WATCH: Taliban ‘Pilot’ Successfully Flies American Black Hawk Straight Into Ground
There's a strange irony to former suicide bombers accidentally killing themselves. Come to think of it, that might have been a better headline for this article. Maybe next time. Screenshot from YouTube.
On Saturday, Sept. 10, a Taliban pilot crashed a repurposed American Black Hawk helicopter during a training exercise at the National Defense University in Kabul. Please, hold your applause until the end.
Videos allegedly showing the incident have since circulated throughout the internet. In them, a Black Hawk helicopter spirals through the air before abruptly smashing into the ground behind a barrier wall. Although the crash was obscured by the wall, pieces of the bird can be seen flying through the air moments after the impact, so it seems safe to say that the bird is totally fucked.
The Taliban’s Ministry of Defense spokesperson, Enayatullah Khwarizmi, announced that three crewmen had been killed and five more had been injured in the crash and that the crash had occurred because of a “technical problem.” Hmm. I’m no aviation expert, but I’d venture to guess that the “technical problem” wasn’t purely technical and probably had something to do with one of these five factors:
- Poor maintenance. We’ve already established that the Taliban don’t perform maintenance. They just rock it till the wheels fall off — literally.
- Sabotage. American forces purposely damaged or otherwise rendered inoperable what they could of the $7 billion worth of equipment left behind in Afghanistan. Although it’s a long shot, there is a possibility that some savvy Black Hawk mechanic did something slick to the tail rotor of this bird to produce this outcome. Either that or some grunt smashed it with a pry bar really fucking hard. Surely I’m not the only person who thought of this.
- Operator error. We don’t know much about the pilot, but we strongly doubt he was trained to the same level and standard as the Americans who flew that Black Hawk before it was abandoned on a flight line in Kabul. Sticking an unqualified pilot in the driver’s seat of a Black Hawk is like sticking a toddler behind the wheel of a Formula One race car — things are going to turn bad very, very fast.
- The pilot was texting. Don’t text and fly, folks.
- The Black Hawk was actually an Autobot named Tomahawk that decided to sacrifice itself instead of being used by evil forces. *Wipes away tear* We’ll never forget you, Tomahawk!
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Eric Miller is a former Army Combat Medic from Parkersburg, West Virginia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and has worked with homeless populations and veteran services throughout the state. He is an avid outdoorsman and has recently become interested in woodworking.
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