Taliban Nets 2,000 Armored Vehicles, 40 Aircraft In Afghanistan

The Taliban has seized more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones as the Afghanistan National Army fled and President Ashraf Ghani abandoned his country.

Photo Insert: A U.S. Humvee being transported in Afghanistan

"Everything that hasn't been destroyed is the Taliban's now," one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Idrees Ali and Patricia Zengerle, Jonathan Landay of Reuters.

Current and former US officials say there is concern those weapons could be used to kill civilians, be seized by other militant groups such as Islamic State to attack US-interests in the region, or even potentially be handed over to adversaries including China and Russia.

President Joe Biden's administration is so concerned about the weapons that it is considering a number of options to pursue.

The speed with which the Taliban swept across Afghanistan is reminiscent of Islamic State militants taking weapons from US-supplied Iraqi forces who offered little resistance in 2014.

Between 2002 and 2017, the United States gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in weaponry, including guns, rockets, night-vision goggles, and even small drones for intelligence gathering.

But aircraft like the Blackhawk helicopters have been the most visible sign of US military assistance and were supposed to be the Afghan military's biggest advantage over the Taliban.

Between 2003 and 2016 the United States provided Afghan forces with 208 aircraft, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the last week, many of those aircraft were most useful for Afghan pilots to escape the Taliban.

One of the US officials said that between 40 and 50 aircraft had been flown to Uzbekistan by Afghan pilots seeking refuge. Even before taking power in Kabul over the weekend, the Taliban had started a campaign of assassinating pilots.

Some planes were in the United States for maintenance and will stay. Those en route to Afghan forces will instead be used by the US military to help in the evacuation from Kabul.

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