Iron Giant Irony

Are you able to recognize the helicopters in the above image, they are among world famous models. The top one is a Sirkorsky (Russian aerospace engineer who migrated to the US) UH-60 Blackhawk and the bottom one is Mil Mi-8. Both of these are troop transport helicopters with limited attack capabilities. The UH-60 is American made whereas the Mi-8 is Russian.

Now both the Americans as well as the Russians love to get their hands on the opposite side's weaponry, I don't blame them, who wouldn't ? We Indians would love to dissect the 5th generation Chinese jets if we ever got a chance, don't we ? What is more interesting is that America being a capitalist country has deep pockets and has made it a mission to buy best Russian equipment out there from third parties because obviously the Russian wouldn't sell them themselves to the US of A, or do they ? (LOL, I know, a lot of question marks isn't ? there I go again). So as I was saying the Americans have a dedicated " Aggressor Squadrons" equipped with Soviet era aircraft they bought during the collapse of the Soviet Union to test their aircraft and personnel against them.

But I am not here to talk about that. I want to draw your attention to the country of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been repeatedly invaded over and over again, and one of the invaders were the Russians. Though the Afghan populace have deep rooted hatred for the Russians they are quiet fond of the Russian equipment. Among them is their love for Kalashnikov rifles, Russian tanks and yeah the Mi-8. The Afghans consider the Mi-8 easier to operate, more forgiving, able to take more damage and suitable for high altitude operations in any weather conditions. So when the US started drawing up their plans for withdrawal they were faced with a dilemma, they were duty bound to provide the Afghans with equipment but there was a small problem, the Afghans wanted nothing to do with the American equipment and wanted Russian one's instead and they were particularly adamant about Mi-8s.

So the US set out to find out why such an demand was being made. The US military evaluated loaned Mi-8s from Ukraine against their Uh-60 and the Americans were in for a rude shock. They found that the Mi-8s outperformed the Uh-60s in almost all capabilities. Now the US military command had to swallow their pride and had to bow their heads down before the Russians in-order to buy brand new Mi-8s for the Afghan military. Later, the US senate came to know about this and were furious at the top brass for spending US taxpayers money on Russian equipment, and helping their sworn enemy's economy by doing so. They reasoned that it is better to provide inferior equipment than to buy from the enemy.

So people what you should infer from this article is that we should not get overjoyed and excited when we hear the news of our military buying top notch US defence equipment for our own forces as sometimes better equipment are available at a significantly lower price from Russia. I am reminded about this quote "US makes scalpel whereas Russia makes hammer, but both do the same job." Though in this case the hammer outperforms the scalpel.