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Terrorist Missiles Versus Airliners
From StrategyPage, EFL:An Indian arms dealer was caught trying to illegally import a Russian SA-18 Igla shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile to an FBI agent posing as an Islamic terrorist. Terrorists trying to take down airliners with portable missiles has been a threat for a long time. Actually, over the last thirty years, itâs been a reality. Some 29 commercial aircraft have been shot down by such missiles. However, the downed aircraft have been small, and most of these tragedies have taken place in Africa. The wars in Africa are the worst on the planet, so violent that most journalists avoid them. For three decades, this has kept the use of portable missiles against civilian aircraft off the front page. Larger airliners, like the Airbusâs, and 757s, 767s and 747s, have not been brought down because these missiles were not designed to take on aircraft with such large and powerful engines. While these missiles were originally intended for use against jet fighters operating over the battlefield, the reality turned out to be different. The most likely targets encountered were helicopters, or propeller driven transports. These aircraft proved to be just the sort of thing twenty pound missiles with 2-3 pound warheads could destroy. Against jet fighters with powerful engines, the missiles caused some damage to the tailpipe, but usually failed to bring down the jet. This was first noted during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, where the Egyptians fired hundreds of SA-7s at Israeli A-4 light bombers. Most of the A-4s, with their 11,187 pounds of thrust engines, survived the encounter. Larger jets, like the F-4 and itâs 17,000 pound thrust engines, were even more difficult to bring down. Smaller commercial jets, like the 737 or DC-9 (each using two 14,000 pounds of thrust engines) have proved vulnerable. But a 757 has much larger engines with 43,000 pounds of thrust, and the 747 is 63,000. Moreover, the rear end of jet engines are built to take a lot of punishment from all that hot exhaust spewing out. Put a bird into the front of the engine and you can do some real damage. But these missiles home in on heat, and all of that is at the rear end of the engine. If terrorists target helicopters and smaller turboprop commuter airliners, or business jets, they are likely to take down aircraft better than half the time a missile is used. This takes into account poorly trained missile operators and defective missiles. And a lot of the missile operators will be poorly trained, and, like November, 2002 incident in Mombassa, using missiles built over two decades ago. They wonât be using any of the Stingers the U.S. gave out in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The custom battery packs in those missiles gave out in the 1990s. Itâs a lot easier to get Russian missiles, and fresh batteries for them. There are several hundred thousand portable surface-to-air missiles out there, but most of them are older models like the SA-7. Many of these are defective from old age, or rough treatment. This is known because of the consistently poor performance of these older missiles. Also keep in mind that, with all those missiles out there, and so many terrorists (not just Islamic ones) eager to use them against civilians, very few are used. Many of the terrorists know that most of those SA-7s are crap, and that explains why they are looking for the harder to get modern missiles. Interesting article. Posted by: Steve 2003-08-14 |
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