Mil Mi-17

So the thing that I wanted to see more than anything was the Il-62, the beast from the east, one of the coolest planes ever made, absolute monster, and it really was.

They also had an Il-76, Tuplev 22154, Tuplev 2134 as well, They also had I didn't photograph They haven't got a photo on the screen here They had Il-18, An-24 And also Mil Mi-17 Did they have Actually that's an Air Force one I should say But that was also in the list Sorry to

interrupt Did they have an Antonov They got 148s? They do,

but they weren't at the show.

And it's got a whole bunch of J6s, aka MiG-19s, and also a few MiG-15s lined up.

on the apron and actually if you looked at Google Maps none of them moved for about 8 years and hadn't moved for many years beforehand they actually have now moved a bunch around it doesn't necessarily mean they're flying but I think I don't know if it's one of the locations where they've built like an underground airbase or not but which they do have a couple of But yeah, this was obviously a cool thing to photograph.

That's amazing! Flying in this VIP Mi-17, just to put it into context.

It's so cool, and obviously, for the benefit of the listener, I don't know how many there are, like 20, 30? Yeah, there's two or three dozen.

And as you know, B.B. Kant is just about a 45-minute drive.

But we took a helicopter, a Mi-17.

It's a 7-8 minutes flight distance.

Me 17, as you know, makes a lot of racket.

So we, I'll take you to my headquarters instead.

We had, we took a helicopter.

It's about one hour, 45 minutes, one hour's drive from the airport to BB camp.

We took a helicopter, a Mi-17.

Now that Mi-17, that six, seven, eight, nine minutes ride, that was the first time I got to myself because there is so much racket that Mi-17 creates.

You can't talk to each other inside.

If you want to walk across a valley, that's going to take you a couple of days, helicopters, five minutes.

So helicopters are absolutely crucial to the mobility of the Colombian security forces and their ability to react to any actions.

Out of 53 Black Hawk helicopters, only 13 are battle-worthy at the moment, out of their big transport, the Mi-17s, out of a 1911 operational.

And this really came into stark focus in the Catatumbo crisis.

because Catatumbo is in the Andes, really hard to transit by road.