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Afghanistan
Wikileaks Afghanistan: Taliban used heat-seeker missiles against Nato helicopter
2010-07-27
Wikileaks, the Taliban say thanks for the feedback, guys.
Taliban insurgents used a heat-seeking missile to down a Nato transport helicopter in Helmand killing a British soldier, five Americans and a Canadian, the documents show.
Posted by:tipper

#13  The MSM + Perts have been repor this since the fall of the Berlin Wall + Monica's Dress.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2010-07-27 23:35  

#12  Unfortunately, unlike Stingers, SA7's don't have a shelf life, in general. Fortunately they are not all that effective except against older rotary winged A/C.
Posted by: OldSpook   2010-07-27 22:58  

#11  One nice thing about Stingers -- the launch coolant/battery combo goes bad in 10 years and MUST be replaced, or the Stinger is just a really expensive IED. There is NO way to launch a Stinger without the valid coolant/battery component -- if you try to jerry-rig it, it blows up in your face. And that is a design feature of the missile system.
Posted by: Shieldwolf   2010-07-27 20:50  

#10  More like the journalist firing off his manpad.

One hit on a Chinook while taking off (2007), 10 near misses? Not saying that real SAMs have not been acquired and/or used; one of the most heavily armed lawless and contested areas in the world. If over all the years and all the missions, its what an average of 1 per month, most of which were just crashes not losses? No offense to the brave men and women who were hurt bad or died...but that ain't much, and give credit to the great machines and better pilots and fantastic ground crews for such.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2010-07-27 19:02  

#9  they get their hands on or make about every weapon ever produced not far from the Khyber Pass so why does this surprise anyone? They just wanna say it is a stinger left over from the 80's is what is getting their panties in a wad so they throw it in someones face.I'm also pretty sure the ISI knows someone too buy these from too.
Posted by: chris   2010-07-27 13:47  

#8  lions and tigers and bears OH MY!
Posted by: lex   2010-07-27 13:01  

#7  List of Coalition aircraft losses in Afghanistan.

So this supposedly happened in May, 2007. And it's the only time. Which tells me either the countermeasures are very good, the Taliban doesn't have very many of them, or they really suck at using them. Or it's doom and gloom bullshit made to fit the agenda.
You don't need a shoulder fired SAM to shoot down a helicopter. The VC and NVA shot down over 5,000 in Vietnam. I doubt they had very many shoulder fired SAMs.
Posted by: tu3031   2010-07-27 09:46  

#6  "The documents show"
The Telegraph has manufactured this assertion almost out of thin air, thereby proving once again that lies travel around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

What the documents really show is that a single witness reported seeing a smoke trail from the rocket. Wikileaks and NYT analysts, not the documents themselves, therefore concluded that it was a MANPAD rather than a rocket propelled grenade because, according to them, RPGs don't leave a smoke trail.

Judge for yourself, and imagine that you are target and the projectile is coming straight at you, that is, you are looking at the smoke plume head-on:
Video, RPG 7 launch
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy   2010-07-27 09:13  

#5  
This is not a suprise. Not a suprise at all.
Posted by: Parabellum   2010-07-27 08:17  

#4  This is not good. Not good at all.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-07-27 05:23  

#3  I figured they were using those IR flares for a reason.
Posted by: crosspatch   2010-07-27 04:35  

#2  95% of all shoulder launched man portable anti-aircraft missiles are heat seekers : Chinese, Russian, American, French, British,etc. Sort of like saying a car has an internal combustion engine.
Posted by: Shieldwolf   2010-07-27 02:49  

#1  Manpad? Isn't that a Soviet system? Looks like they don't want us to succeed there. May be too embarrassing.
Posted by: gorb   2010-07-27 01:06  

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