Posted on August 9, 2009 - by Venik

Russians in Afghanistan

AP’s recent “Safety of Russian planes in Afghanistan questioned” by Catrina Stewart is exactly why female journalists should stick to writing about Gucci purses, chihuahuas, and SUVs. After some, no doubt, extensive research on the subject of military transport aviation, this broad came to the conclusion that the reason NATO keeps hiring Russian cargo aircraft is because it doesn’t have enough of its own. She further theorized that the key to safely operating a cargo plane in a war zone is fresh uniforms and clean pillows on the seats.

To prove her point, Stewart found a bunch of morons from organizations that have nothing to do with aviation – everything from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute to that old Jewish fart Pavel Felgenhauer sitting in his roach-infested Moscow apartment pretending to be a Russian military analyst. How do you know an AP or Reuters article about the Russian military or related matters is bullshit? Easy: it quotes Felgenhauer. He used to be a reporter for the Red Star newspaper and, I guess, that made him an expert on everything military-related. Just look at this man’s photo and tell me if you would seriously expect anything smart to come out of his mouth. I rest my case.

Back to Stewart, though. US DoD forked over $400 million to the Russian Volga-Dnepr heavylift carrier operating An-124s and that, based on the general tone of Stewart’s article, got some American contractors all hot and bothered. NATO is heavily reliant on Russian cargo planes and helicopters in Afghanistan to deliver nearly a quarter of all cargo shipped to Afghanistan every year in support of  whatever the Americans and the rest of NATO have been doing there for the past eight years. NATO uses Russian aircraft and pilots not because it doesn’t have enough of its own, but for three major reasons: cost, performance, and experience.

Let’s start with cost. The world’s two most expensive cargo planes – both to buy and to operate – are C-5 and C-17 and, not surprisingly, they form the basis of USAF’s heavylift capability. Using these planes to transport canned food to Afghanistan is like using a Mercedes 600 to deliver pizza. Performance: An-124 offers greater cargo capacity (in both mass and dimensions), better fuel efficiency, wider operating tolerances and fewer service hours per hour of flight than anything else in the same class in the entire NATO fleet. The plane was designed in the 1980s and incorporated all the operational experience gained by the Soviet military in Afghanistan. As far as the Russian Mi-26 helicopters contracted by NATO, the only thing that comes close is the C-130 Hercules and that’s not even a helicopter.

Experience: most of the Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian  pilots contracted by NATO to fly the Russian transport aircraft are the same guys – now in their forties and fifties – who flew the Soviet transport planes and helicopters in Afghanistan during the 1980s. They are familiar with the aircraft, with the terrain, with evasive maneuvers, and, most importantly, with the double-faced, pajama-wearing fucks waiting for them on the ground. Not a single Russian cargo plane or helicopter was lost in Afghanistan in the past eight years for any reason. Only someone like this AP blowhole would imagine that one only needs to follow UN’s civil aviation regulations to safely pilot an unarmed five-story building with wings over the ZU-23-infested Panjshir valley.

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