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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Shoulder-launched missiles are cheap, portable and deadly against lumbering commercial jets -- and terrorists in the U.S. may already have them.
Nov 8, 2001 | American Airlines Flight 970 was supposed to be routine, a two-hour hop from Managua, Nicaragua, to Miami International Airport. The only thing different about the scheduled flight leaving from Augusto Cesar Sandino International Airport on March 31, 1993, was that it was carrying senior-level Nicaraguan diplomats. Just before the plane was to take off, airport authorities received an anonymous telephone call threatening to shoot down the Boeing 727 with a shoulder-launched missile.
The plane was kept on the ground until security crews could sweep the area by foot and helicopter for any suspicious activity. The authorities had plenty of reason for concern -- the caller had said the plane would be shot down with a "Redeye" missile. Redeyes, the first American-made, shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, had been captured by the Russians at the end of the Vietnam War and subsequently shipped to the Cubans, who then funneled them to Nicaragua's communist Sandinista regime.
In the end, the flight took off without incident, but the incident unnerved airport authorities and American Airlines, who realized that they were virtually powerless against the invisible threat. It also showed how close to home the threat of shoulder-launched missile attacks against passenger jets has come.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, aviation experts warn that shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles could be used against American passenger jets in the future. Terrorist organizations like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network are already believed to own such missiles, and some say it will only be a matter of time before they filter into the U.S. -- if they haven't already.
So-called Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, are capable of knocking a jet out of the sky from as far as five miles away and at an altitude of up to 13,000 feet in as little as 13 seconds. Those aboard often have no warning before the missile explodes as it slams into an engine, air-conditioning unit or other heat-producing device on the aircraft.
In addition to American-made Stingers -- currently in the news because hundreds were supplied by the U.S. to the mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 -- there are also Russian versions of the technology, including the Strela and IGLA series missiles. Highly accurate, easy to use and conceal, they are readily available on the black market around the world.
According to a 1997 CIA report, shoulder-launched missiles were used 27 times against civilian aircraft in the last 19 years, resulting in 400 casualties. A 1994 State Department report offers a slightly higher figure -- 536 fatalities of passengers and crew as a result of 25 civilian aircraft incidents involving MANPAD missile attacks. A Department of Defense report released in 2000 goes a step farther, stating that "one of the leading causes of loss of life in commercial aviation worldwide has been from MANPADS attacks, with over 30 aircraft lost."
Most of the incidents have been concentrated in Africa and the former republics of the Soviet Union, but there have also been attacks in Near East Asia and Central America.
The prospect of a domestic antiaircraft missile attack has captivated American minds for several years now. Speculation that a Stinger was behind the explosion that downed TWA Flight 800 was so great that the Pentagon even launched several of the missiles off the coast of Florida during the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation of the crash in order to disprove those theories.
