MANPADS. Why?
 

I can appreciate that MANPADS would have been very useful in the Cold War context of a massive conventional war. But surely there comes a point at which their military usefulness is outweighed by the immense coup that just one missile could deliver to a terrorist, rogue state or criminal group.

Around forty civilian aircraft have been hit over the last few decades. In some cases with dreadful loss of life, in others this was narrowly averted by exceptional airmanship. Admittedly most of these involved former Soviet or Chinese made missiles but why are we still making them?

Because groundforces with no effective air defense capabilty are vulnerable to attack aircraft.

Hope this helps.

And, when AQ decides to buy a Cessna, it might be useful to hit it before it does something suicidal.

Also stopping production wouldn't do anything in the short term, it's a bit like locking the gate after the horse has bolted. They are already out there.

Answer = $ $ $ $ $

I read the other day, the 3 most lucrative industries in world are
3). Automobiles
2). Cocaine
1). Arms dealing.

I don't dispute they have a use, A squared the question is whether they're potential more useful to our enemies. Nutloose that's a valid point; there must have been hundreds "liberated" in Libya alone. But it's also a cop out in that they do have a shelf-life and we can hardly expect others to restrict them if we won't.

Nope, we can expect them to move in and clean up on the lucrative sales we have just declined!

On reflection withdrawn my last remark here and apologise if I offended anyone.

Gosh but I love these kinds of discussions.

The "We" thing is superfluous.

It is "They" that matter.

"They" will build them...."They" will give them to Terrorists. Then They will use them against Civilian Airliners.

What "We" do re building the things has f@ck all to do with what "They" do.

If one believes those who wish to lead us to believe Tens of Thousands of the things went missing as a result of the West's tumbling of Qadaffi....then perhaps that should be the focus of the OP's concerns and not the MANPAD's we build, store, safeguard and control.

It is those we don't store, safeguard, and control that are the threat.

They seem to be finding valuable use in the civil war in Syria - so however wrong that war is - the MANPADS appear to be doing a job...

SAS, agreed, up to a point but "we" lose stuff too; a pallet of TOW missiles got left on a beach never to be seen again. A pile of star streak missiles was pictured lying unattended in a car park during Olympics. We handed stingers to folk we now consider terrorists. Many British Army weapons found their way into IRA hands during the troubles and the Syrian ones being put to "valuable use" may yet bite us hard!

I thought they had a set use by time limit built into them, so they wouldn't be of use to anyone else. A sort of fire or forget it.

Is that strictly true? We handed weapons mainly to the Mujahideen; they are/were very different to the Taliban. A large element of the Mujahideen that fought the Soviets became the Northern Alliance and they were the people who ousted the Taliban from Kabul. Similar people, different nuance perhaps?

Yes, I thought Stingers had a battery time life and as much
as the US wants to recover unused one's, they are worried
about them being used.

Roland,
Well put!

Nutloose,
Wishful thinking I fear - hence why the CIA sponsored the Stinger 'buy back' programme.

MANPADs have proven relatively robust, and can last for years in poor conditions.

Back to the original question - have a look at Israeli A4 losses in the Yom Kippur War (over 50...) and several were attributed to the layered Soviet style embedded AD systems moving with Arab armoured formations - SA6, ZSU23/4 and SA7. The latter was such an issue the Israelis extended the jet pipe on the A4 to attempt to detonate the (relatively) small warhead away from vital systems and hope the A4 would survive.

Strela (SAM-7) too IIRC.

They last a very long time and still work just fine. In the case of the SA-7 and its copies you only need a voltage source, nothing more.

There may be some confusion when you say 'battery life'. Once activated, the battery only provides electrical power for spool up and cooling for a relatively short period - and it's a one use only; if you lose the tgt you need a new battery before attempting to engage again. Battery 'shelf life' is actually pretty good, dependant on how they're stored.

So were back to the old invade invade bit again are we?:(

The Poor Bloody Infantry around the world want something they can fire against aircraft - they just don't believe that their airforce will be there 100% of the time and be 100% effective

If they don't get it they'll blaze away with whatever guns they have anyway

MANPADS are a cheap method of making life more uncertain to ground-attack aircraft and so they do have an effect

Trying to uninvent them is just impossible