The Manpads Threat Resurfaces

The best-known use of Manpads occurred during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. At one stage the Soviets appeared likely to defeat the local mujahideen guerillas, largely because of the firepower and manoeuvre advantage they enjoyed from attack helicopters. However, the US provided the mujahideen with Stinger Manpads and some 270 Soviet helicopters were shot-down, a dramatic effect that severely limited the employment of rotary-wing aircraft and changed the course of the war.

Manpads have also been fired at large military transport/civil airliner aircraft types. In January 2004, a USAF C-5 airlifter taking-off from Baghdad was hit by a surface-to-air missile; similarly, in December 2003, a C-17 was hit. Both aircraft sustained considerable damage but landed safely. In November 2003, two SA-14s were fired at a DHL Airbus A300 cargo jet: one missile hit the A300’s left wing, which caught fire; again, the pilots managed to land safely. In all, about 20 attempts have been made to shoot-down civilian aircraft with Manpads in Iraq in recent years; additionally, a substantial number of US Army helicopters have been shot down by SA-7s and rocket-propelled grenades.

The Manpads threat has not been confined to Iraq. Two SA-7s were fired unsuccessfully at an Israeli B-757 taking-off from Mombassa, Kenya, in 2002; while overall, in the past 35 years, some 40 missiles have been launched against civil aircraft around the world, leading to 28 crashes and around 800 fatalities.

The surprising thing is that more attacks have not been made. Hundreds of thousands of shoulder-fired missiles have been manufactured in the past three decades; and Russian authorities have warned that ‘tens of thousands’ of Manpads may have been stolen in the chaos that followed the disintegration of the USSR. An SA-7 reportedly costs a mere $5000 on the international arms black market.

Airlines and aircraft manufacturers preoccupied with the bottom line have been reluctant to invest in anti-Manpads systems. Options include fitting airliners with military-style anti-missile defence systems (flares, lasers); minimising the efflux and vulnerability of hot spots (engines, APUs, etc); relocating critical structural components away from hot spots; improving fire suppression systems; and so on. Presently, however, aircraft insurance costs are less than implementing such measures and little has been done.

The main response to the Manpads threat has come from US government agencies, which have quietly sought to buy-up and destroy illegal stockpiles. The US State Department reportedly has destroyed more than 30,000 Manpads in 30 countries in the past eight years. Proscription has also been tried, with efforts being made to establish an international control regime. But attempts to control arms flows generally have been unsuccessful; and anyway, in this case, the horse would appear to have already bolted.

The concern now must be that the chaos in Libya will have replenished illegal arms merchants’ supplies. Recent WikiLeaks documents have indicated that Yemen – an al-Qa’ida stronghold – has a secret supply of Manpads; while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that the terrorist organisation Hamas also has a stockpile. Airline companies and aviation regulation authorities will have some very unpleasant questions to answer should, say, a wide-bodied jet be lost to terrorists using these cheap, simple, effective and, apparently, readily-available weapons.