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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Borderland Beat: A discussion of MANPADS in Mexico |
| 2012-12-24 |
| Borderland Beat collegue Chivis Martinez has conducted an interview of security expert Dr. Robert Bunker concerning possible future cartel combat capabilities. Read the whole thing. About MANPAD weapons like SA24 or RBS70 do you know at what price they would sell at on the black market? The SA24 Grinch, which has only been in production since 2004, looks to be too high end for Mexican cartel use. Still, dozens of MANPADS turned up in Algeria in February of this year— many of which were SA24s—so these systems are out on the black market due to the recent civil war in Libya. The much older Swedish RBS 70 would be a better fit if the cartels decided to go down that path. My guess is you are thinking about some sort of Venezuela to Colombian FARC to Sinaloa or Zetas type of transfer. I don’t think the black market price matters in the context of Mexican cartels. If a cartel really wanted a few of these systems, it could easily pay a multiple of the going black market price. Say a lower end system was going for $50,000.00—Sinaloa has the resources to offer ten times that number and not even blink an eye over it. Over the long term, they would not purchase MANPADS that way but for a few systems it would not break their bank. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 OK, How much is YOUR life worth? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2012-12-24 10:25 |