Experts Discuss Shoulder-Fired Rockets

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Experts from the FBI, Scotland Yard and international civil aviation agencies met Friday on how to secure airports against shoulder-fired rockets that terrorists are trying to acquire.

The closed-door talks at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe examined how to minimize the threat.

"We know that al-Qaida has these weapons, we know that they've used them, and we know that they'll use them again," said Brian Woo, head of the OSCE's anti-terrorism unit.

The experts declined to discuss specific measures being taken to safeguard airports and airliners, but credited tighter security for the lack of missile attacks on commercial airliners in the past 14 months.

The last known attempt was in 2002, when two missiles narrowly missed an Israeli charter airliner taking off from the airport in Mombasa, Kenya. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attempt.

Anti-terrorism officials from the United States and Britain, along with representatives from 40 of the 55 nations that make up the OSCE, said estimates of the number of portable missiles on black markets worldwide run into the hundreds of thousands.

Although more than 600 people have been killed in about 40 attacks in the past three decades, most of the shootings involved insurgents targeting military aircraft in war zones.

But with airport security noticeably tightened after the Sept. 11 attacks and hijackings of commercial aircraft no longer as easy to arrange, terrorists are rediscovering the strategic advantages of shoulder-fired missiles.

The rockets chase the heat produced by a jet engine and explode on impact. They are effective only while the target plane is flying low and slow, meaning during takeoff and landing.

"Even if a missile misses an aircraft, it will have a devastating impact on the airport and the local economy," said a diplomat familiar with Friday's talks, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Western law enforcement official, also speaking on of anonymity, said intelligence suggests terrorists are working to acquire such missiles and that governments must take the threat seriously.

Last summer, a British citizen, Hemant Lakhani, was arrested in an international sting operation after he allegedly tried to sell a dummy Russian-made SA-18 Igla missile to undercover agents posing as terrorists.

Although weapons experts say the Igla is the most sophisticated, accurate and difficult-to-obtain portable rocket, there are other choices for terrorists, including hundreds of American-made Stinger shoulder-fired missiles the United States sold to Afghanistan in the 1980s.

There are also thousands of a class of missile known in the West as the SA-7 Grail and in Russia as the Strela, or Arrow, which have been produced in Russia, Eastern Europe, China, the former Yugoslavia, Egypt and other countries. Some have sold for as little as $500, according to U.S. intelligence.

They tend to weigh just 35 to 40 pounds, and their 5-foot tubes are compact enough to be easily concealed in a large duffel bag.

Although their performance varies depending on the type, the missiles tend to have a minimum range of 600 yards and a maximum of roughly 3 miles, and can hit airborne targets ranging from 50 feet to 10,000 feet.

On Friday, the army of Serbia-Montenegro began destroying about 1,200 Strela missiles, which have been widely used by Iraqi insurgents to attack U.S. helicopters. The United States paid for the destruction at an army base outside Belgrade.

"These weapons were declared obsolete and unnecessary by the army of Serbia-Montenegro, but at the same time they could be very useful for terrorists," said U.S. Ambassador William D. Montgomery.

including hundreds of American-made Stinger shoulder-fired missiles the United States sold to Afghanistan in the 1980s.

IIRC, we provided Afghans rebels fighting the Red Army which had invaded. I believe I read somewhere that those Stingers could now be useless because the shelf-life of their batteries had expired.

the thing about shoulder launched SAMS is that they have a relatively short slant range...all they need to do is establish an absolute security barrier about 3 KM out from the runway and takeoff/landing flight paths and that should take care of it...yeah, right...let's see them try to do that around any major US airport...anything less really isn't going to do that much good, and can you imagine commercial aircraft dropping burning infrared flares in order to distract the missile's IR seeker? the lawsuits from THAT would go on forever...

2 posted on 01/23/2004 7:32:33 PM PST by ahadams2 (Anglican Freeper Resource Page: http://eala.freeservers.com/anglican/)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.