into Iranian hands. That's why we have C-5's. C-5's use the airport at Kandahar. A C-5 could fly all three of those helicopters in one flight. There is something seriously fishy here on a lot of different levels. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-06-19 14:43 |
| #10 tu3031 - see yesterday's story about the 3 missing choppers in containers and selling the stuff to China and Iran. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-06-19 14:07 |
| #9 The question I've had since I read this is what the hell are the mooks gonna do with helicopter engines? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-06-19 14:05 |
| #8 And C-17's do operate out of Baghram. As of mid-March 2002 American heavy construction equipment was employed at Bagram erecting steel frames for new shelters and building earth-filled security barriers. American C-17 transport aircraft were arriving every few hours, and as many as 50 helicopters, including CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64 Apaches, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-60 Black Hawks were visible on the taxiways. So why would they transport those engines over land when they can fly them out from Kabul directly? There is more (or less) to the report than is meeting the eye. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-06-19 14:03 |
| #7 It can carry a Bradley so it can certainly carry those engines. I still smell something fishy with that report. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-06-19 14:00 |
| #6 crosspatch I agree. How is it that this cargo that could be tampered with and possibly be sabotaged not just stolen be allowed to happen? Why weren't our troops transporting this cargo? Or following it's path very closely. |
| Posted by: Jan 2008-06-19 13:01 |
| #5 I can see shipping stuff overland, even something valuable like engines. There's only so much lift capacity around and it may all be committed to other operations. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2008-06-19 12:51 |
| #4 Where is my Karachi-Kabul superhighway?! Would be done by now. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2008-06-19 12:38 |
| #3 Uhm, something makes no sense here. Helicopter engines will fit easily in a C-17 or even carried by a CH-47. As these supply routes have never been secure, anything sent by that route would be known to be subject to hijack. I am not sure how much stock I put in this story. Any shipping any supplies on this route that you don't want to fall in enemy hands should lose their job. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-06-19 12:27 |
| #2 Oh, and make tampering with the carton set the bomb off too! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-06-19 11:13 |
| #1 Put bombs with GPS units in the shipping cartons. If the cartons leave the permitted route or go AWOL the cartons should commit suicide. Something like a chopper engine should have the equiv. of a 2000lb bomb in plastic explosives around it. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-06-19 11:12 |
