Friday, March 25, 2011

How Did Libya Get Hold Of Advanced Surface-To-Air Missiles

Photo: Wikimedia

Who Sold Libya Its Supermissiles? -- The Danger Room

The U.S. government calls it the “one of the most lethal” weapons of its kind — an advanced, portable missile, designed to knock planes out of the sky. A variant of it just showed up in Moammar Gadhafi’s army and nobody seems to know how exactly it got there. But diplomatic cables, unearthed by WikiLeaks, suggest one potential culprit: the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

Aviation Week’s eagle-eyed reporter David Fulghum spotted a Russian SA-24 Grinch surface-to-air missile mounted on a Libyan army truck in recent cable news footage. And that’s a cause for concern: The SA-24 is more accurate, longer-flying, and more lethal than than earlier models of surface-to-air missiles. It also has a dual-band infrared seeker and is more difficult to jam than older systems.

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My Comment: Russian export controls of some of their weapon systems has always been a joke. What surprises me is that we have yet to experience a terrorist attack in which terrorists use these surface to air missiles to shoot down (en masse) a number of passenger airliners, and all at the same time.

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