Radios taken by Taliban

PD47JD

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I saw a video recently of a soldier using an axe to render several pieces of radio gear "inoperable".
I saw this video on the internet, so I cannot/will not vouch for its authenticity.
But presuming that we knew that the equipment was to be left behind, certainly it would meet the fate (or a similar one) shown in said video.

Now, could the Taliban collect enough pieces/parts to get a working radio or two, or three? Maybe. But that assumes that the technical knowledge exists to do that. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Personally, I'm more concerned about the stuff we gave to the ANA and National Police, which is no doubt still 100% operational, and most likely includes instructional material in the native language.
" I'm more concerned about the stuff we gave to the ANA and National Police, which is no doubt still 100% operational, and most likely includes instructional material in the native language. " and that is it in a nutshell. The U.S. forces did not 'give' anything to the Taliban. The radio/communication equipment count (165,000) has no relation to the equipment amount actually provided to the Afghan and National Police Forces. If anyone "gave" radio equipment to the Talibs (correct name) it were the Afghan armed forces who elected not to fight for their country.
I strongly suspect the 165,000 number was dreamt up by an agent provocateur bent upon grinding his/her political axe through disinformation.








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rardarman

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It depends on the radios. The L3HARRIS PRC-152's can utilize many different waveforms. SINCGARS, Havequick, HPW, SATCOM and self healing Ad-Hoc capabilities to name a few.Other than Havequick, these waveforms pretty much all require type 1/Suite A ViNSON suite of crypto algorithm keys be loaded before they can even be used properly in combat opeorations .

Type 2/CNSA, formally known as Suite B, encryption algorithms, like AES, can not be used with any of those waveforms. AES encryption capability in those radios is primarily for allowing secure interoperability with non-CCI compliant radios,

The PRC-152 also has OTAR capabilities.

If the military did indeed leave behind fully intact and operational PRC-152's and other types of radios with similar capabilities, that were not zeroized, then it's possible that they could be utilized by the Taliban for a brief amount of time, with some waveforms, before the encryption keys are completely changed.

As far as using them to communicate with each other, they would have to consistently maintain the HUB's for those keys, that would already be loaded in the radios for them to stay in the radios, to still operate in most of those modes at all. Otherwise, non-secure, single channel/simplex, VHF/UHF line of sight communications would be pretty much all they could utilize.

The 117s and the 152s can operate without having a key pushed to them but limited.

If anything they are now beacons for targeting.
 

prcguy

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Or its completely true and I'm more inclined to believe the higher numbers since the people in charge will try and do damage control lessen the apparent severity or hide the facts. There are pictures of the abandoned equipment and weapons and other documentation which gives an idea of the numbers.

No the US did not intentionally give the Taliban a bunch of radios and weapons. But they did walk away from a huge number of these items and the withdrawal from Afghanistan is well documented to have been in haste with insufficient planning and basically a huge failure. I also doubt the Taliban has the knowledge to keyload Type 1 equipment even if they have the hardware but as someone else mentioned, most of the radios can and will operate in the clear by simply entering frequencies, so if they have the batteries and charging infrastructure they have some pretty good and reliable radios to use (against us) along side their Baofengs.

I strongly suspect the 165,000 number was dreamt up by an agent provocateur bent upon grinding his/her political axe through disinformation.








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TDR-94

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The 117s and the 152s can operate without having a key pushed to them but limited.

Yes, but none of the hopping, network or SATCOM type waveforms will allow proper operation without the COMSEC keys and the radios in CT mode.
 
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