U.S. military to pick up pace of evacuation flights out of Afghanistan

Overnight, nine American C-17 transport aircraft arrived at the airport delivering equipment and roughly 1,000 troops, Taylor said. Separately, seven C-17s departed the airport carrying a total of roughly 700-800 passengers. Of that number, 165 were American citizens and the remainder were a combination of Special Immigrant Visa applicants and third country nationals.

Taylor also referenced a photo published Monday by Defense One showing roughly 640 Afghans and their families crowded inside a C-17, being lifted to safety. The image, he said, “speaks to the humanity of our troops in this mission. The skill and professionalism of our U.S. military.”

Over the next 24 hours, “the speed of evacuation will pick up,” Taylor said, with the U.S. military expected to achieve roughly “one aircraft per hour in and out” of the airport in Kabul.

“We predict that our best effort could look like 5,000 to 9,000 passengers departing per day,” he said. “But we are mindful that a number of factors influence this effort, and circumstances could change.”

The Taliban’s control of Kabul and checkpoints outside the airport are reportedly complicating U.S. evacuation efforts, with time running out to remove vulnerable Americans and Afghans ahead of President Joe Biden’s self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline for the military mission.

Taylor said Tuesday the U.S. military has “had no hostile interactions, no attack and no threat by the Taliban” thus far at the airport, adding: “We remain vigilant.”

But Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby was vague when asked at the news briefing whether the United States had reached an agreement with the Taliban to allow the U.S. evacuations to proceed until the end of the month.

“Our commanders at the airport are in communication with Taliban commanders on the ground, outside the airport. There have been discussions. There is communication between them and us. And I would just let the results speak for themselves,” Kirby said.

“Right now, as the general made clear, the mission runs through Aug. 31,” he added. “The commander in chief made it very clear that we were to complete this drawdown by Aug. 31, which now includes … the pulling out of American citizens and drawdown of our embassy personnel. So that’s what we’re focused on. That’s the timeline we’re on.”

Kirby also did not elaborate upon potential U.S. efforts to ease passage through Taliban checkpoints or expand the U.S. military perimeter around the airport, so Americans and Afghans could more easily reach their evacuation flights.

“There are interactions down at the local level,” he said. “And as the general said, we are processing American citizens to get out. So again … without speaking to the sausage-making of communications here, thus far — and it’s early on — the results are speaking for themselves.”

Earlier Tuesday, Kirby defended the administration against accusations that its Afghanistan withdrawal was unprepared for the speed of the Taliban’s incursion into Kabul — revealing the Defense Department had been conducting drills as far back as May to rehearse the mass evacuation of noncombatants from the country.

Still, Kirby acknowledged the “disturbing and heartbreaking” nature of the scene Monday at airport in Kabul and conceded that U.S. officials failed to foresee “the level of panic that was going to happen” on the tarmac.

Kirby’s remarks came hours after the United States resumed operations Monday at the airport following efforts by American, Turkish and other international troops to reestablish security there. Thousands of desperate Afghans had stormed the tarmac in a series of overnight breaches from the airfield’s civilian, southern side — seeking to flee their country after the Taliban’s government takeover.

The pandemonium resulted in the United States suspending flights out of Kabul amid a rapidly deteriorating security situation and an urgent U.S. military operation to evacuate American civilians and Afghan allies out of the Taliban-controlled capital.

On Tuesday, however, Kirby rejected the notion that the administration was caught flat-footed by the disorder at the airport, explaining that U.S. officials has been “planning for noncombatant evacuation operations” since May — “right after” Biden announced his withdrawal decision in April.

“In fact, we held a big drill here at the Pentagon, downstairs in the Joint Operations Center with the entire interagency, to walk through what the retrograde was going to look like — the withdrawal — as well as including the possibility for these kinds of evacuation operations,” Kirby told MSNBC in an interview.

Kirby also described another drill that took place “just as recently as two weeks ago,” when U.S. officials “held a tabletop exercise here at the Pentagon to walk through what it would look like to do exactly what we’re doing now — which is a noncombatant evacuation operation from Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

Despite that planning, at least seven people died Monday during the storming of the airport in Kabul, including several Afghans who clung to a departing U.S. military jet and fell mid-air as it gained altitude. Additionally, the body of one Afghan was found in the landing gear of an American C-17 transport aircraft hours after it hastily took off from the runway.

U.S. troops also were twice forced to respond to “hostile threats” at the airport, resulting in the deaths of two armed individuals who were shooting at them, as well as the possible wounding of an American soldier. No such security incidents have taken place since, Taylor said.

Kirby insisted Tuesday that U.S. officials had “planned for almost every contingency” surrounding evacuations. “But as an old military maxim says, no plan survives first contact. So obviously, we had to adjust in the moment,” he said.

“It would have been difficult to predict for the level of mayhem and chaos that we saw there,” Kirby added. “We’re mindful of the images, the graphic nature of them. Certainly, nobody wanted to see it result like it did over the last 24 hours.”

While the military, northern side of the airfield “is back up and running again,” Kirby said U.S. officials would continue to better secure the civilian, southern side throughout Tuesday.

“No plan is ever perfect, and no plan can be perfectly predictive in terms of what friction, what unknown aspects and factors you’re going to deal with on the backside,” he said.