It doesn't seem very robust for a combat plane. All the Afghnis have to do to shoot it down is scare a bunch of birds to fly in its path.
"Let my armies be the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky."
- someone
To be fair it hit them at the most vulnerable possible time. There wasn't enough altitude to restart the engine.
Birds generally stick to low altitudes so most the time when this would happen would not have enough altitude to restart
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