USAFE Fighter Wings Conduct Rare Air-to-Air Live Fire Training

Aug. 20, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

F-16s and F-15s from the Air Force’s 31st and 48th Fighter Wings linked up in northwestern Wales in mid-July, conducting a rare air-to-air live fire training exercise in the U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa (USAFE) area of responsibility.

For the 31st Fighter Wing, based out of Aviano Air Base, Italy, it was the first time in 14 years the wing’s F-16Cs were able to conduct such training in Europe.

As part of the exercise, the fighters launched missiles at flares towed by a Mirach 100 drone.

“It’s a rare opportunity to have something fly off of your airplane that you can actively watch as it guides on its target then spears a flare in a cloud of fire,” said Capt. Johannes Weinberg of the 555th Fighter Squadron in an Air Force release.

It was Weinberg’s first time actually employing an air-to-air missile, and he described the situation as “enlightening and exciting.”

“It was the most adrenaline that has pumped through my blood since first flying the F-16,” he said. “Employing air-to-air missiles is something we practice on almost every training sortie, and it is now something I feel more confident in, if I had to employ one in combat.”

The 31st Fighter Wing fired a total of four AIM-9LM Sidewinder missiles at the Aberporth Range Complex from July 9 to 15.

Also as part of the exercise, F-16s from the 31st FW and F-15EXs and F-15Cs from the 48th Fighter Wing integrated and executed low-level flight training within the U.K. low-altitude environment.

Moving forward the 31st Fighter Wing is planning on participating in future live fire air-to-air exercises, the release said.

USAFE leadership has been aiming to increase training opportunities in the area for months now—back in March 2020, USAFE boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine the command was meeting regularly with NATO leaders and others to plan for new range infrastructure and training opportunities as the F-35 began to deploy across the theater.

By the end of 2020, the Air Force inked a five-year, $27 million deal with defense contractor QinetiQ to allow the U.S. to use British Ministry of Defense ranges that are currently being operated by QinetiQ. One of those ranges QinetiQ operates is the Aberporth Range Complex where the 31st and 48th Fighter Wings recently trained.

Kabul Evacuation Flight Sets C-17 Record With 823 On Board

Aug. 20, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Aug. 15 C-17 evacuation flight from Kabul set a new record—by far—for the number of passengers carried on a Globemaster III flight at 823 people, a dramatic rise from the initially reported number on the flight.

The crew of the C-17, call sign REACH871 from the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, decided for themselves to take off from Hamid Karzai International Airport with the plane packed full of Afghan evacuees because of a “dynamic security environment” as the situation at the airport deteriorated.

A photograph of the flight, first posted on the unofficial “Air Force amn/nco/snco” Facebook page, has gone viral around the world showcasing the USAF airlift mission out of Afghanistan. Air Mobility Command, in a statement Aug. 20, said the initial count of 643 included only adults sitting in bus seats after the C-17 landed at Al Udeid. It did not include the 183 children sitting on adult laps.

Audio of a radio or other voice call between the C-17 and a control center posted online included a controller asking the aircraft, “How many people do you think are on your jet? Eight hundred people on your jet? Holy cow. OK. Hey, well, good job getting off the ground.”

The crew, all from the 6th Airlift Squadron at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., and deployed to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, consisted of aircraft commander Lt. Col. Eric Kut, Capt. Cory Jackson, 1st. Lt. Mark Lawson, loadmaster Tech. Sgt. Justin Triola, loadmaster Airman 1st Class Nicolas Baron, Staff Sgt. Derek Laurent, and Senior Airman Richard Johnson. Triola conducted the final count of the passengers, and Baron’s jacket is seen in a viral photo of a sleeping child on board the C-17.

“They were definitely anxious to get out of the area, and we were happy to accommodate them, and they were definitely excited once we were airborne,” Triola told CNN, adding that “everybody was thrilled to actually leave.”

The flight broke the previous C-17 record, set in November 2012 when 670 residents of Tacloban, Philippines, boarded an evacuation flight to Manila following Super Typhoon Haiyan. That flight was flown by a C-17 aircrew from the 535th Airlift Squadron at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

The C-17 typically flies with a maximum of about 300 people when outfitted for large passenger loads using pallets with seats.

25% of Afghan Air Force Fled, Remainder in Disarray, Sources Say

Aug. 19, 2021 | By Abraham Mahshie

The Afghan Air Force was once considered the Kabul government’s lethal advantage over the Taliban. Now, aircraft and personnel that have not left the country may fall into Taliban hands, but sources say maintenance problems and insufficient aircrews likely will diminish their value.

The Afghan Air Force once stood at approximately 200 fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, including A-29 Super Tucanos, AC-208 light attack aircraft, Cessna 208s, PC-12 Pilatus surveillance aircraft, C-130 Hercules transport planes, and a fleet of helicopters that included UH-60 Black Hawks and Russian-made Mi-8 and Mi-17 Hips.

The Defense Department long struggled to make the Afghan Air Force self-sufficient, with its pilots sometimes deserting during training in the United States and contractor maintenance required to achieve readiness. By June, readiness dropped from over 90 percent in March/April for the AC-208 and 77 percent for the UH-60s to about 30 percent across the force, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

“I would say it’s a ragtag force that’s left,” said 25-year Air Force veteran John Venable of the Heritage Foundation.

“If they have exceptional pilots, then the number of platforms they have is fleeting, and the technical faculties of those aircraft are not leading edge,” he added.

An Uzbek government official confirmed to Air Force Magazine that 46 aircraft, including 22 fixed wing and 24 helicopters, and 585 Afghan airmen and soldiers had fled to Uzbekistan by air after the fall of Kabul.

“Maybe it will be confiscated, maybe it will be given back to the Afghan government—the Taliban—it’s still unclear,” the Uzbek government official told Air Force Magazine, referring to the aircraft.

Reuters, quoting the Tajik foreign affairs ministry, reported that several military airplanes and over 100 Afghan soldiers also fled to Tajikistan, another Central Asian neighbor. Calls to the Embassy of Tajikistan in Washington, D.C., were not returned.

What is clear is that some 25 percent of the Afghan Air Force fled when the fall of Kabul became imminent.

For the aircraft left behind, lack of spare parts, contract support, and maintenance means few flyable platforms, said Venable.

“For the Blackhawks, and the A-29s specifically, that left those platforms almost unflyable,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean they can’t fly. That doesn’t mean that one or two of them can’t get airborne, like we’ve witnessed with those that have defected, but the number and types that are left that are actually employable is another thing,” Venable explained.

By his count, about 24 less-sophisticated Cessna 208s are still in the country, some of which may be flyable.

Venable counted 53 Black Hawks in the Afghan Air Force before the fall of Kabul, 12-14 of which he suggested were flyable. In its last report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said as of June 30, the Afghan Air Force has 33 usable Black Hawks in the country. Reporting suggests seven fled to Uzbekistan.

Source: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report.

It is still unclear whether the United States can legally claim ownership of the property now impounded in neighboring countries.

The State Department did not respond to an Air Force Magazine inquiry about the legal ownership status of military equipment sold or donated to the former Afghan government. The Defense Department also did not immediately respond to inquiries by Air Force Magazine.

The Question of Pilots

While the Taliban now controls a number of attack, surveillance, and transport aircraft, it still requires pilots to fly them.

In July, Reuters reported that the Taliban had been on a campaign to assassinate Afghan Air Force pilots to diminish the air strategic advantage. At least six had been killed, according to the report.

Venable assessed that Afghanistan had about 120 Black Hawk crews before the fall of Kabul. It is not known how many crews fled across the border or are in hiding.

In recently surfaced videos posted to Twitter, former Afghan Air Force pilots were forced by the Taliban to fly Hips. More Afghan pilots and crews may be forced to man a Taliban air force, especially if those who fled are repatriated, Venable warned.

“Some of those [Black Hawk crews] will be forced to fly based on the well-being of themselves and their families,” he said. “My humble opinion is that many of the most capable pilots either left or were assassinated in the days leading up to fall of Afghanistan.”

The Uzbek government has sought to enhance its defense partnership with the United States in recent years, conducting joint training and participating in professional military education. However, to maintain good bilateral relations with its neighbor, it may be pressured to bow to Taliban requests to repatriate Afghan citizens and aircraft now in its country.

“The most important thing is for us to get those folks who flew in support of us and Afghan operations … out of the region as rapidly as we can,” said Venable. “That way the Uzbeki government does not have to be faced with that moral dilemma, if and when it comes.”

The defense analyst suggested key American partners and allies such as Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman accept the personnel and, if possible, the aircraft.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke to his German counterpart by phone Aug. 17 and met with his Qatari counterpart at the Pentagon on Aug. 19. Afghanistan was discussed, but specific details of their conversations were not revealed. Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is seeking refuge in the UAE after fleeing Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban takeover.

In an Aug. 18 Pentagon briefing, Austin said DOD was not yet pursuing the aircraft.

“We’re focused on the airfield and getting people out safely,” he said of the Kabul evacuation mission underway. “So, we’re going to take that issue up at a later date, and we’re going to continue to try to gain greater fidelity on the issue as well.”

Skunk Works Will Hand Off ARRW Production to Missiles and Fire Control

Aug. 19, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

While the first examples of the hypersonic missile AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) will be built at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, rate production will happen elsewhere, Skunk Works Vice President and General Manager Jeff A. Babione said.

Babione told reporters Aug. 10 the initial examples of the ARRW’s hypersonic glide body will be built at Building 601 at Skunk Works’ Palmdale, Calif., facility at Air Force Plant 42. The company has the capacity to build “8-12” units of ARRW per year at the plant, but Babione didn’t indicate how many years of low-rate production are anticipated.

Once the missile is given the green light for large-scale production, Babione said manufacturing will likely shift to Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control facility, which is better for large-scale work.

“We can stand up manufacturing” of hypersonics programs generally at Palmdale “in a relatively short space of time,” he said.

But after that initial pulse of production, “I see a very similar future to the JASSM [AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile] model, where we would develop an early prototype like TBG [Tactical Boost Glide], HAWC [Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept], and then we would find the best place to produce it,” he said.

The Missiles and Fire Control unit is about to open a high-rate JASSM production facility in Troy, Ala. The unit also builds the Army Tactical Missile System booster that accelerates the ARRW glide body to hypersonic speed before releasing it.

Skunk Works is applying digital thread methods to the development of ARRW, Babione said, making rapid iterations of the design possible.

“I see hypersonics as a game changer,” similar to the low-observable technology F-117 stealth attack jet, he said. “It will really change the way we fight in the future, being able to hold targets at risk at great distances, being able to reach out in very short timeframes, with exceptional maneuverability. That will create significant challenges for our adversaries.” He added, “Clearly, we know our adversaries are advancing in these areas, which is why it’s a national priority to be able to develop and field an operable hypersonic systems.”

The company is employing a “best of the best” philosophy, using expertise from different divisions to bring ARRW to service. The space division has “that extra [knowledge] in high-speed aerodynamics [and] heat transfer,” while Skunk Works has “that best-in-class aerodynamics,” and Missiles and Fire Control has “state-of-the-art” expertise with the booster.

Babione declined to comment on recent ARRW test failures, saying only the Air Force can release that information. However, he noted that hypersonics are highly challenging.

“When you’re going … Mach 5, in excess of a mile a second … those environments generate tremendous heat and vibration, and virtually everything you do is significantly more difficult than on a normal aircraft,” he noted.

There is greater opportunity for game-changing technology with the HAWC program, which is an air-breathing system, he said. The HAWC can be smaller and more lightweight than ARRW and thus can be carried on many kinds of platforms. It will be “relatively affordable,” he said.

But the digital thread technology is “platform agnostic” and can be applied across all hypersonic programs, he said. It allows Skunk Works to “quickly iterate” new design changes to meet changing “customer requirements.”

The customer “wants us to … discover, learn, test again … and I think we’re demonstrating that agility in the work we’re doing, from a hypersonics standpoint,” Babione asserted.

C-17s Ready to Ramp Up if Evacuees Can Make It to the Kabul Airport

Aug. 19, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Pentagon is expecting to increase the pace of C-17 airlifts out of Kabul as the influx of troops has slowed to a trickle and the Globemaster IIIs are going in configured for larger loads of evacuating U.S. citizens and Afghans.

However, the pace of evacuations is severely limited because of the unsafe conditions in the Taliban-controlled city and the extreme difficulty some Afghans are facing getting to the airport.

“We’re ready to increase throughput and have scheduled aircraft departures accordingly. We intend to maximize each plane’s capacity, we’re prioritizing people above all else, and we’re focused on doing this as safely as possible with absolute urgency,” said Maj. Gen. William D. “Hank” Taylor, the Joint Staff’s deputy director for regional operations, in an Aug. 19 briefing.

As of early Aug. 19, 13 more C-17s had arrived at Hamid Karzai International Airport within the previous 24 hours. Within that time, 12 aircraft left with passengers. Since Aug. 14, 7,000 people have been evacuated from Kabul. There are now about 5,200 troops on the ground at the airport, including personnel who are setting up a field hospital.

The Pentagon said air operations can now ramp to maximum capacity of about one C-17 out per hour, evacuating a total of 5,000 to 9,000 people a day. Planning took into account the C-17 outfitted for the most seats, with about 300 on each jet, though one sortie early in the evacuation was more than double that capacity.

“We’re trying to make maximum use of the ramp space, of the aircraft, of the queue, and we’re going to adjust that every day,” Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said. “The demand … will drive how many sorties we fly.”

At the current pace, the C-17s are leaving Kabul with about half of the 300 it can carry when properly configured.

The airlift capacity is not an issue of flying people out. The ramp-up hinges mainly on people getting to the airport, along with other factors such as weather. While the airfield itself is secure, the situation outside the airport remains chaotic with large crowds and reports of Taliban roaming and even beating those trying to flee.

Commanders on the ground speak with the Taliban at least twice per day to try to get more people through to the airport.

The State Department has also sent more consular officers to assist with the processing of those who can get through the gates. Department spokesman Ned Price said Aug. 19 that about 6,000 are waiting to leave at the airport.

The military is also flying constant overwatch missions over Kabul to protect U.S. forces in case a dangerous situation arises. While the Pentagon has announced the deployments of B-52s and a carrier strike group to the region, Aug. 19 was the first time the department specifically discussed air missions over the city.

Navy F/A-18s have been flying overwatch “at altitude” over Kabul, though they are not flying low passes over the city or airport, Kirby said. The aircraft are there so commanders have options “at their disposal,” he said. On Aug. 18, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said other aircraft, including F-16s, AC-130s, and MQ-9s, are also available.

“As always, we have the right to defend ourselves, our people, and our operations,” Kirby said.

As of Aug. 19, fuel is no concern at the airport even though it is surrounded by the Taliban. USAF refueling tankers have been constantly flying in the area. “We also have the ability on our own, the logistics ability, to fuel our aircraft as needed,” Kirby said.

VIDEO: Countdown to Next-Generation Nuclear Support

Aug. 19, 2021

Video from Air Force Magazine YouTube

Guidehouse is approaching the Integration Support Contract 2.0 from the perspective of a trusted consultant, a third party the government can rely on for expertise and an independent perspective.

Jumper: Time for ‘a New Reckoning’ on Air and Space Power

Aug. 19, 2021 | By John P. Jumper

Gen. John P. Jumper was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force from Sept. 6, 2001—five days before the 9/11 attacks—to Sept. 2, 2005. As Chief, he helped the Air Force adapt to fight terrorism and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq. He offered this reflection at the request of Air Force Magazine.

For those of a certain age, the images of chaos in Afghanistan conjure up dark emotions of Vietnam in 1975—a tactical surprise born of strategic failure at the cost of American credibility.

In Afghanistan, men and women in uniform accomplished their assigned combat mission against al-Qaeda but struggled to absorb the mission creep of nation building that followed. Afghanistan now replaces Vietnam as the nation’s longest war.

The lessons of Vietnam prompted the transformation of our military services and a wake-up call for the Air Force. Since Vietnam, we have embraced the values of stealth, standoff, and precision; become better partners in the joint battlespace; and leveraged burgeoning digital power to enable near real-time command and control.

But the lessons of Afghanistan, the return of peer adversaries, and the prospects of an operationalized Space Force and rapidly advancing cyber weapons demand a new reckoning and thoughtful reflection about the expanding scope of threats that blur distinctions between the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of joint combat. Efforts to evolve joint concepts of operation should be accelerated—figuring out how we execute the joint fight as the first step of the requirements and acquisition process.

At long last, we must divest the aging systems that have consumed resources and blocked our path to sustained technical superiority. We need to heed all the lessons of Afghanistan starting with early failures in joint planning, airspace control, and coordination of conventional and special operations. These are areas where CONOPS [concepts of operations] jointly conceived and exercised can produce proficiency in the evolving doctrine of rapid, agile, and dispersed operations needed to confront the increasing scope of conventional and unconventional challenges.

The warrior mindset of the Space Force opens the door to full integration of the vertical dimension to include the cyber weapons that must be employed to secure the vital digital battlespace. The Air Force and Space Force have a unique opportunity to enhance the architecture of command and control with intelligence and information flows directly to those who need it now. These are the virtues of an operationalized Space Force and warrior-Guardians focused on delivering space power to the fight.

Our Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond have set the proper course. This Department of the Air Force team deserves our full support as they work to build the world’s most powerful Air and Space Forces.

Kabul Evacuation Pace Increases as US Citizens, Afghans Struggle to Get to Airport

Aug. 18, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

Airlift operations are increasing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, with about 20 C-17s flying out per day in what U.S. military leaders say is likely to be the country’s second-largest non-combatant evacuation operation in its history.

“Right now, our mission is to secure that airfield, defend that airfield, and evacuate all those who have been faithful to us,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said during an Aug. 18 briefing. “There will be many postmortems on this topic, but right now is not that time. Right now, there are troops at risk, and we are the United States military, and we fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan.”

As of early Aug. 18, 18 C-17s and one C-130 had arrived at Hamid Karzai International Airport with another 700 troops, bringing the total number of American forces there to 4,500. As of the same time, 18 C-17s also had departed with about 2,000 people, including about 325 American citizens, as well as Afghans and NATO personnel. Some commercial flights also have resumed, though they need to operate on visual flight rules, without the aid of air traffic control.

Over the next 24 hours, the Pentagon expects that number to stay consistent. The Defense Department still thinks it can fly out about 5,000 people per day, with aircraft leaving at a rate of about one per hour.

The airport continues to be secure, and the Taliban are not in any part of the facility. The group maintains checkpoints outside the airport, and its members are checking American citizens’ passports to allow passage to the airport.

U.S. troops and State Department personnel are manning two gates at the airport, with one processing 120-130 people per hour and another processing 340-350 per hour. The processing is contingent on people getting to the gates with the proper credentials.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said during the briefing that the military needs to remain focused on keeping the airfield secure. This means, at this time, not sending forces into Kabul to try to extract American citizens or other people.

“The forces we have are focused on the security of the airfield,” he said, asking, “What happens if we lose the ability to provide that security? We don’t want to detract from that.”

Earlier in the week, chaotic scenes showed Afghans breaching the walls of the airport and climbing onto a C-17 that had just landed. People crowded the flight line, preventing aircraft from landing or taking off.

U.S. military leaders are coordinating and “deconflicting” with the Taliban to allow people to pass. There have not been any hostile interactions with the Taliban, Austin said.

In addition to aircraft landing at the airport for evacuations, Milley said a heavy presence above the city for security includes U.S. Air Force F-16s, B-52s, AC-130s, and MQ-9s, along with F/A-18s and AV-8s. There were reports of fighter jets flying low over Kabul in the early hours of Aug. 18, but the Pentagon could not comment on those operations at the briefing.

The evacuation is solely taking place at the urban airport inside Kabul after U.S. forces drew down from bases across the country, including the massive Bagram Airfield located about an hour’s drive north of the city.

Milley said military planners considered the idea of keeping both the airport and Bagram open, or solely operating out of Bagram, which has two runways as opposed to one in Kabul. However, keeping Bagram secure requires a “significant level of military forces” and would require external security from Afghan forces. The task, at the time, was to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul, so the decision was made to focus on the nearby airport.

Since Afghan forces collapsed in the face of the Taliban advance, there’s been rampant speculation on whether there was a failure of intelligence before the retrograde. Milley said intelligence showed “multiple scenarios” were possible, including an “outright Taliban takeover.” Others included a prolonged civil war or a negotiated settlement. On the prospect of a rapid collapse, intelligence had predicted a wide timeframe of weeks, months, and even years after a U.S. withdrawal.

“Nothing that I, or anyone else, saw indicated a collapse of this army and government in 11 days,” Milley said.

Austin said the operations will increase as efforts to bring out U.S. citizens and Afghans continue, while at the same time the U.S. will deconflict with the Taliban. The deadline of Aug. 31 still stands for bringing out all U.S. forces.

“It’s obvious, we’re not close to where we want to be in terms of getting the numbers through,” Austin said. “So we’re going to work that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated. And I’ll do that as long as we possibly can until the clock runs out or we run out of capacity.”

Veterans Scramble to Provide Support for Stranded Afghan Interpreters

Aug. 18, 2021 | By Greg Hadley

In the months after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would fully withdraw from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, veterans groups lobbied on behalf of Afghan nationals looking to obtain special immigrant visas, urging Congress and the White House to speed up the bureaucratic process for interpreters and other partners and ensure they would not be left to face a rapidly advancing Taliban.

Now that the Taliban has seized control after an astonishingly quick conquest, U.S. troops remain only at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, and thousands of SIV seekers and their families are in danger while veterans halfway across the globe scramble to help as many as they can.

Over Facebook, LinkedIn, text, and email, hundreds of veterans are in contact with Afghans who aided the U.S. mission over the past 20 years, retired Army Col. Steven M. Miska, director of the organization First Amendment Voice, told Air Force Magazine. The pleas for help are increasingly desperate as the Taliban establishes checkpoints and strictly regulates access to the airport.

In response, veterans have helped by backing up files and documents related to SIV applications. Then, they’ve offered what may seem like surprising advice:

“Erase everything on your phone, and burn those documents,” said Zach Asmus, a retired Airman and active volunteer with Combined Arms, a veterans group. “I mean, these are things that people have been clinging to for 20 years. They would never part with these things, because that’s your ticket out of the country. But right now if you’re caught with that on you, you’re identified as allied to the Americans, so it’s pretty much a death sentence.”

Even beyond those measures, both Asmus and Miska said, former Afghan interpreters and partners are being urged to scrub their digital presence—erase Facebook pages, wipe search engine histories, delete photos—to ensure the Taliban cannot tie them to the Americans.

“The Taliban are honestly pretty tech savvy,” Asmus said. “They’re going through people’s phones—they’re even searching their Google history. So if you’ve looked up ‘SIV application’ or ‘U.S. embassy’ or whatever, they’ll look through your pictures, they’ll look through your Google history, they’ll look through your email. And if you’ve got any ties to any of the things that we just mentioned, you’re in big trouble.”

The exact number of Afghans still in the country who are seeking special immigrant visas is not certain at the moment, as Air Force planes continue to ferry out evacuees in a chaotic environment.

Recent estimates, however, pegged the number of backlogged SIV applicants at around 20,000, said Lawrence Montreuil, a retired Marine Corps officer and current legislative director for the American Legion. Add in their families, and that makes roughly 70,000 men, women, and children in need of evacuation. At this point, getting them all out will be difficult, if not impossible, Montreuil said.

It’s a sentiment shared by others who spent months warning that such a situation might unfold unless the Biden administration or Congress acted with urgency. The American Legion and other organizations have been lobbying on behalf of the former interpreters for years now but say the SIV program was underfunded and underprioritized.

Miska has firsthand experience in aiding local partners, helping to establish an “underground railroad” in Iraq to get interpreters and allies to safety amid sectarian violence. He and others advocated for evacuations to take place before the situation devolved, pointing to past instances when the U.S. has first transported refugees to Guam or military installations for safety then processed them for visas before they were allowed to enter the country.

As the situation has become a crisis, Asmus said, the U.S. should take the most expansive approach possible in determining which Afghans it will allow on planes—not necessarily to go directly to America, but to at least have the opportunity for their SIV application to be processed while in safety.

“You have to consider everyone that has even hit the ‘Start my application’ button as a possible person that’s going to be vetted,” Asmus said. “You have to allow them safe harbor to get the documents, to contact supervisors, to be fully vetted, because we have full confidence that these 18,000 that have started the application are going to have a high acceptance rate.”

That confidence is borne from the deep bonds many veterans formed with their Afghan interpreters and counterparts throughout the course of deployments. Working closely together for so long, they became friends and partners—and now that the Afghans face potentially deadly consequences because of those bonds, the veteran community is “animated,” Miska said.

“I can speak from personal experience,” Montreuil added. “I was an Afghan National Army advisor in southern Afghanistan, and I can tell you that they were essential to not only mission accomplishment but our survival on a daily basis. So I think it’s that moral necessity that veterans feel.”

As a combat controller, Asmus had closer contact with Afghan interpreters than many in the Air Force. He, too, called them integral to the mission and said he feels compelled to advocate for them now.

“What we said to them was, ‘Hey, if you raise your hand and you help us, and you keep us safe and you let us … get home safe to our families in a couple months, we want to tell you that, you know, we appreciate that and we’re going to reciprocate that and hopefully get you back to the U.S. one day if you follow these SIV application instructions,’” Asmus said. “But the fact that maybe they do that, and it looks like they’ve exhausted everything on their end and then they’re stuck in any sort of bureaucratic red tape, it’s really a sad thing.”

At the moment, however, there is only so much veterans can do as they watch a dangerous, chaotic situation that could change at any moment. Still, what little support and help they can provide can be crucial, Miska said.