Little Things That Irk You: The Hateful 08

[Cassius_Smoke]

The whole Pen Farthing fiasco. Everything I've heard about it so far seems to be people knowingly ignoring the facts in order to drag him over the coals for simply trying to do a decent thing.

From what I can gleem, he just seems like a guy caught up in the utter **** storm that befell Afghanistan.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, he's effectively managed to get out and save both people and animals and yet for some reason that some animals were on board is enough to tear into him, no matter the number of near empty flights and holds going out. Shows how even when there's one nugget decency in a ****storm the UK media will never fail to crush it.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Talking about Afghanistan, have you seen the arsenal of **** they've obtained from the retreating forces?
They have fighter jets, tanks, APCs, rockets, a **** tonne of assault rifles and more.

[charlesr]

Merica. Arming the Taliban by pulling out after arming the Afghans that they armed to fight the Taliban that they armed to fight the Russians.

[Neon Ignition]

Somewhere a script writer within Activision is furiously penning a document with the header title Call of Duty (2024) on it as sweating lawyers race back and forth from Bobby's office

[Blobcat]

Tumble dryer looks like it has broken. Poor thing has worked overtime with drying my uniform pretty much every day since the pandemic.

[Asura]

Talking about Afghanistan, have you seen the arsenal of **** they've obtained from the retreating forces?
They have fighter jets, tanks, APCs, rockets, a **** tonne of assault rifles and more.

I thought this too, but I had a read into it online.

The US left a huge amount of materiel; I read for example there were 6 THOUSAND trucks.

However, further reading suggests that when they're pulling out, the military perform a long process where they evaluate all their equipment; they take back everything particularly useful/valuable and only leave whatever, well, isn't. So while they left tons of humvees, many of them aren't running or at the end of their service life. Apparently that sort of equipment requires daily, highly skilled maintenance.

They left assault riles and such, but no ammunition, and apparently Afghanistan already has more assault rifles than people, mainly left over from the Soviets.

They left fighter planes and helicopters, but stripped them down, and without their FCS and computer systems they're basically just expensive scrap.

Supposedly the vast bulk isn't running now, and what is/what can be repaired won't be running in 6 months' time.

[Brad]

Those black hawk choppers need maintenance every 30 hours, and I doubt they have the skills to do that. Another point of view is that a lot of the equipment was given or sold to Afghanistan. Not the outgoing government, the country. The taliban are the government there now so they’re in charge and the equipment is rightly theirs. Silly merca!

[cutmymilk]

So it was the biggest littering operation in history?

[fishbowlhead]

Those black hawk choppers need maintenance every 30 hours, and I doubt they have the skills to do that. Another point of view is that a lot of the equipment was given or sold to Afghanistan. Not the outgoing government, the country. The taliban are the government there now so they’re in charge and the equipment is rightly theirs. Silly merca!

Exactly. Even if the Taliban get a few working its not going to be for long until they run out of parts, thats if they can get that part off another grounded unit that has it. These thing eat parts and labour for breakfast and without access to the manufacturer, expertise to fit, and a supply chain there dead in the water.

[Brad]

Yep, they won't be able to use them for long. And if they sit doing nothing that's just as bad for them. I'm sure lots of us here would love a pinball table but if you get one of those you'd better learn how to maintain it! BlackHawks are to choppers as The Twilight Zone machine is to pinball tables.

EDIT: I guess the hardware *was* provided to the outgoing government but this is what happens when then enemy cares more about their cause than the incumbents do about theirs.

[briareos_kerensky]

They can always sell parts to other countries. Iran has been maintaining, upgrading, and reverse-engineering American-built jets from before the revolution. Pretty sure they'd like a couple of extra spare parts, or new electronics to thinker with.

[QualityChimp]

I'm kinda picturing teens with access to a load of GTA shark cards, buying all the military hardware and popping to the shops in an F-16.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Well that's the other thing, Im pretty sure you can't just jump in a fighter jet and fly it. No one will be trained to use one.

[QualityChimp]

Well, according to The Sun, the 9/11 terrorists learned to fly using Microsoft Flight Simulator, so if the Americans have left behind a powerful enough PC to run it, we could be in trouble.

Or like most PC gamers, they could just spend ages tweaking the graphics filters, rather than actually playing it.