Canadian spy plane wreckage found on Kabul hillside, in suspected minefield
at 12:37 on January 21, 2004, EST.
KABUL (CP) - It could take up to three days to recover what's left of a Canadian spy plane that crashed
Tuesday in Kabul. Search crews spotted the wreckage Wednesday on a barren hillside on the outskirts of
the Afghan capital, in the centre of what's believed to be a minefield.
"I know it's on the side of a hill and it's not easily accessible," said Maj. Dyrald Cross, who runs the
unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, program.
"It's also in a field that's a high threat of mines, so we need the engineers to clear a safe lane to the site for
us so that we can recover the pieces."
That effort, to ensure an 800-metre distance is free of landmines, will take several days.
"It could take two days or as many as three," said Cross.
"It will take that long to go that distance, and make it suitable enough that we can recover (the aircraft)."
Soldiers dispatched to find the plane were able to pinpoint its location using a grid mapping system that
employs a satellite-based Global Positioning System to mark co-ordinates.
"Just after first light, they were able to spot the UAV roughly at the grid that we had received as the last
location for it before it shut off," said Cross.
Flight safety inspectors are being flown into Afghanistan from Ottawa to investigate why the unmanned
surveillance plane crashed.
They will scour the flight data that was recorded as the aircraft was airborne and sift through pieces of the
wreckage to determine what happened.
"We don't know what the cause of the crash was," Cross stressed.
"We can't say definitively if it was the engine or if it was anything else. (The engine) may have stopped
when it hit the ground."
The $33-million, high-reconnaissance system uses aircraft that are launched by catapult from the back of a
truck.
The UAV is equipped with a 65-horsepower Bombardier snowmobile engine that carries its 3½-metre-long
frame across the sky, and collects data through video cameras mounted in a ball on the underside of the
aircraft as it travels at 40 metres per second.
Tuesday's crash left Canadian forces in Kabul with no planes to work with. They had taken delivery of four
aircraft late last year, but two were damaged in "hard landings" in the past two months, and another plane
crashed Nov. 21 after its parachute failed to open as the aircraft descended.
The military expects to regain three of those aircraft, now repaired, within a week.
In the meantime, a German spy plane is being used by the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF,
to collect intelligence on the ground.
There are 2,000 Canadians working in or around Kabul as part of ISAF.
Terry Pedwell
© The Canadian Press, 2003