page_title: Afghan Air Force
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Afghan Air Force / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Afghan Air Force Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighters and Ilyushin Il-28 bombers at Kabul, Afghanistan, during the visit of the U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, 9-14 December 1959. فارسی: جنگنده‌های میکویان-گورویچ میگ-۱۵ و بمب‌افکن‌های ایلیوشین آی‌ال-۲۸ نیروی هوایی افغانستان در کابل به هنگام دیدار دوایت آیزنهاور رئیس‌جمهور ایالات متحدهٔ آمریکا، ۱۴-۹ دسامبر ۱۹۵۹
context_page_description: The Afghan Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. It is divided into four wings, with the 1st Wing at Kabul, the 2nd Wing at Kandahar, the 3rd Wing at Shindand, and the 4th Wing at Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Mohammad Dawran has served as Chief of Staff of the Afghan Air Force and Gen. Abdul Fahim Ramin as the Afghan Air Force Commander. The command center of the Afghan Air Force is located at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The Shindand Air Base in Herat Province serves as the main training facility.
  The Royal Afghan Air Force was established in 1919 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 Najibullah. The Afghan Air Force had over 400 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.
context_section_description: The Afghan Air Force began on 19 August 1919, when the Afghan Air Force was established. In 1924 and 1925 it saw action when it fought against the Khost rebellion. 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, however they were not made into a separate air arm until 1924. For the next decade, Soviet pilots performed the bulk of the flying and equipping for the AAF, probably about one-half of the aircraft were Polikarpov R-1s, a Soviet copy of the de Havilland DH.9A. Most AAF aircraft were destroyed in the civil war that began in December 1928, and it was not before 1937 that a serious rebuilding effort began. From the late 1930s until World War II, British Hawker Hind and Italian IMAM Ro.37 aircraft constituted the bulk of the Afghan Air Force, which by 1938 amounted to about 30 planes in service. 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 Force was redesignated the Royal Afghan Air Force (RAAF), a title it retained until further political upheaval in 1973.
  By 1960, the Royal Afghan Air Force consisted of approximately 100 combat aircraft including MiG-15 fighters, Il-28 light bombers, transports, and a few helicopters. Also by that time, a small number of Afghan pilots were undergoing undergraduate pilot training in the United States, while others attended training in the Soviet Union, India, and several European countries. In the "bloodless" 1973 Saur Revolution, 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 gained Soviet assistance to upgrade the capabilities and increase the size of the Afghan Air Force, introducing newer models of Soviet MiG-21 fighters and An-24 and An-26 transports. In 1979 the Air Force lost four Mi-8s. Improvements in the early-to-mid-1970s notwithstanding, the Afghan Air Force remained relatively small until after the 1979–80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While the Afghan 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 Force 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 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17s – one regiment of MiG-17s and MiG-19s reported at Mazar-i-Sharif in 1990.
  45 MiG-21s – in 1990, three squadrons were reported at Bagram Airfield
  60 Su-7s and Su-17s – 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.
  45 Il-28s
  150 Mi-8s and Mi-24s
  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,
caption: MiG-15 fighters and Il-28 bombers of the Afghan Air Force (AAF) in 1959.
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