First Afghan Door Gunner Team Finishes Training

Speaking at the certificate presentation ceremony, the commander of Shindand Air Base pointed out that the now certified Afghan door gunner team is the first one that will be able to take over, at a later stage, part of the training tasks from the mentors of coalition forces. Speaking at the ceremony, the US commander said special thanks to the Hungarian mentors for their work, and requested the commander of the Hungarian contingent to present the certificates. Regarding the Afghan aircrews, the US command had assigned the instructors of the contingent the training of three groups, consisting respectively of helicopter pilots, flight engineer instructors and door gunner instructors. The mentors of the contingent commenced executing their training tasks. After a comprehensive academic training came the simulator training, and then the flying training tasks. In that phase, the instruction of the three teams continued in a combined form again.

Basically, it was the mentors of the Hungarian contingent that conducted the training, while the US partners joined it in different phases to check and evaluate the progress. As a result of the training, on March 3 the eight Afghan door gunners trained by the personnel of the HDF Mi–17 AAT-8 contingent performed a successful checkride with the US evaluators. All eight Afghan door gunners have been certified as door gunner instructors. The work, however, does not stop at this point – it has just reached an important stage. The flight engineer instructor training and the helicopter pilot basic training are to continue into the future.