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| Afghanistan |
| Concerns regarding misuse of Afghan Air Force fleet echoed in latest report to U.S. Congress |
| 2019-11-23 |
| [KhaamaPress] The Office of the Inspector General in Department of Defense echoed concerns regarding the misuse of Afghan Air Force fleet, in its quarterly to U.S. Congress. The report on Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan outlined the issues the U.S.-led training mission is facing in Afghanistan. Citing the TAAC-Air report, the Inspector General added in its report that the Afghan Air Force had a total of 183 aircraft as of the end of the quarter of 2019, which has been growing each quarter, in accordance with the AAF Modernization Plan. However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... the report stated that a key concern for TAAC-Air advisors is misuse of the AAF fleet. "One indicator of misuse is aircraft utilization rates (average flight hours per aircraft per month)." The report further added that the monthly utilization rates for the Mi-17 and MD-530 helicopters in September (38.6 and 31.8, respectively) far exceeded the manufacturer’s recommended rate, which is 25 hours per month for each aircraft, warning that the high utilization rates reveal a potential for more serious maintenance requirements in the future that could cause the helicopters to go out of service unexpectedly and remain unusable for an extended period. 25 hours a month?? "The AAF UH-60 monthly utilization rate in September, 19 hours, is below the recommended maximum of 35 hours per month," the report said, adding that "TAAC-Air told the DoD OIG that not all AAF units have access to the data required to conduct effective fleet use and maintenance planning, which leads to overfly of utilization rates." The report also outlines shortfalls in how the Afghan Air Force is planning and operating. "TAAC-Air also reported that the AAF often fails to adhere to its own aircraft tasking process, resulting in delays in delivery of critical supplies." The TAAC-Air has also told the Inspector General that senior AAF officials often delay approval of supply requests, instead of adhering to established procedures for such authorizations which ’lead to logistics inefficiencies which result in extended 2-3 day gaps whereby combat operations are either halted or commanders are forced to take unacceptable risks’, according to report. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 Using the A-29 Tornado as a crop duster? Air An Air Tractor. The armed version. |
| Posted by: Unaitle Panda6599 2019-11-23 23:41 |
| #4 It sounds like a misallocation of maintenance budgets. How much of it is disappearing into the ether? |
| Posted by: Unaitle Panda6599 2019-11-23 23:32 |
| #3 So those helicopters are supposed to be used for just 4 6-hour days out of 30?! OK, they're helicopters, but how can they be worth anything if you have to have 7 of them to keep one operating each day? And from when we had actual traffic reports from helicopters, I doubt they had such a large stable of aircraft. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2019-11-23 10:56 |
| #2 Oh, I thought the punch line was going to be they were flying opium to Turkey. |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2019-11-23 09:08 |
| #1 Using the A-29 Tornado as a crop duster? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2019-11-23 05:58 |