It's a “step toward making the country less dependent on American airpower,” the independent US military publication Stars & Stripes reported on Tuesday, citing officials.
That bodes well for US President Donald Trump, who is reportedly planning to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan before he faces re-election in 2020.
The United States' mission in Afghanistan was known as Operation Enduring Freedom from the US invasion in 2001 until 2014, when the mission was renamed Operation Freedom Sentinel and saw a drop in combat operations and a refocus on training, advising and equipping the Afghan military.
On Sunday, the Afghan Air Force's US-supplied A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft bombed a Taliban target in Uruzgan province, taking out a number of insurgents and destroying munitions stores, according to Jalaludin Ibrahimkail, a spokesman for the air force.
“This is a very important step that we have taken, and we will try to increase nighttime air operations carried out solely by Afghans in the future,” Ibrahimkhail said.
The US and its allies in Afghanistan have been training Afghans to conduct nighttime operations on various aircraft for months, Stars & Stripes reported. Nighttime airstrikes are preferable to daytime operations because it is harder for insurgents to retaliate with anti-aircraft weapons in the dark.
Afghan Defense Ministry…
