What We Left Behind in Afghanistan: Billions in U.S. Military Weapons & Material

By now you have heard about the military weapons, vehicles, aircraft, drones, classified technology, and encrypted communications equipment the feckless and incompetent Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left behind for our new friends the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Clearly, the deaths of 12 U.S. Marines and a Navy medical corpsman, not to mention some 170 Afghani civilians in the ISIS-K suicide bomb attack last week are of primary concern.

But the gift of some $35 billion in military hardware to an enemy American and coalition forces fought against for 20 years, cannot be ignored—despite the Pentagon’s desire to the contrary.

Whether all of that American military gear was intentionally or unintentionally left behind as Biden ordered a full-blown military bug-out, somebody wearing a uniform, such as Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley or Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin should be fired.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley

Of course, that will not happen in a spineless and irresponsible Biden administration. Austin and Milley are more concerned with teaching American soldiers Critical Race Theory and eliminating “white rage” in the ranks than they are about warfighting.

Both seem convinced that the Marine Corps, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are sated with “white supremacists”—an adversary even more dangerous than the Taliban, ISIS-K, or Al Qaeda.

Perhaps their obsession with rooting out “white privilege and fragility” in the military made them forget all of those American weapons and other military gear now in the hands of the Taliban—not to mention ISIS-K and Al Qaeda.

Oh well, who cares if we gifted the Taliban with Javelin missiles? Each one only costs $80,000—not counting the $125,000 launchers. Or what about those Stryker vehicles left behind? Baseline models only run $4.9 million each.

Then there are those F-15 fighters. They only cost about $87 million per copy and those UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Hell, they are a bargain at only $6 million each. Then there are some $200 million in high-tech drones that the Taliban can now use against us at some point down the road—or can give to the Chinese so they can reverse engineer them.

If you watched carefully last week, you saw videos of Taliban soldiers walking around with some of those 978,000 American M4 and M16 rifles, as well as M24 sniper rifle systems, and M2 .50 caliber machine guns. Some had night-vision goggles, radios, and magazine pouches hanging from their bodies while others tooled around Kabul in American Humvees and MRAPs.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, between 2003 and 2017 the United States transferred 75,898 vehicles, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to Afghan forces.

But that’s not all. Between 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs, and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the equipment is lost to the Taliban, “and obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” he added.

The Pentagon’s response to all of this: “We are always worried about U.S. equipment that could fall into an adversaries’ hands,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said. “What actions we might take to prevent that or to forestall it, I just simply won’t speculate about today.”

Clearly, no action was taken. None at all. Zip, Zilch.

        A Blackhawk for the Taliban

Last week Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Chiefs staff was asked if U.S. troops on the ground were taking any action to “to prevent equipment from falling into the hands of the Taliban by destroying it.”

His bleak response: “I don’t have the answer to that question.”

So, essentially, the Biden administration, in cahoots with the idiots in charge at the Pentagon, has succeeded in turning the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next 10 years or so.

The Taliban now control 75,000 military vehicles, including about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees, about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and about 150 armored personnel carriers.

But more importantly, they have achieved an enormous psychological and propaganda victory, in addition to a military victory, over the United States.

Once again, the Biden administration is not concerned. No, bumbling, bungling Biden is more intent on tracking down white supremacists, domestic terrorists (AKA conservatives and Republicans), insurrectionists, and anybody who might have voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than he is about the gift of billions of dollars of American military gear to the Taliban and their terrorist compadres.

God only knows what caprice the Biden White House will treat the nation to next.

Perhaps our feckless president will give away the Statue of Liberty.

After all, with all these white supremacists running around the country, provoking insurrections, demanding a return to slavery, and Jim Crow elections, nobody will want to come to America ever again so why have the Goddess of Liberty wasting her time in New York harbor?

Let’s put her on a slow boat to Communist China. Now there’s an enlightened, nation that the socialist swamp creatures in Washington love. And while she’s there, maybe she can recover some of that mlitary hardware the Taliban will be giving to China.

In the meantime, take a look at the list of those military goodies we so graciously bequeathed to our conquerors in Afghanistan:

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s

-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc

-45 UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters

-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers

-Scan Eagle Military Drones

-30 Military Version Cessna’s

-4 C-130’s

-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft

=208+ Aircraft Total!!

-At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition

-61,000 M203 Rounds

-20,040 Grenades

-Howitzers

-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds

-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear

-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles

-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes

-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles

-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets

-Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)

-Laser Aiming Units

-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT

-2,520 Bombs

-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops ALL operational

-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency

-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber

-Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor

-US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics

-Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Oh well. It’s only taxpayer money. Who cares?

 

About Ronald E. Yates

Ronald E. Yates is an award-winning author of historical fiction and action/adventure novels, including the popular and highly-acclaimed Finding Billy Battles trilogy. Read More About Ron Here

2 thoughts on “What We Left Behind in Afghanistan: Billions in U.S. Military Weapons & Material”

  1. The left is going crazy to debunk the $83 billion number including constraining their lists to only weapons and ordnance. Nothing about bulldozers, office equipment for their entire government and military, etc.
    SIGAR reports 146B spent with 30% estimated waste and loss. That’s 44B. Not knowing prices I don’t know what your report here adds up to in billions.
    Is there a way to find out everything ever sent there that didn’t come back, both civilian and military including US military abandonments of non-weapons systems? I would love to get close $83B, but even more fun if you could dig up numbers getting to $100B.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the comment, Lee. sorry for the tardy reply. You are right, the left is pulling out its hair trying to cover up Biden’s blunders in Afghanistan. I doubt if we will ever know definitively just how much $$ we poured into Afghanistan in our losing war against a bunch of sheepherders. Such a waste of life and money.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Lee Schoff Cancel reply