Originally posted by: Smiling Canadian The exception was later in the war when the Stinger missiles hit the field and those weren't handed out willy nilly. They were only given to groups that the SF Advisers approved of.
Stingers were exactly what I was thinking of when I said it. Regardless, it's the obvious finger print left on so many other cases.
As I stated in reply to Sam, the rebels aren't using American weapons.
The weapons we sell to the Saudi's, Bahrain, Israel, UAE, Kuwait and Egypt are all downgraded versions of our own modern equipment. Last I checked, we don't use Soviet era rocket launchers mounted on the back of shitty pick up trucks.
You can debate the validity of us selling weapons to allies in the region, but you can't assume we're fueling a Syrian blood bath when we simply don't see these weapons being used.
Very fair points, Irrenarzt.
All I meant to imply is that every country in this region (including the super powers outside of this area) have all picked a pony in this show and are funneling weapons into the region.
I personally don't care that (or if) we are giving arms to these rebels. While I would like for them to be paying us for weaponry, instead of it being a handout, I am simply relieved that we do not have OUR troops in this region fighting their war for them (like we usually do).
Nothing tells people to respect their independence and revolution than letting them shed the blood and make the personal sacrifices needed to enact a new government (by over throwing their old one).
Anything shy of that is just handing people something they may not want and will certainly never value.
Originally posted by: ~~Snake~~ Sam. You realize there are dozens of countries giving them support? Why do hate the uSA so much?
I think a better question would be, why do you support the slaughter of women and children by one side but not the other? It strikes me as a little cold hearted knowing our country has the ability to end these atrocities against un-armed men, women and children and choosing not to do anything.
I recall some people around here making statements about oppression and how it is the only reason for armed conflict. Kill the oppressor! It's my opinion that fellow humans under the oppression of a dictator trumps international boundaries and laws.
I like Poland's national motto, "Your freedom is our freedom".
It's easy to sit here in America and feel proud not to care about those suffering around the world. I know our country has made some bad decisions in the past. I think it's pathetic when we have the ability to do something good and all the things we did wrong in the past become more important than doing good again.
I'm not sure how you can say the murder of un-armed people is good.
Also great points..........hence the reason I am ok with arming these rebels to the hilt with whatever it takes to let them fight out their OWN revolution.
Originally posted by: samUwell yes, we are not selling them American weapons but that does not mean that the CIA does not have access to other countries weapons either, right?
to think otherwise is a slap in the face of the CIA.
I knew that would be your response, but we're also talking precedent here, correct? Precedent is your reasoning behind believing we'd supply rebels, which is perfectly logical to do... but consider that in other cases that we actually have, we supplied AMERICAN weapons. Examples: Afghanistan, Angola, Chechnya, Iran (contra affair), etc...
To assume the CIA is buying massive amounts of foreign weapons, and then handing them over to the rebels, is harder to believe (because its not efficient) then them simply acquiring them from neighbors and the methods I described above.
Actually the CIA rarely supplies American weapons. I can only speak about Afghanistan in the 80's...I saw truckloads of Chinese and Russian Block weapons delivered via the CIA. The exception was later in the war when the Stinger missiles hit the field and those weren't handed out willy nilly. They were only given to groups that the SF Advisers approved of.
And that transaction has fucked us over ever since.
The stinger and it's cheap foreign knock offs has downed more American helicopters than anything ever imaginable.......
For every Russian huey it shot down in Afghanistan.......it has taken down an order of magnitude, or more, American ones in the ME ever since then.
There is a reason we would give them foreign seized shit and not American innovation.......because we already have some pretty major efforts and methods of defeating foreign assets. Defeating our own assets is extremely counter productive. Post edited by Mockery at 8/7/2012 9:42:00 PM
Originally posted by: Mockery The stinger and it's cheap foreign knock offs has downed more American helicopters than anything ever imaginable.......
Eh, not so sure about that. But I am open to reading where that information you were given came from. I think you have been lead astray because you are a smart guy that always backs up his claims.
For every Russian huey it shot down in Afghanistan.......it has taken down an order of magnitude, or more, American ones in the ME ever since then.
Again, not so sure about that. Also, Russians dont have hueys, they have Hind atk helis.. they are flying tanks, but they quickly found out how effective Stingers were.
There is a reason we would give them foreign seized shit and not American innovation.......because we already have some pretty major efforts and methods of defeating foreign assets. Defeating our own assets is extremely counter productive.
The watered down versions of what they get are far easier to counter than our first line stuff. For example, lets look at the MLRS. In a counter battery fight, theirs would be destroyed before a rocket is fired.
Originally posted by: Mockery The stinger and it's cheap foreign knock offs has downed more American helicopters than anything ever imaginable.......
Eh, not so sure about that. But I am open to reading where that information you were given came from. I think you have been lead astray because you are a smart guy that always backs up his claims.
For every Russian huey it shot down in Afghanistan.......it has taken down an order of magnitude, or more, American ones in the ME ever since then.
Again, not so sure about that. Also, Russians dont have hueys, they have Hind atk helis.. they are flying tanks, but they quickly found out how effective Stingers were.
There is a reason we would give them foreign seized shit and not American innovation.......because we already have some pretty major efforts and methods of defeating foreign assets. Defeating our own assets is extremely counter productive.
The watered down versions of what they get are far easier to counter than our first line stuff. For example, lets look at the MLRS. In a counter battery fight, theirs would be destroyed before a rocket is fired.
These are videos illustrating it happening........
There is a reason that our aircraft have been strapped with flare dispensary systems, as an IR countermeasure, and it is primarily because of the threat that Stingers, and cheap stinger derivatives, designed from our old Stingers, posed to us. Post edited by Mockery at 8/8/2012 12:41:11 PM
Launched in 1990 with a Congressional earmark of $10 million, the operation competed against Chechnyan, Azeri and Iranian arms dealers anxious to capitalise on the break-up of the Soviet Union and impending battles among satellite states, as well as drug dealers looking for artillery to fend off aircraft in their space.[3]
The price of a Stinger was estimated at $300,000.[3] Other sources suggested that the weapons, which cost $20,000 to produce, were only selling for $100,000 on the black market, still much higher than the $70,000 that the CIA initially offered Afghans to turn them over.[4]
In 1993, the CIA approached Congress noting that they required an additional $55 million to buy back the weapons, noting that a failure to secure the missiles could result in attacks against American civil aircraft.[5]
After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US attempted to buy back the Stinger missiles, with a $55 million program to buy back around 300 missiles (US$183,300 each).[15] The U.S. government collected most of the Stingers it had delivered, but some of them found their way into Croatia, Iran, Qatar and North Korea.[16] According to the CIA, already in August 1988 the US had demanded from Qatar the return of Stinger missiles.[17] Wilson later told CBS he "lived in terror" that a civilian airliner would be shot down by a Stinger, but he did not have misgivings about having provided Stingers to defeat the Soviets.[14]
Source one states "may have". Nor does it give an data on the number of US helis/aircraft downed in significant numbers by stingers. It only says 4 a/c but not what took them out. Even if it were true they were stingers, that's a far cry from the ~269 soviet helis knocked out during the soviet occupation of A-stan by about 1.5%. If anything, the magnitude you mention is reversed as in WAY less for us, not more for us.
I gotta haul ass to lunch, but I really do not believe the stingers and their knock offs (they are actually SA-18s) have had that much of an impact as you have been lead to believe.
Some of the Stingers that the US supplied starting from 1987, could have been used during the US intervention in Afghanistan. Due to political reasons, US and Coalition forces generally downplay or even deny any MANPADS involvement in the Afghan War by Taliban insurgents, attributing the attacks to unguided RPGs. However it became clear that coalition aircraft came under attack by different types of MANPADS in different instances.[21][22]
For obvious political reasons, our military refuses to recognize that any of our aircraft have ever been shot down by a stinger.
They claim that all of them are generic RPG's.....or "shoulder fired missiles" and leave it at that.
Despite them putting IR counter measure systems on virtually every aircraft in our fleet over there.........
Wonder why they would put this on all of our aircraft if they knew all of these RPGs were just dummy line of fire projectiles?
Clearly someone in our military is either bullshitting us, or just doesn't know what they are talking about.
I think it is a mixed bag of both (as usual).
But I agree with you that the threat may be over stated.
After you have been hit it is hard to prove exactly what destroyed your aircraft. Unless the pilot lived and can describe his first hand accounts of how far away he was and any evasion techniques.
Even that is speculative since it is not like you get a lot of warning, or evasion maneuvering time, when someone shoots something traveling mach speed at you.........
It is nice to have this conversation with you, SS. It has led me to some interesting articles that I was also unaware of before now. Post edited by Mockery at 8/8/2012 1:13:27 PM
Some of the Stingers that the US supplied starting from 1987, could have been used during the US intervention in Afghanistan. Due to political reasons, US and Coalition forces generally downplay or even deny any MANPADS involvement in the Afghan War by Taliban insurgents, attributing the attacks to unguided RPGs. However it became clear that coalition aircraft came under attack by different types of MANPADS in different instances.[21][22]
For obvious political reasons, our military refuses to recognize that any of our aircraft have ever been shot down by a stinger.
They claim that all of them are generic RPG's.....or "shoulder fired missiles" and leave it at that.
Despite them putting IR counter measure systems on virtually every aircraft in our fleet over there.........
Wonder why they would put this on all of our aircraft if they knew all of these RPGs were just dummy line of fire projectiles?
Clearly someone in our military is either bullshitting us, or just doesn't know what they are talking about.
I think it is a mixed bag of both (as usual).
But I agree with you that the threat may be over stated.
After you have been hit it is hard to prove exactly what destroyed your aircraft. Unless the pilot lived and can describe his first hand accounts of how far away he was and any evasion techniques.
Even that is speculative since it is not like you get a lot of warning, or evasion maneuvering time, when someone shoots something traveling mach speed at you.........
It is nice to have this conversation with you, SS. It has led me to some interesting articles that I was also unaware of before now.
Brother, I know you and I can talk without it getting personal and you arent a myopic asshole that is easily fixated on one thing.
But I need to say this: I wholeheartedly agree that some of our technology has fallen into hands it shouldnt and in turn, most likely sold to countries like China and Russia so they can reverse engineer our tech. Look at this shit:
Design: The J-20 is delta win canard configuration with V-Shape tail and has two S-Shaped DSI inlets. The aircraft is probably the biggest 5th Gen aircraft and is approximately 60-65 feet long. It has a bubble canopy similar to the F-22. Overall the aircraft uses Chinese experience on the J-10 and JF-17 in wing and inlets area. Most other aspects are taken from the success of the American F-22.
Look familiar? I was on the flightline of Edwards AFB not to long ago and after seeing the pics of the J-20, I had a case of the ass over that tech leak.
Ok, tangent aside.
My point was that you know I served "x" amount of time over there and I didnt see anything close to what you have been lead to believe. Yes, we lost some birds. But no where near the number the soviets did during their time in A-stan. Now whether or not those birds we lost were due to Stingers is what is up for question. With absolute certainty, I know we havent lost an immense amount to stingers or any derivatives of stingers.
As far as AirDef systems on aircraft go, we have had those going since the advent of homing (radar guided)/ IR (heat seeking) missiles.
Interesting. I read we lost more birds due to mechanical issues or pilot error than rockets. _______________________________________________________________
"If guns kill people then spoons make us fat!"
Mockery, the battery life expectancy of a Stinger missile is only 4 to 5 years, and unique to its design. Unless they were supplied with enough parts to keep them serviceable for 20 years then they CAN'T shoot down our aircraft with a stinger. They simply wouldn't function anymore. The honest belief, if stingers are being used, is that they would have been supplied by Pakistan.
And your assumption of "foreign knock offs" being based on the stinger is also incorrect... The Russian SA-7 Grail was designed in 1968, and placed into service in 1970. The Stinger wasn't put into service until 1981. Post edited by Irrenarzt at 8/8/2012 6:33:45 PM
Originally posted by: Irrenarzt Mockery, the battery life expectancy of a Stinger missile is only 4 to 5 years, and unique to its design. Unless they were supplied with enough parts to keep them serviceable for 20 years then they CAN'T shoot down our aircraft with a stinger. They simply wouldn't function anymore.
And your assumption of "foreign knock offs" being based on the stinger is also incorrect... The Russian SA-7 Grail was designed in 1968, and placed into service in 1970. The Stinger wasn't put into service until 1981.
them batteries can be back-engineered, then produce new units.
Originally posted by: Irrenarzt Mockery, the battery life expectancy of a Stinger missile is only 4 to 5 years, and unique to its design. Unless they were supplied with enough parts to keep them serviceable for 20 years then they CAN'T shoot down our aircraft with a stinger. They simply wouldn't function anymore.
And your assumption of "foreign knock offs" being based on the stinger is also incorrect... The Russian SA-7 Grail was designed in 1968, and placed into service in 1970. The Stinger wasn't put into service until 1981.
them batteries can be back-engineered, then produce new units.
Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Much more probable that they were supplied by Pakistan, or using the Soviet variants. Also more likely that the now UNUSABLE old stingers were turned into road side bombs instead. Post edited by Irrenarzt at 8/8/2012 6:40:47 PM
My point was that you know I served "x" amount of time over there and I didnt see anything close to what you have been lead to believe. Yes, we lost some birds. But no where near the number the soviets did during their time in A-stan. Now whether or not those birds we lost were due to Stingers is what is up for question. With absolute certainty, I know we havent lost an immense amount to stingers or any derivatives of stingers.
As far as AirDef systems on aircraft go, we have had those going since the advent of homing (radar guided)/ IR (heat seeking) missiles.
Very fair points, SS......
It probably is an inflated fear. As many things have become in the DoD. My coworker was talking to me about his time in Afghanistan, serving in the airborne, and was saying that these were far far more prevalent and abundant than stingers were.
I also work in this field of IR countermeasures and all I hear about is how much of a problem these weapons are. I rarely ever see any stats to back up how big of a problem it actually is.
So this has been an enlightening discussion.
I have another coworker, who went to Afghanistan, to repair these on board IR detection systems, and brags that after he got done there that the attrition rate of helicopters went down to near zero.
Assuming he wasn't full of shit, which is a bad assumption on my part, because he almost always full of shit.......I implied that to mean that shoulder fired, IR weapons, were extremely abundant in that region.
Apparently not from what you are saying...........
I also figured that would explain these multi-million dollar laser upgrades going on.........instead of flare projectiles.
I think, from what you have said so far, it really is an over exaggerated fear and is probably a neat way for the Pentagon to get another military industrial procurement program off the ground, through unnecessary fear mongering, that otherwise never would have been needed.
I posted above the incidents reports for all aircraft downed in both wars if you wanted to count them up.
With that said, I do not doubt that general wear and tear, user error, has caused far more downed aircraft (flying around in sand all day) than RPGs have.
Originally posted by: Irrenarzt Mockery, the battery life expectancy of a Stinger missile is only 4 to 5 years, and unique to its design. Unless they were supplied with enough parts to keep them serviceable for 20 years then they CAN'T shoot down our aircraft with a stinger. They simply wouldn't function anymore. The honest belief, if stingers are being used, is that they would have been supplied by Pakistan.
From my understanding of the stinger, that is probably an extremely good point. I also doubt (especially now) that a lot of our helicopters were being shot down by the actual stingers we left in that region.......unless they have been serviced by someone.
I found this to be a great article of a specific event where one of our aircraft had to be downed by a surface to air missile (at 11k ft) and our military still wants to report that it was just a conventional RPG (and a lucky shot).
I don't buy it.
My point, for the most part, is that there have been a lot of deviations to the stinger. I'm not even sure, especially from that last article, or this wiki link, that I should even be calling some of what we gave them stingers anymore.
50 Redeye systems were delivered to the Mujahideen by the US during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in 1984,[2] where they were used to shoot down a number of aircraft including several Su-25 jets as well as Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters.[3] By November 1985 it had largely been replaced by the dramatically more successful FIM-92 Stinger missiles.
Which was also apparently harvested by our CIA and given to the Mujahiddeen.
Strela-2M was used also in Afghanistan during the Soviet war in Afghanistan by the Mujahiddeen. The missiles were obtained from various sources, some from Egypt and China (locally manufactured Sakr Eye and HN-5 versions of the SAM), and the CIA also assisted the guerrillas in finding missiles from other sources.
So god only knows what is hitting whom where, especially when our own military is clearly bull shitting everyone that RPGs are hitting helicopters miles away and aircraft miles in the sky.
And your assumption of "foreign knock offs" being based on the stinger is also incorrect... The Russian SA-7 Grail was designed in 1968, and placed into service in 1970. The Stinger wasn't put into service until 1981.
Fair correction. This is what I get for being ambiguous and vague with a bunch of guys who clearly know their shit and have all served in the military directly dealing with this stuff.
Before the FIM-92 Stinger was obviously the FIM-43 Redeye.
The SA-7 was the Russian equivalent of our Redeye (in their mind). The Stinger was our improvement to our Redeye.
The Russians, since then, have also improved drastically upon their ancient SA-7's, with the SA-14's, and implemented a lot of our "FIM-92 Stinger" improvements into their design.
They obtained those improvements by obtaining our weaponry directly from the battle field ..........similarly to how we have obtained theirs. It is a lot easier, however, to get their weapons than it is for them to get ours. Ours can't be purchased from our military contractors, ours have to be procured and appropriated to the military, and the military has to give them to you.
Unlike Russian shit that is spread out all over the globe, in third world shantys, primarily unaccounted for, and only require a hand full of dollars to hand them over (like a drug deal).
If ours slip through into enemy hands, to either be copied, or directly used against us.......it is usually by some third party country like Pakistan that we perhaps entrusted with shit we shouldn't have given them. Post edited by Mockery at 8/9/2012 3:15:27 AM
My finest example of us giving our "allies" our best new weaponry and it being stolen, copied, and used against us by our biggest enemies.
During the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958, the Republic of China's (Taiwan) F-86 Sabres faced the much higher performance PRC MiG-17's. The MiG's had speed, maneuverability and altitude advantages over the Sabres, allowing them to engage only when they desired, normally at advantageous times. In response, the US Navy rushed to modify 100 of the ROC's Sabres to fit the newly introduced AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, the latest model being the "B" version. These were introduced into combat for the first time on 24 September 1958, when a group of MiG-17's cruised past a flight of Sabres, only to find themselves under attack by missile fire. This was the first instance of guided missiles being used in air-to-air combat.[1]
On the 28th, a similar engagement resulted in one of the missiles becoming lodged in a MiG without exploding, allowing it to be removed. The Soviets later became aware that the Chinese had at least one Sidewinder, and after some wrangling, were able to convince the Chinese to send them one of the captured missiles.[2]
Gennadiy Sokolovskiy, later chief engineer at the Vympel team, said that "the Sidewinder missile was to us a university offering a course in missile construction technology which has upgraded our engineering education and updated our approach to production of future missiles."[3]
And that was the day that the Soviet developed K-13, directly stolen from our AIM-9 Sidewinder, came to be.
On and on and on this goes. One country building off the advancements and innovation of the other for technological superiority.
As we learned with nuclear weapons, it takes a lot more time, effort, and money to be an innovator than a copy cat.
Hence why it might not be a great idea to hand everyone our latest and greatest technology unless we want it to fall into enemies hands........be exploited.......copied.......reverse engineered.....and used back against us.
That's my main intended point to be carried away in this thread.
The SA-7 worked like dog shit. It had a terrible success rate. The Redeye was far superior........the Stinger was infinitely superior to anything out there at the time we started giving it to the Mujaheddin.
Through doing that the Mujaheddin scared off the Russians......but our best technology was compromised and somewhat to seriously used back against us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not to mention the countless new threats they pose to commercial aircraft all over the world.
Everything from airports, to Air Force One, are running frightened because of the technology that innovations we let slip into other countries hands.
Would they have been able to develop these without our help?......probably.......but not anytime soon and with no guaranteed certainty.
After all, this was the country who thought the Trabant was an exceptional automobile.
The Saudis said they would shoot down any Israeli planes that fly over its airspace on their way to or from Iran
Saudi Arabia has informed Israel in recent weeks that it will shoot down any Israeli planes that fly over its airspace on their way to or from Iran. A report in Yediot Achronot Thursday said that the Saudis have made it known that they will not allow their airspace to be used for any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel, the U.S., or any other country.
According to the report, the Saudis transferred the message to Israel via senior officials in the administration of U.S. President Barack H. Obama. The officials had just recently returned from talks in Israel with senior members of the government.
IDF intelligence, the report said, had identified four air routes that could be used to attack Iran – one of them over Saudi Arabia. The Saudi route would have Israeli fighter jets flying south, turning into Saudi territory for a short time, and then exiting into the Persian Gulf and Iran.
As a result of the warning, the report said, Israeli officials are now concerned that they will have to figure out a way to avoid a battle with the Saudi air force if the southern route is chosen. Although Saudi pilots are not known for their skills, the country has a wide array of sophisticated defensive and offensive systems and weapons, thanks to massive American arms sales.
However, some Israeli officials were doubtful that the message had been the idea of the Saudis' alone, saying that message was part of the ongoing pressures by American officials to prevent Israel from attacking Iran without Washington's permission.
