Afghan Air Force - History

History

The history of the Afghan air service began on 22 August 1924 as the Afghan Air Force. As early as 1921, the Soviet Union and Great Britain provided a small number of aircraft to Afghanistan's King Amanullah Khan who had been impressed with the British use of aircraft against his government in 1919. For the next decade, Soviet pilots performed the bulk of the flying of Afghan aircraft, probably about one-half of which were Polikarpov R-1s, a Soviet copy of the de Havilland DH.9A. Most Afghan aircraft were destroyed in the civil war that began in December 1928, and it was 1937 before a serious rebuilding effort began. From the late 1930s until World War Two, British Hawker Hind and Italian IMAM Ro.37 aircraft constituted the bulk of the small Afghan air service, which by 1938 amounted to about 30 planes in service. The Hawker Hind remained in the Afghan inventory until 1957, and as of 2009 one former Afghan Air Force Hawker Hind still flew in the Shuttleworth Collection. In 1947, the air arm was redesignated the Royal Afghan Air Force, a title it retained until further political upheaval in 1973.

By 1960, the Afghan air force consisted of approximately 100 combat aircraft including MiG-15 fighters, Il-28 light bombers, transports, and a few helicopters. Also by that time, a small number of Afghan pilots were undergoing undergraduate pilot training in the United States; others attended training in the Soviet Union, India, and several European countries. In the 1973 "bloodless" coup, King Zahir Shah was deposed and Mohammed Daoud Khan became the country's president. During his five years in power, until the Communist coup of 1978, Daoud relied on Soviet assistance to upgrade the capabilities and increase the size of the Afghan air force, introducing newer-models of Soviet-built MiG-21 fighters and An-24 and An-26 transports. Improvements in the early-to-mid-1970s notwithstanding, the Afghan air arm remained relatively small until after the 1979–80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While Afghanistan's air force was equipped with a large inventory – probably some 400 aircraft in the mid-1980s – many of them were manned and maintained by "advisors" from Czechoslovakia and Cuba. In many cases, the Soviets were reluctant to entrust Afghan pilots with either the latest aircraft models or high priority missions and, indeed, a number of Afghan pilots were equally reluctant to conduct air strikes against their countrymen.

The Afghan air force was at its strongest in the 1980s and early 1990s, producing some concern on the part of neighboring countries. The air service had at least 7,000 personnel plus 5,000 foreign advisors. At its peak, the air force had at least 240 fixed-wing combat aircraft (fighters, fighter-bombers, light bombers), 150 helicopters, and perhaps 40 or more Antonov transports of various models. Midway through the Soviet-Afghan war, one estimate of Afghan air power listed the following inventory:

• 90 x interceptor MiG-17 – one regiment of MiG-17s and MiG-19s reported at Mazar-i-Sharif in 1990.
• 45 x interceptor MiG-21 – in 1990, thee squadrons were reported at Bagram Air Base
• 60 x fighter-bomber Su-7, Su-17 Warplane, a British partwork, reported in its issue 21, published in 1985, that some 48 Su-7BMs, without Su-7UM two-seaters, had been supplied from 1970, forming the equipment of two fighter/ground attack squadrons at Shindand Airbase.
• 45 x light bomber Il-28
• 150 x helicopter Mi-8, Mi-24

Additionally, the Afghan air force probably operated some 40 or more transports, including the An-26, An-24, and An-2. Another estimate in 1988 painted a more detailed picture of the Afghan Air Force:

• 322nd Air Regiment, Bagram Air Base, three fighter squadrons with 40 MiG-21s
• 321st Air Regiment, Bagram Air Base, three fighter/bomber squadrons with Su-7/Su-22
• 393rd Air Regiment, Dehdadi Air Base (Balkh), three fighter/bomber squadrons with MiG-17s
• 355th Air Regiment, Shindand Airbase, 3 bomber squadrons with Il-28s and one fighter/bomber squadron with MiG-17s
• 232nd Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, three helicopter squadrons with Mi-4, Mi-6, and Mi-8 with one squadron of Mi-8s detached to Shindand
• 377th Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, four helicopter squadrons with Mi-25s and Mi-17s
• ? Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, two transport squadrons with An-2, An-26/30, and one VIP transport squadron with one Il-18 and 12 An-14s
• two attack helicopter squadrons with Mi-24s at Jallalabad and Kabul
• Air Force Academy, Kabul, with Yak-18s and L-39s
• Air Defence Forces consisting of two SAM regiments at Kabul, an AAA Battalion at Kandahar, and a radar regiment at Kabul

After the Soviet withdrawal and the departure of foreign advisors, the air force declined in terms of operational capability. With the collapse of the Najibullah Government in 1992, the air service ceased to be a single entity, instead breaking up amongst the different mujahideen factions in the ongoing civil war. By the end of the 1990s, the military of the Taliban maintained five supersonic MIG-21MFs and 10 Sukhoi-22 fighter-bombers. They also held six Mil Mi-8 helicopters, five Mi-35s, five L-39Cs, six An-12s, 25 An-26s, a dozen An-24/32s, a IL-18, and a Yakovlev. The Afghan Northern Alliance/United Front operated a small number of helicopters and transports and a few other aircraft for which it depended on assistance from neighboring Tajikistan. With the breakdown of logistical systems, the cannibalization of surviving airframes was widespread. The US/Coalition operations in the fall of 2001 destroyed most of the remaining Afghan aircraft. It was 2005 before a US-led, international effort began to rebuild the Afghan air service; since 2007, the pace has increased significantly under the auspices of the Combined Air Power Transition Force.