A quick catch up, there has been a bit of activity at Prestwick over the past few days – so thought that I’d add a post. As we all know, good old Prestwick gets it’s fair share of more exotic types than the other Scottish Airports.

And over the past few days there have been a few nice bits and pieces through, a couple of Antonov’s, US Army Dash 8, RCAF Polaris, four CF-18’s and the Samaritans Purse DC-8. Not at all bad for just a few days, there were a few others – but for me these were the highlights.

It’s always nice to see something nostalgic in the air, a DC-8 fills the bill for nostalgia – not that I would have ever expected that in the 1970’s. There are more movements planned over the next couple of days, with two additional RCAF CF-18’s to replace the broken ones that I’m sure will be there for a few more rounds of Golf..

There will it seems only be the RN Hawks and the F-20’s operating out of Prestwick for Joint Warrior, so it looks like the next biggie will be COP 26 – on that front there is currently nothing to add to the rumours.

Quick trip to Prestwick yesterday, to find the place almost devoid of aircraft – not quite what I expected but that’s spotting for you. There was a RCAF C-130 sitting on the north side and a USAF C-17 on the south side, the only movement while there was the C-172 G-DRAM with floats attached.

There were a few spotters on the mound, but none of the regulars that I recognised, as a consequence there were no new rumours to add to the site. There was a single visible over the top movement, CT-02 the NATO A400M operated by the Belgian Air Force – but that was it for the day.

All in all it was a pretty poor day, given the past few months. So it seems that things at Prestwick have cooled off a bit, but there is always the chance that the preparatory stuff for COP 26 will start arriving in a few weeks time.

I’m still wondering how they are going to justify the whole jolly for all these people, especially given the objectives – I suppose if things work out well, people could cycle home to wherever?

Getting back to the challenge of identifying this aircraft, the previous post left a number of things up in the air. One of those things was the aircraft type, there was a choice of several.

You may assume that the type would be the easiest part of it, well not really – this model was built by a number of manufacturers and they were listed in several differing ways by the FAA. I have had an email contact informing me that this is or was a ROCKWELL S-2R THRUSH COMMANDER, but even that leaves three or four searches for the list of aircraft of that type.

You may think that the type details are not so important, it is – as in this case I think that the identity of the aircraft in question will have to be identified through a process of elimination. Before we start that, we have to have a positive type ID which will then allow the generation of the list.

All sounds so simple doesn’t it, not so – the list will probably be into three figures and it will be easy to eliminate many of them using the FAA database. So now the sluthing starts, wish me luck.

Less than a year ago a number of these A-29’s passed through Prestwick on delivery, the Afgan Air Force and Army were provided with significant quantities of equipment.

Although a significant number of aircraft have been flown out of Afganistan, they will probably be returned to the Taliban regime in the future. And the question is, what does that future hold for Afganistan and its people.

The Taliban have gained almost complete control of the country, practically without a shot being fired. Despite President Biden’s statement regarding the readiness of the Afgan Government forces, it would seem that things conspired against the government on the defense front.

The existing Afgan president fled, no real mention of his whereabouts, or the whereabouts of the load of cash that he took with him. So the Taliban have captured a country, effectively with its infrastructure in tact – the question is what will they do with the opportunity.

As to the ordinary people of Afganistan, they have tasted possibly some of the globally accepted freedoms and norms of the present day. Many are Afgans agrieved with the west for its abandonment of them, yet there was no attempt by the Afgan people to defend these freedoms – paid for in western lives.

Will the Taliban take the country back in time, or as seems unlikely at the moment embrace the future – only time will tell.

Afganistan falls to the Taliban, hind sight is a wonderfull thing they say. But there have been many wars fought in that part of the world, Britain itself has lost at least three or four, the Soviet Union as was has lost one. What on earth made the rest of the world think that it could win one?

We now have a fully re-equipped Taliban – with much of the latest US tech. As a consequence, we are almost certain to see an upsurge in terrorist incidents around the world.

What about the ordinary people of Afganistan, well the price of freedom is high and the ordinary people are not currently prepared to pay it. In fact the Police, Army, Air Force and a number of other organisations are not prepared to pay the price. Likely caused by the fact that they themselves were not getting paid, with their waged being taken by corrupt officials.

From memory this was something that was supposed to have been tackled by the Afgan government, probably not many of the Billions of Dollars poured into Afganistan went where it was supposed to go.

So all told how many lives were lost, how many people were maimed – all for what?