Who knows if they are operational or not. I'm sure they are working O.T. to get them operational if purchased in a semi-obsolete state.
20 ??? BTW, someone had better have some hard, verifiable inside Intel to make a qty "20" claim.
The problem is that these terrorist organizations really do have extremely wealthy supporters from a region that closely resembles the Middle East ... A major security concern is that not all ex-Soviet weapons facilities are as secure as they should be, and in some cases, personnel may be tempted to let go of some of the NBC materials for large cash payments.
The income levels of some of the ex-Soviet military, security and scientific personnel (absent extremely strong ethics and morality) open up the possibility of cash deals and incentives for NBC materials to be offered from the "black market" (IE: non-state terrorist actors with cash reserves to burn).
If you were a commandant at a semi-secure weapons facility in the former USSR making $60-$100 month U.S. (or whatever minimal amount) and someone (also with veiled threats) initially offered you $10 million US cash for some of the materials in your care, what would you do?
One major caveat. Automatically characterizing potentially missing "fissile material" or "weaponized plutonium" as "briefcase" devices is misleading.
Secure storage of weaponized plutonium, fissile material and any form of nuclear, chemical or biological materials is key, regardless. And yet, the potential delivery and ignition devices used may vary. Many hold forth a threat scenario that NBC materials are used in a so called "dirty bomb," which may or may not be the size of a "briefcase" incidentally. Truck, airborne or seaborne threats can not be discounted. Some hypothesize that North Korea may try to use a missile as a delivery system. Others have varying theories as to how a non-state terrorist actors like Al Qaida may try to deliver a nuclear, biological or chemical agent.
The most plausible theory is a large truck or seaborne delivered device with a passive NBC agent being detonated by some explosive device(s).
When nuclear materials go missing from Central Asia, all potential delivery systems have to be examined carefully and a contingency plan for each and every one must be set up for CONUS.