KABUL – The Afghan Air Force is expected to start dropping the laser-guidedbombs to suppress the Taliban insurgents and other terrorists in the nearfuture, said a top US military General.
Major General James B. Hecker, Commander, 9th Air and Space ExpeditionaryTask Force-Afghanistan told reporters in Pentagon “Three A-29 pilots arenow trained to drop laser-guided munitions.”
Gen. Hecker further added “The first was dropped in training in December,so the Taliban can look forward to those laser-guided bombs raining on whatused to be safe havens in the near future.”
He also added that in the future, the Afghan Air Force will also get whatwe call AC208s, and they’ll get a total of 32 of them. “These are similarto the C208, but this is an attack model, so it will carry pods withlaser-guided rockets and a gun. It can also capture full-motion video andassist other aircraft to achieve precision targeting, making it an ISRasset, which is going to be key to enabling the A-29,” he added.
According to Gen. Hecker, in 2017, the Afghan Air Force conductedapproximately 2,000 airstrike sorties, or roughly 40 strikes — sorties eachweek, with a record high of nearly 80 missions in a single week in October.
“To put this into context, the Afghan Air Force airstrike sorties are nowalmost double what the U.S. Air Force conducts in Afghanistan,” he said.