FYI Your 170
IIRC the US provided a number of these to the Afghani forces when they were fighting the soviets. The weapons were in Afghanistan, trained personnel were there as well. All that is needed is a boat off the east coast, launch one missile and dump the launcher over the side. Due to the limited range if it were to be employed against an airliner it would have to be during takeoff or landing. Plausible.
The Stinger Missile System
Stinger
The Stinger is a man-portable, shoulder-fired, infra-red (IR) homing (heat seeking) air defense guided missile. The Stinger is the only forward area air defense missile currently employed by US forces. The Stinger is designed to counter high-speed, low-level, ground attack aircraft.
The Stinger employs a unique Rosette Scan Pattern image scanning technique that allows it to discriminate among targets, flares, and background clutter. The Stinger is also unique in that it possesses the Target Adaptive Guidance (TAG) technique which biases missile orientation toward vulnerable portions of the aircraft and assures maximized lethality. This superior lethality is derived from hit-to-kill accuracy, high warhead lethality, and the impact force of Stinger's kinetic energy generated by speeds of up to Mach 2.0.
The Stinger also possesses characteristics favorable to today's force projection Army. The Stinger is highly deployable because it is a lightweight, self-contained air defense system that can be rapidly deployed on many military platforms in any combat situation. The Stinger's Fire-And-Forget ability also increases the survivability of its crew. Stinger's Fire-And-Forget technology allows gunners and platforms to take cover or engage new targets immediately after firing. The Stinger Missile also has a low life-cycle cost. The Stinger is issued as a certified round of ammunition, so it requires no field maintenance or associated logistical costs.
The two most popular forms of the Stinger are the Manportable Air Defense System (MANPADS) and the Standard Vehicle Mounted Launcher (SVML). The MANPADS system weighs 34.5 pounds and consists of the missile, disposable launch tube, detachable gripstock, and integral IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system. A MANPADS crew consists of a crew chief, gunner, and vehicle carrying the basic load of missiles. The MANPADS is currently fielded by all US forces.
The Standard Vehicle Mounted Launcher (SVML) contains four ready-to-fire Stingers. The Army's Bradley Stinger Fighting Vehicle (BSFV) provides a highly lethal weapons system that utilizes the SVML. The Bradley Stinger Fighting Vehicle provides the maneuver force with a potent air defense weapon to augment the combined arms team.
The Stinger Missile System has been proven in combat in both Afghanistan, and in the Persian Gulf. In Afghanistan the basic Stinger downed over 270 Soviet aircraft (a 79% combat success rate), and helped to stop air assault operations and force Soviet withdrawal. Current Stinger enhancements are underway to ensure the Stinger's ability to defeat any enemy threat well into the next century.
Stinger Missile Specifications
Specifications
| Guidance |
Passive IR/UV Homing - Fire and Forget |
| Navigation |
Proportional with Lead Bias |
| Speed |
Supersonic |
| Weight |
23.0 lbs |
| Diameter |
2.75 inches |
| Length |
60 inches |
| Range |
4 kilometers |
| Identification Friend or Foe |
Compatible with US/NATO Equipment |
Prepared by West Point Cadet Bryan Cofer condensed from: Stinger: Family of Weapons Systems, by the Hughes Missile Systems Company.
We will soon learn that TWA 800 WAS taken down with a smuggled missle too. Setting ANYTHING off like a missile isn't like lighting-off a bottle rocket-
- it requires ground/platform support gear and TRAINED personnel, power, etc ...
But of course, ANYTHING is possible on FR where *magically* things just 'work' without any supporting or external systems and regardless of the physics involved ...
In kids we call that playing 'make believe'.
In Afghanistan, they called it *killing infidel invaders.* With the *ground/platform support gear* of an observer with a pair of binoculars performing the duty of an IFF unit, the *TRAINED personnel*, many of whom could not read nor write, managed a kill success rate of about 79% against Soviet fixed and rotary-wing aircraft within the Stinger's 5-mile range, about 4 successes per 5 tries. The Block One and Block Two improvement program may improve those rates somewhat, or may just keep pace with modern antimissile countermeasures.
But though I doubt it was an FIM-92A Stinger that took down Flight 800, it's certainly possible both that it could have been knocked out by a MANPADS ground-to-air missile, and it's certainly possible that the U.S. government could have some very criminal reasons for concealing such an attack.
Say, you don't figure Richard Secord or Ed Wilson or any of those other spooks who got caught peddling US weaponry to the Libyans or Iranians has developed the Afghanis or Saudis as a new customer base, do you?
