A team of British special forces, the Special Air Service (SAS), is trapped in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan and is being pushed back by Taliban forces. Rescue operations were carried out with the help of technology.
The SAS members reportedly numbered 20 and were far from their peers when the Taliban came to power. They also sent an SOS message to the UK to be evacuated immediately.
They could not use the Kandahar runway because it was already controlled by the Taliban. So the SAS troops fled to a hidden location in the desert. The coordinates of the location were sent to the UK with a cipher message to the UK.
Online flight trackers found the British Hercules plane flying, but then radar could no longer track it because the identification sensors on the plane were turned off. It seems that their route to the SAS hideout is not identified.
The Hercules plane then landed at night where the pilot and crew wore special night vision goggles to see in the dark.
"This is a very, very quiet mission. Kandahar has fallen to the Taliban, the enemy is very large and killed the Afghan special forces who are working with the SAS. So this is a very important mission," said a source.
The Hercules then reappeared on the flight tracker and approached the international military base in Dubai. The SAS troops were saved thanks to the help of the multi-purpose aircraft, radar scramblers, and special goggles for seeing in the dark.
The C-130J Hercules aircraft is indeed one that SAS relies on because it is flexible, can fit a lot and can also land or take off from unfriendly runways like in the desert. While the pilot is said to have high skills.
