New Video Shows How Blackwater Supports the Troops

A new video on YouTube shows one of the ways Blackwater Worldwide supports the troops.

No, it's not about putting little yellow ribbon magnets on the back of your cars, or grandstanding in front of television cameras. It's the real thing - parachuting ammunition to the US Army Special Forces to resupply our warfighters in hot combat areas. It's really helping the troops fight terrorists.

The remarkable video was just posted. It shows two Blackwater C-212 planes on resupply missions to Army forward operating bases in Afghanistan. The video does not give locations.

One of the neat things about this video is that, unlike other videos of Blackwater on the Internet, this one is annotated so that the viewer knows what's going on and in what context.

Credits at the end of the video say it was shot by Dr. Michael Waller of the Institute of World Politics. A check of the IWP website shows that Waller is also editor of Serviam, a magazine about the global stability industry. (For a higher resolution of the video, go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQyl_WnaJ1I and click the "Watch In High Quality" icon just below the right lower corner of the image box.) When visiting YouTube, be sure to give the video a great rating!

Video Shows Blackwater's Pinpoint Air Drops in Afghanistan

Want to see one of the ways Blackwater is supporting the troops? Watch this video. As a temporary service to fill the Air Force's lack of small fixed-wing aircraft, Blackwater Worldwide has beeen providing front-line air drop services in Afghanistan. Its fleet of twin-engine C-212 cargo aircraft has been a vital resupply link for US and Coalition forces in remote areas of the country.

A recently posted video, apparently shot last winter at a US forward operating base (FOB) in Afghanistan, shows the precision of the Blackwater drops. To avoid enemy antiaircraft fire, the small unarmed planes fly in, nap-of-the-earth about 35-50 feet off the ground at about 160 knots, pop up high enough over the drop zone to release pallets of supplies by parachute, and escape before the Taliban can shoot them.

Each highly skilled contractor pilot performs these missions several times daily, delivering everything from mail, food and water to spare parts and ammunition. Our Special Forces could not function without them.

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince told Congress last fall that the military at present cannot perform the mission because Air Force fixed-wing aircraft cannot land on the short, unimproved, high-altitude airstrips in remote parts of Afghanistan, and that the planes are too large to carry out small missions.

In the above video, someone is heard saying that a Blackwater pilots are flying in the wrong way, but he soon eats his words. Two Blackwater planes then zoom in and drop the pallets exactly on-target. It's an instructive little video.

A unit of the 82nd Airborne based at the Salerno FOB in Khost made a video of similar Blackwater missions and put it to music. To view it, click here: http://blackblawg.blogspot.com/2007/10/video.html.

Rare video shows Blackwater supplying troops in Afghanistan

Here's a rare video of Blackwater in action on the warfront. This one is about how Blackwater teams with the US Army's elite 82nd Airborne to deliver supplies to the troops in remote parts of Afghanistan.

In the video, two Blackwater C-212 light cargo planes fly extremely close to the ground - about 35 feet up - to avoid Taliban gunfire. They fly up to about 150 feet to drop pallets of ammunition and water to American soldiers. US military crews are aboard.

Because the military lacks the type of planes needed to supply the area, the 782nd Brigade Support Battalion contracted Blackwater to fly the aircraft for remote deliveries. The 782nd is responsible for supplying 22 paratrooper bases across 19,000 square miles of some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world.

Kevin Maurer of the Fayetteville Observer, the hometown newspaper of the 82nd Airborne, is presently in Afghanistan. Soldiers from the 782nd produced the video and posted it on YouTube in July, 2007. This video and Maurer's report come to our attention courtesy of the blogger White Rabbit.