Aircraft Had Been Slated For Placement With The Afghan Air Force

The Pentagon has reversed course on a plan to acquire an additional 15 Russian Mi-17 helicopters from Rosoboronexport for the Afghan Air Force. The aircraft were to have been acquired at a cost of $345 million to the U.S. taxpayer.

The policy change was made public in an e-mail from Defense Department spokeswoman Maureen Schumann, according to Reuters. “After initially requesting funds from Congress in the FY14 (2014 fiscal year) budget to provide additional enhancements for the Afghan National Security Forces, the department has re-evaluated requirements in consultation with Congress," she wrote. "We currently do not have plans to purchase additional Mi17s from Rosoboronexport beyond those in the Afghan Program of Record."

The original plan called for the acquisition of 63 new Mi-17s at a cost of $1.1 billion. The reasoning was that they were familiar to Afghan pilots, and it would ease the transition to an indigenous force as U.S. troops withdraw from the region.

The main sticking point in the deal, which many in Congress have criticized from the start, is that Rosoboronexport deals with Syria. Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn said in a statement that "Doing business with the supplier of these helicopters has been a morally bankrupt policy, and as a nation, we should no longer be subsidizing Assad's war crimes."

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said in a news release "I am pleased that after my repeated calls to the Secretary of Defense and General Dempsey to end this wasteful spending, the Department of Defense is terminating the contract to buy Russian helicopters. This wrong and wasteful contact should have been canceled a long time ago – preventing taxpayer dollars from indirectly funding the sale of arms to the Assad regime for the slaughter of the Syrian people.

"The Army’s mishandling of this arms program, as well as the Afghan military’s inability to maintain the helicopters, further underscores why this contract should have been canceled long ago. I applaud DOD for correcting this wrong, and hope the agency buys American in the future. We should buy American helicopters, period. I will be introducing legislation shortly to ensure that we do not do business again with foreign companies that enable war crimes in Syria and that the Army has a plan in place to transition Afghanistan to buy American helicopters when needed.” 

Connecticut is the corporate home of Sikorsky.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.defense.gov