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The chief of U.S. transportation command says he is worried daily that advanced, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles will show up on the battlefield in Afghanistan or along the routes to fly there that could threaten strategic airlift. In particular, classified State Dept. cables have voiced concerns about Chinese weapons and trainers having connections with the Taliban. “Today [that threat] could change,” says Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb. “I want us to stay ahead of it, with all of our international partners, [by being aware] these things might happen. We don’t talk a lot about it, we readjust. Even though it’s not...

Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air National Guard are modifying a KC-135 air refueling aircraft for testing of an infrared anti-missile system. Comprehensive ground testing of the company's Guardian system began Jan. 12. Follow-on flight testing is to begin Wednesday. The company said the Operational Utility Evaluation is scheduled for completion in mid-March. Northrop Grumman's Guardian system incorporates the company's AN/AAQ-24(V) infrared countermeasures defensive aid system in a pod-based configuration. The AN/AAQ-24 is installed on more than 500 fixed- and rotary-wing platforms for the U.S. military and others. It's designed to protect aircraft from advanced man-portable ground-to-air missiles and consists...

officials suspected Yemen had stocks of shoulder-fired missiles, a major concern if they fell in the wrong hands, while the Yemeni leader sought to use new-found leverage for US aid, secret memos said. Although Yemen's Defense Ministry insisted it had no such cache of the weapons, an informant told US diplomats that the government agency in fact "does indeed have MANPADS, but would never speak of them because they are considered a state secret." The embassy cable marked "secret" and dated August 4, 2009 also said that while Yemen "realizes their MANPADS are of little military value, they consider them...

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the federal government was ready to investigate solutions to nearly every terrorist threat to civilian aviation. Nearly 10 years later, there has been a subtle shift away from some high-tech solutions to real but low-probability threats. In the case of shoulder-launched missiles aimed at commercial airliners, the government has changed tactics from gadgetry to policy; the White House and Congress this year quietly stopped funding laser-jamming equipment that could scramble missiles as they track the heat of aircraft.

Six months ago, authorities seized a cargo plane in Bangkok that contained 35 tons of North Korean military weapons. These included versions of the Chinese HN-5 “man-portable air defense system,” or MANPADS. The MANPADS were being shipped to Iran. The HN-5 — a copy of the Soviet SA-7— is less capable than the MANPADS Iran produces on its own. Why, you ask, would Iran be importing more primitive missiles than the ones it already makes? The only conceivable answer is that Iran was planning to provide North Korean missiles to Iran’s proxy terrorist groups, to gain plausible deniability in case...

There's a laser-guided antiaircraft missile jammer sitting on the table of the conference room in the office of Popular Mechanics. It comes in a medium-size box, weighing in at about 30 pounds, topped with a clear hemisphere housing a prominent mirror mounted on a 360-degree gimbal. Peering inside the dome, a viewer can see a network of other mirrors that bounce light from a laser housed below, directing the beam to the main lens affixed to the gimbal. This prototype is the only one in the world, and this is the first time its inventors, BAE Systems, have brought it...

Turkey has been marketing its short-range air defense system to Arab League states. Turkey's military-owned Aselsan has been briefing Arab militaries on the company's Pedestal-Mounted Air Defense System (PMADS). The system, based on the U.S.-origin Stinger surface-to-air missile, was designed for very short-range air defense, particularly the protection of critical sites and military bases. "There is interest [in the system] within the region," an executive said. Aselsan displayed PMADS at Sofex-2010, which took place in Amman, Jordan on May 10-13. Executives said Jordan's military has been examining the feasibility of procuring the system, which could also fire French- and Russian-origin...

The effectiveness of a countermeasure system for the U.S. Army Chinook helicopter to defeat guided missiles was proven in battle, BAE Systems said. BAE said its Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures system has proved its worth in defeating infrared-guided missiles on the battlefield. ATIRCM uses lasers to protect the Chinook from missile attacks. A common missile warning system tells the system to emit a high-energy laser beam to defeat the infrared system on the incoming missile. Jim Crouch, general manager for protection solutions at BAE Systems, said ATIRCM is the best countermeasure system available for combat helicopters . "ATIRCM was put...

In the last few years, intelligence analysts have noted that very few portable anti-aircraft missiles have been discovered in any of the thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda weapons caches found in Afghanistan. It is generally believed, at least by the mass media, that there are thousands of these portable missiles, particularly the Russian SAM-7 (and some later versions) on the black market. Maybe, but not really. Part of the reason is that it is easy to track a missile, used in a successful attack on military or commercial aircraft, to the country (or even factory) or origin. For that...

Anti-Aircraft Missiles Intercepted From North Korea Alarm Scientists Kurt Achin | Seoul 24 February 2010 A group of American scientists is expressing alarm at a possible attempt by North Korea to ship portable anti-aircraft missile systems abroad. The missiles were part of a an airborne cargo intercepted by authorities in Thailand in December. The Federation of American Scientists, based in Washington, is urging more vigilance by the international community after the discovery of so-called MANPADS missile systems aboard a cargo plane loaded in North Korea. The plane was intercepted during a landing in Thailand two months ago. The U.S. group...

Russia's KBM has been briefing Middle East and other militaries on the Igla man-portable air defense system. The Igla-S, an enhanced version of Igla-9K38, was touted as effective against fighter-jets, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. Iran and Syria have received a legacy variant of Igla-S. The Igla-S has been touted as capable of downing a range of U.S. UAVs deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It also has night-firing capability," KBM said. "Igla-S MANPADS is a new-generation system featuring considerably extended firing range and enhanced kill probability against aerial targets and possessing a new quality for this class of...

A C-130 aircraft carrying an Alabama senator and congressman was fired on this evening as it was flying from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. The airplane was carrying Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, and two other senators. Three rockets were shot at the plane and were "near misses," Shelby said in a telephone interview. He said the pilot took evasive maneuvers to avoid the rockets. The plane landed safely in Amman at about 4 p.m. central.

PALMDALE - The Department of Homeland Security plans to evaluate unmanned, high-altitude vehicles as a platform for a counter-missile defense system for commercial airliners in answer to the threat of shoulder-fired missiles being used to attack aircraft as they take off or land. While seeking bids for development of such a system, the department plans to conduct trials using the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems' Predator B aircraft. Both are built and tested in the Antelope Valley; Global Hawk at Northrop's facility at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale and Predator B at General Atomics'...

WASHINGTON // First, U.S. military helicopter pilots in Iraq tried flying low and fast, hoping to elude heat-seeking missiles fired by insurgents. The insurgents responded with heavy weapons such as machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and the loss rate of American helicopters soared. So the pilots went high -- and insurgents replied with lethal surface-to-air missiles. A Marine Corps CH-46 helicopter was lost yesterday 20 miles northeast of Baghdad. It was the fifth helicopter that has gone down in Iraq in three weeks. Five Marines and two Navy hospital corpsmen were killed, and there was confusion over whether the twin-rotor...

The Army now believes that the Lynx helicopter shot down over central Basra at the weekend was most probably hit by a surface-to-air missile, obtained possibly from neighbouring Iran, after missile casings were discovered on the third floor of a nearby building, security sources in the city said yesterday. The discovery, if confirmed, will be a worrying development for British operations in Iraq, which are increasingly reliant on helicopter "air bridges" to move men and equipment to reduce the risk of convoys being ambushed by roadside bombs.The discarded missile parts were located when a search was conducted of the building...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, March 20 - Raising tensions that have revived the politics and personalities of the cold war, the United States has suspended military assistance to Nicaragua because it has failed to move forward with the destruction of an arsenal of shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles that the Bush administration considers a possible terrorist threat. American diplomats here said Friday that about $2.3 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Army had been suspended pending the destruction of the Soviet-made SA-7 missile systems. In Washington, a senior State Department official confirmed that "part of our security assistance is on hold" while an agreement...

Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, or MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems), have proliferated throughout the world. They can be purchased on the military arms black market for as little as $5,000. More than two dozen terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, are believed to possess such weapons. The FBI estimates that there have been 29 MANPADS attacks against civilian aircraft resulting in 550 deaths. At least 25 of the reported attacks have been attributed to non state actors. Even though a U.S. airliner has not been attacked by a missile, the question well may be when, not if, such an attack will happen....

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - The United States and Russia are close to signing an agreement to help control the trafficking of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, a weapon highly prized by terrorists, the Russian defense minister said during a visit here on Tuesday. The minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, said the deal had been negotiated rapidly during the past several months, and he predicted that "this agreement is sure to be signed pretty soon." During a joint news conference, neither Mr. Ivanov nor Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld provided details on the agreement. Mr. Ivanov, however, broadly indicated that the agreement would call...

WASHINGTON - Concerned that airline travelers are increasingly vulnerable to terrorist missile attacks, the government is developing plans to equip commercial airliners with the same protective countermeasures that military pilots use to fend off enemy missiles. Thousands of easily concealed shoulder-fired missiles are within quick reach of terrorist groups from the world's black-market arms bazaars. In August, FBI agents arrested a British citizen in New Jersey suspected of trying to peddle a Russian-made SA-18, a newer-generation surface-to-air missile. "As of today," defense analyst Loren Thompson said, "commercial airliners are naked against the potential of such a threat." Last week, the...

Originally designed to threaten U.S. and allied military aircraft in the event of conventional war, today these Russian weapons – and their Chinese knock-offs – pose one of the greatest terrorist threats in the hands of Al Qaida. Shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, sometimes referred to as MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems), are not new, but they have emerged recently as one of the major worries for counter-terrorists around the globe for two primary reasons: