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The Afghan Air Force (AAF; Pashto: دافغانستان هوائی ځواک ; Dari: قوای هوائی افغانستان), formerly the ''Afghan National Air Force'', is a branch of the military of Afghanistan that is responsible for air defense and air warfare.〔("Afghanistan: Karzai creates an Air Force" ) 〕〔 It is divided into three wings, with the 1st Wing at Kabul, the 2nd Wing at Kandahar and the 3rd Wing south at Shindand in western Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Mohammad Dawran serves as Chief of Staff of the Afghan Air Force〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=U.S. Builds Afghan Air Base, but Where Are the Planes? )〕 and Major General Abdul Wahab Wardak is the Afghan Air Force Commander.〔Abdul Wahab Wardak〕 The command center of the Afghan Air Force is located at Kabul International Airport and the Shindand Air Base in Herat Province serves as the main training area. The Afghan Air Force was established in 1924 under the rule of King Amanullah and upgraded by King Zahir Shah in the 1960s. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union built up the AAF, first in an attempt to defeat the mujahideen and in hopes that a strong Afghan air power would preserve the pro-Soviet government of Najibullah. The AAF had over 400 military aircraft, including more than 200 Soviet-made fighter jets.〔 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 less than a dozen. During Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001, in which the Taliban government was ousted from power, only a few helicopters remained of the Afghan Air Force. Since 2007, the US-led, international Combined Air Power Transition Force (CAPTF), which was renamed the NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan (NATC-A) in 2010,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=U.S. Air Forces Central Command )〕〔NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan〕 has worked to rebuild and modernize the Afghan Air Force. The CAPTF / NATC-A serves as the air component of the US-led, international Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan which is responsible for rebuilding the Afghan armed forces.〔(ACIG Journal – Indian-Subcontinent Database (Afghanistan); Yves Debay and David Donald, "Wings over the Panjshir Valley", World Air Power Journal, vol. 40, Spring 2000 ) 〕 The AAF currently has about 100 aircraft and around 5,000 active personnel. By 2016 the NATO training mission in Afghanistan wants to raise the ranks of the AAF to 8000 and increase the air fleet to 140 aircraft which are progressively getting more advanced. == History == The history of the Afghan air service began on 22 August 1924 as the Afghan Air Force. As early as 1921, the Soviet Union and Great Britain provided a small number of aircraft to Afghanistan's King Amanullah Khan who had been impressed with the British use of aircraft against his government in 1919. For the next decade, Soviet pilots performed the bulk of the flying of Afghan aircraft, probably about one-half of which were Polikarpov R-1s, a Soviet copy of the de Havilland DH.9A. Most Afghan aircraft were destroyed in the civil war that began in December 1928, and it was 1937 before a serious rebuilding effort began. From the late 1930s until World War Two, British Hawker Hind and Italian IMAM Ro.37 aircraft constituted the bulk of the small Afghan air service, which by 1938 amounted to about 30 planes in service.〔R. Schnitzler, G.W. Feuchter, R. Schulz (Eds.): Handbuch der Luftfahrt (Manual of Aviation). Jahrgang 1939. p. 11. J.F. Lehmanns Verlag, München & Berlin〕 The Hawker Hind remained in the Afghan inventory until 1957, and as of 2009 one former Afghan Air Force Hawker Hind still flew in the Shuttleworth Collection. In 1947, the air arm was redesignated the Royal Afghan Air Force, a title it retained until further political upheaval in 1973.〔Lennart Andersson, "The First Thirty Years of Aviation in Afghanistan," part 1, at () Edward Girardet, Afghanistan, The Soviet War (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1985), pg. 88; (ACIG Journal – Indian-Subcontinent Database (Afghanistan) ) 〕 By 1960, the Afghan air force consisted of approximately 100 combat aircraft including MiG-15 fighters, Il-28 light bombers, transports, and a few helicopters.〔Ludwig W. Adamec, Historical Dictionary of Afghan Wars, Revolutions, and Insurgencies (Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Md., Toronto, 2005, 2d ed.), pg. 52〕 Also by that time, a small number of Afghan pilots were undergoing undergraduate pilot training in the United States; others attended training in the Soviet Union, India, and several European countries. In the 1973 "bloodless" coup, King Zahir Shah was deposed and Mohammed Daoud Khan became the country's president. During his five years in power, until the Communist coup of 1978, Daoud relied on Soviet assistance to upgrade the capabilities and increase the size of the Afghan air force, introducing newer-models of Soviet-built MiG-21 fighters and An-24 and An-26 transports. Improvements in the early-to-mid-1970s notwithstanding, the Afghan air arm remained relatively small until after the 1979–80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While Afghanistan's air force was equipped with a large inventory – probably some 400 aircraft in the mid-1980s – many of them were manned and maintained by "advisors" from Czechoslovakia and Cuba. In many cases, the Soviets were reluctant to entrust Afghan pilots with either the latest aircraft models or high priority missions and, indeed, a number of Afghan pilots were equally reluctant to conduct air strikes against their countrymen. The Afghan air force was at its strongest in the 1980s and early 1990s, producing some concern on the part of neighboring countries. The air service had at least 7,000 personnel plus 5,000 foreign advisors. At its peak, the air force had at least 240 fixed-wing combat aircraft (fighters, fighter-bombers, light bombers), 150 helicopters, and perhaps 40 or more Antonov transports of various models. Midway through the Soviet-Afghan war, one estimate of Afghan air power listed the following inventory: * 90 x interceptor MiG-17 – one regiment of MiG-17s and MiG-19s reported at Mazar-i-Sharif in 1990.〔Flight magazine 1990 or The Encyclopaedia of World Air Forces〕 * 45 x interceptor MiG-21 – in 1990, thee squadrons were reported at Bagram Air Base〔Flight magazine or The Encyclopaedia of World Air Forces〕 * 60 x fighter-bomber Su-7, Su-17 ''Warplane,'' a British partwork, reported in its issue 21, published in 1985, that some 48 Su-7BMs, without Su-7UM two-seaters, had been supplied from 1970, forming the equipment of two fighter/ground attack squadrons at Shindand Airbase.〔Orbis Publishing Ltd, 'Sukhoi Su-7 'Fitter' – Soviet Sledgehammer, 'Warplane, Vol. 2, Issue 21, p.413〕 * 45 x light bomber Il-28 * 150 x helicopter Mi-8, Mi-24 Additionally, the Afghan air force probably operated some 40 or more transports, including the An-26, An-24, and An-2.〔 Another estimate in 1988 painted a more detailed picture of the Afghan Air Force: * 322nd Air Regiment, Bagram Air Base, three fighter squadrons with 40 MiG-21s * 321st Air Regiment, Bagram Air Base, three fighter/bomber squadrons with Su-7/Su-22 * 393rd Air Regiment, Dehdadi Air Base (Balkh), three fighter/bomber squadrons with MiG-17s * 355th Air Regiment, Shindand Airbase, 3 bomber squadrons with Il-28s and one fighter/bomber squadron with MiG-17s * 232nd Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, three helicopter squadrons with Mi-4, Mi-6, and Mi-8 with one squadron of Mi-8s detached to Shindand * 377th Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, four helicopter squadrons with Mi-25s and Mi-17s * ? Air Regiment, Kabul Airport, two transport squadrons with An-2, An-26/30, and one VIP transport squadron with one Il-18 and 12 An-14s * two attack helicopter squadrons with Mi-24s at Jallalabad and Kabul * Air Force Academy, Kabul, with Yak-18s and L-39s * Air Defence Forces consisting of two SAM regiments at Kabul, an AAA Battalion at Kandahar, and a radar regiment at Kabul After the Soviet withdrawal and the departure of foreign advisors, the air force declined in terms of operational capability. With the collapse of the Najibullah Government in 1992, the air service ceased to be a single entity, instead breaking up amongst the different mujahideen factions in the ongoing civil war. By the end of the 1990s, the military of the Taliban maintained five supersonic MIG-21MFs and 10 Sukhoi-22 fighter-bombers.〔York, Geoffrey. Globe and Mail, "Military Targets Are Elusive. Afghanistan Army Called a Haphazard Operation", September 19, 2001〕 They also held six Mil Mi-8 helicopters, five Mi-35s, five L-39Cs, six An-12s, 25 An-26s, a dozen An-24/32s, a IL-18, and a Yakovlev.〔Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment, 2001〕 The Afghan Northern Alliance/United Front operated a small number of helicopters and transports and a few other aircraft for which it depended on assistance from neighboring Tajikistan. With the breakdown of logistical systems, the cannibalization of surviving airframes was widespread. The US/Coalition operations in the fall of 2001 destroyed most of the remaining Afghan aircraft. It was 2005 before a US-led, international effort began to rebuild the Afghan air service; since 2007, the pace has increased significantly under the auspices of the Combined Air Power Transition Force.〔Debay, "Wings over Panjshir"〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Afghan Air Force」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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