Mali manual suggests al-Qaida has feared weapon [ MANPADS]

AP ^ | June 11, 2013 | RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

They tried SA-7s three times I believe, and only succeeded once.

During the Afghan Russian war at least 3 billion in U.S. dollars were funneled into Afghanistan by the CIA to train and equip mujaheddin troops with weapons including US made Stinger missiles. These were our newest (circa 198?) shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they could use against Soviet helicopter gunships.

Hundreds of Stinger missiles were slipped into Afghanistan to provide the mujaheddin with an offensive antiaircraft option which had been unavailable up until then. The arrival of the Stingers tipped the balance from what had been a war of attrition by nullifying the Russian gunships.

When the Russians withdrew, there were Stingers (hundreds??) left in Afghanistan. The early foundations of al-Qaeda were allegedly built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujaheddin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. Why haven't Stingers appeared in other conflicts where al-Qaeda was a combatant?

My guess would be that the missiles we supplied were designed to have a "shelf life" of perhaps a few months. This could be achieved by engineering a key component (battery?) to fail after a predetermined time had elapsed, thereby rendering the missile useless, otherwise we would be worrying about Stingers not SA-7s.

Regards,
GtG

PS Perhaps the Russians do to their export model SA-7s whatever we did to our Stingers, just to control the "aftermarket" as it were...

[txhurl]

bttt

[txhurl]

FINALLY FNC mentions this - Shep.