Taliban Black Hawk helicopter crashes in Kabul during training exercise

Asia-Pacific, News September 12, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

A Taliban-operated Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul on September 10, 2022, killing all three crew members aboard. Five people were wounded during the crash.

The helicopter was being flown during a Taliban training exercise. According to the spokesperson of Taliban’s Defense Minister Enaytullah Khowrazmi “An American Black Hawk helicopter, which was flown for training, crashed due to a technical problem inside the campus of the National Defence University.”

An unverified footage has been circulating the social media which shows the helicopter losing control and swirling dangerously in the air before taking a nose dive onto the ground sending pieces of the aircraft up in the air.

The footage and sources reveal that the helicopter crashed inside a training facility at a Taliban military base. Although the Taliban spokesperson described it as a ‘technical problem’ it appears that the helicopter crashed due to mishandling by the trainee pilot aboard.

An American-made Black Hawk helicopter being flown by the Taliban for a training exercise crashed in Kabul, killing 3 people pic.twitter.com/jME8OM88FF
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) September 11, 2022

U.S. military left a lot of equipment in Afghanistan before Taliban seized power

The U.S. armed forces left several defense articles and military equipment in Afghanistan after their withdrawal in 2021. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. government oversight authority for Afghanistan’s post-war rehabilitation, the U.S. military had transferred at least $28 billion worth of military equipment including arms, ammunition, vehicles, drones, aircraft, and helicopters into Afghanistan between 2002 and 2017.

The U.S. was able to send most of its military equipment out of Afghanistan before the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in August last year, however, some of the aircraft, armored vehicles, and light-weight arms and ammunition were left behind and captured by the Taliban.

In an attempt to avoid the Taliban from taking control of the advanced fleet of military aircraft, the U.S. troops disabled and destroyed 70 percent of the aircraft and helicopters before its chaotic evacuation operation from Kabul.

Earlier this year, the Taliban reported that they have recovered and repaired many of those aircraft left behind by the U.S. military. Taliban also recruited several U.S.-trained pilots, mechanics, and other military personnel from the Afghanistan National Security Defense Forces (ANSDF) for operating the military equipment and training their men.

US Black Hawk in Afghanistan — ^{U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crew members assigned to Task Force Tigershark, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, 7th Infantry Division depart for a mission at Operating Base Fenty in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, May 17, 2017. (Image Credit: U.S. Army)}

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopter

Although Taliban officials did not specify any details, the circulating video shows that the crashed helicopter was a four-blade twin-engine UH-60 Black Hawk military helicopter. Black Hawk is one of the most profoundly used helicopters by the U.S. armed forces, especially for its conquests in the Middles East. Several units of these helicopters were brought to Afghanistan. Each of these helicopters could cost somewhere between $25-30 million.