How Valuable Are The U.S. Weapons The Taliban Just Captured?

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Taliban fighters with M-16 rifles display their flag on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday.

Rahmat Gul/AP

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Rahmat Gul/AP

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Similar scenes have been repeated across the country: In the weeks before the Taliban seized Kabul, retreating Afghan forces ditched billions of dollars worth of U.S.-supplied military hardware — ranging from assault rifles to Black Hawk helicopters.

The Taliban wasted no time in gloating over their new war booty. Photos and video posted to social media show Taliban posing with captured aircraft, trucks, Humvees, artillery guns and night-vision googles. Such equipment could be used to suppress internal dissent or fight off their rivals.

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Afghan Army Capt. Rezaye Jamshid waves to a UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft taking off at Kandahar Airbase, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in May. The Taliban captured helicopters and other military equipment when they overran the Afghan military this month and reclaimed control of the country.

Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

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Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

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Even so, Bowman says, «I don’t think this is an insurmountable problem for the Taliban and their al-Qaida partners.

A lot of other items in the Taliban’s new arsenal could easily be put to use, says Jonathan Schroden, the director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.

With small arms and night vision devices, they «don’t need a lot of skill or training to use those, he tells NPR.

Then there’s the question of maintenance and spare parts. U.S. contractors maintained the Afghan military’s Black Hawks. In the hands of the Taliban, they «would break and they would not be able to fix them, Schroden says. Same goes for the C-130s, he says, which like the Black Hawks have «fairly sophisticated maintenance requirements.

By contrast, if the Taliban could find somebody who knows anything about airplane engines, they could probably keep the A-29s flying, Schroden says.

For vehicles like the up-armored Humvees, known as MRAPS, «they’ve captured so many of them that they could cannibalize the ones they have for spare parts to keep the others running, he says.

Made back in the U.S.S.R.

Asked what weapon he thinks is the most lethal in the Taliban’s new arsenal, Schroden doesn’t name an American system, but a Russian one — the D-30 howitzer, a 122-mm towed artillery piece.

He says the weapons are lethal and «it’s clear the Taliban know how to use them.

Another option might be to simply sell off whatever the Taliban can’t learn to use or maintain themselves.

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On the Black Hawks and A-29s, for instance, «presumably there is some avionics, communications equipment, other things on those aircraft that they could sell, Bowman says.

Despite the sectarian divide between the Sunni Taliban and Iran’s Shiite government, there are some signs of cooperation. Iran might be interested, as might China or Russia, if for no other reason than to «humiliate America, he says.

Schroden agrees, pointing to high-tech «sensor balls on the front of some aircraft.

«They have sophisticated electro-optics, optical equipment, as well as signals intelligence type stuff in them, he says. «Those things might be of interest to other countries as well.