Destroying damaged aircraft

[Saintsman]

When a helicopter has to make an emergency landing in Afghanistan and it cannot be recovered straight away, it is usually destroyed so that the Taliban can't use it.

What would they use it for?

[charliegolf]

Propaganda photos? Crash landing turns into a ground-to-air 'kill'.

CG

[Blacksheep]

Hmm. Good point. In the olden days there were times when we'd leave weapons lying around for our irregular opposition to find. Hand grenades with 0 second fuses. Things like that. A suitably adapted forty seater could take out a whole platoon of Taliban if we left it in the right place.

[onetrack]

A relatively intact helicopter would be manna from heaven for terrorists who have a relatively unstable and regularly fractured supply line.
It would yield many basic, useful items... from wiring, armaments, instruments, explosive compounds, PCB's .. to a sizeable supply of aluminium and other metals.

These are all useful ingredients for IED manufacture. IED's that are regularly set for NATO forces... and civilians, too, if they are in disagreement with the Taliban aims and edicts.

One could only imagine what these resourceful ba$tards could fabricate from a relatively intact helicopter. Remember, these are the people who can fabricate exact copies of other countries weapons, without having resources such as machine tooling, dies, alloy steels, and foundries.

Study up on what the NVA produced in 'Nam, by way of booby traps, grenades, and jungle-built armaments, often manufactured from rubbish thrown away by troops, and you'll understand that some lessons learnt in one terrorist war, haven't been entirely forgotten, in another.

I have never forgotten the images in an NVA propaganda film shown to us during training, whereby NVA "volunteers" were shown de-fusing 1000lb U.S. bombs that had failed to detonate (inherently deadly work with no manuals, seeing as they had anti-handling devices on the set fuse).

They were then shown, sawing through the casing, to within a couple of mm of the explosive, tapping the casing to break it open... then extracting handfuls of explosive, ready to be turned back into booby traps, to be used against us.
Not to mention, the handy supply of iron in the casing, that was melted down in wood-fired jungle foundries, to be cast into jungle-made fragmentation grenades.

You give these type of fanatical, resourceful fighters, NOTHING, that could be even remotely useful.

[Sonorguy]

There's also likely to be lots of kit on there that you don't necessarily want the enemy to be able to analyse in terms of exactly how it functions, particularly the DAS kit that's on some of them.

[Torque Tonight]

And of course there are the aircraft weapons. I'm sure they'd find a use for a few heavy machine guns and a shed load of ammunition. There's also classified information on board the aircraft that you don't want falling into the wrong hands. If the Paveway comes down at the right moment you get to take out a bunch of the bad guys as they're crawling over the wreckage.

[Pontius Navigator]

TT, dropping a bomb will not necessarily destroy something though soft and squidgy things will usually be damaged beyond repair.

[ninja-lewis]

Even if the Taliban couldn't do anything with the parts, they could still recover them and sell them on to other groups or states who might for a double whammy - the technology is potentially compromised and the enemy receives funding to spend on things they can use.

[glug]

Looking from the other angle. An aircraft will need repair by technicians, perimeter defence, overwatch etc, etc. All great targets for attack as aircraft normaly land on flat areas, without big rocks as it helps the occupants survive. Is a broke aircraft worth the danger to us? Nope. Destroy it.

[hanoijane]

Hmmm. You're in grave danger of believing propaganda films, Mr onetrack. Never very wise.

I think history has revealed that the NVA(or more properly the PAVN) were quite well equipped from elsewhere, and didn't generally have to resort to pulling Yankee toys apart to find ways of pursuing their aims.

However, their southern cousins in theViet cong (or NLF) had more reason to follow the suggestions you've outlined, being somewhat less well equipped than their northern brothers.

Not really fanatical or even particularly resourceful. Just getting rid of Johnny Foreigner who's cluttering up their back yard. Rather like the Afghans...

[orgASMic]

Saintsman - we are not even allowed to throw batteries away in case the locals recycle them into weapons. The sheer effort that goes into denying the enemy its supplies must not be undone by leaving stuff around for him to just pick up.