space. how close were we to leaving, how desperate these people were getting. you can see the massive crowds, the fear, the anxiety. one of the things that comes out is how incredible these marines and these soldiers were in terms of dealing with these individuals. these people trying to leave, making sure they had the right paperwork and putting themselves in harms way. back to your question about security perimeters. it would put our troops at far greater risk if they went beyond the air field. the mission was to secure the air field and control access. not to be out in town. martha: you don t have this characterized as a chaotic exit. but looking at this, it backs up the notion that this was a very chaotic scene. obviously desperation outside the air field. on the air field, once we got people on, there was a very
threat. the major armor formations, we thought the russians would degrade them, they would have to fight in much smaller groups than they are, that s not happening. command and control is in place, they re communicating. internet is functioning. electronic warfare has not been in play. some of these things are really kind of puzzling as to why the russians wouldn t have spent the time at least the first 12, 24, 48 hours to try to achieve these effects and then fight a less capable ukrainian military. they have not, they have paid the cost. some of these reversals are really quite meaningful. the airborne assault on the air field outside of kyiv, very close to the city, and the russians were obliterated, that s a shocking turn of events. the fact that the russians have been held around some of these major cities now. russia has overwhelming combat power and they ll keep pouring in like matthew said additional forces. but it might not be that simple. i think this could turn into a meat g
senator, that all of the equipment that we had, that we used was retrograded by general miller as a part of the draw dawn. thousands of tons of equipment and whatever high-end equipment that we had that we were use, the equipment that that the that the afghan security forces had as the taliban took over is the equipment that that you see, and, of course, all of the helicopters that were left on the air field at aprilky, i asked general mckenzie to demilitarize those so that they couldn t ever be used again, and and so we we retrograded all our equipment that we were supposed to retrograde as we drew down. the only thing i could say in finishing up i would hope that god would bless america not to repeat what we ve continually
0 thank you, senator. you re right, the tempo upped significantly, the taliban continued to make advances. our entire chain of command, myself, the chairman, general mckenzie, routinely engage the afghan leadership to encourage them to solidify their defensive plans, to make sure they were providing the right logistics to their troop, and further stiffen their defenses. to no avail. to compound that, president ghani continued to make changes in the leadership of the military, and this created further problems for the afghan security forces. mr. secretary, i don t mean to interrupt you but my time is elapsing. so this gets to the overestimation that i think the overly optimistic assessment. even as late as july you re still encouraging the afghan special forces. you re expecting the ghani government to remain, but that was not the case. in december of 2019 the washington post reported that the u.s. military commanders privately expressed a lack of confidence that the afghan army a
the aircraft. i can tell you what the the taliban has done. they established a firm perimeter outside of the air field to prevent people from coming on the air field during our departure. we worked that with them for a number of days. they didn t have knowledge of our time of departure. we chose to keep that information restricted. they were actually helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations. i m going to go to the phones. dan? thanks for calling. general, can you give us a deeper level of detail on what the last day looked like in terms of the number of flights, the number of people on the ground to start with, who might have been on that last plan particularly senior leaders and kind of how this played out? thanks. sure. i ll begin with the back end of your question on the last airplane out. general chris donahue, my ground