Afghan Air Force

The Afghan Air Force (Pashto: د افغانستان اسلامي امارت هوایي ځواک, Dari: قوای هوایی امارت اسلامی افغانستان) is the air force branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The Royal Afghan Air Force was established in 1921 under the reign of King Amanullah and significantly modernized by King Zahir Shah in the 1960s. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union built up the Afghan Air Force, first in an attempt to defeat the mujahideen and in hopes that strong Afghan airpower would preserve the pro-Soviet government of Mohammad Najibullah. When Najibullah eventually fell in 1992 the Afghan Air Force may have counted 350 aircraft. The collapse of Najibullah's government in 1992 and the continuation of a civil war throughout the 1990s reduced the number of Afghan aircraft to some 35–40. During Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001, in which the Taliban government was ousted from power, all that remained of the AAF was a few helicopters. In 2006, the Afghan National Army Air Corps was established, and was renamed the Afghan Air Force in 2010 while remaining part of the Afghan National Army. Since 2007, the U.S.-led Combined Air Power Transition Force, renamed the NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan in 2010, aimed to rebuild and modernize the Afghan Air Force. It served as the air component of the NATO Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan which was responsible for organising the Afghan Armed Forces. The AAF possessed 161 aircraft in 2021 and had in 2020 over 7,500 personnel. The Resolute Support Mission intended to raise the ranks of the AAF to 8,000 airmen and increase the number of aircraft, which were progressively getting more advanced. Following the withdrawal of NATO forces in the summer of 2021, in addition to a large-scale offensive by the Taliban, the mostly non-functional Air Force largely disintegrated. This culminated in...