[FreedomPoster]

AA is anti-aircraft
AAA is anti-aircraft artillery i.e. guns
SAM is surface-air missiles

Usually you hear "SAM site" or "AAA battery" to indicate the deployment of these. Of course, we're dealing with the press here, and they really are semi-clueless about the military.

[TFMcGuire]

Clueless now but about to be rapidly educated or is it embedded?

Like the game warden who feigned himself a fisherman and went out fishing with a man suspected of dynamiting fish (That lure is called a Dupont wobbler :).

When he revealed to the fisherman that he was a game warden and that the suspect was now under arrest, the fisherman ignored him, lit a stick of dynamite and handed it to the officer. Then the fisherman asked, "You gonna talk or you gonna fish?"