Fired MANPAD found near Cairo airport
 

This is an odd but developing story. Last week, someone claimed to have found a recently fired MANPAD in a rubbish dump near Cairo Airport - well within range of departures and arrivals. The story bubbled around for a little bit, then the Egyptian government denied it and said that a claimed Youtube video of the discovery was an old video from 2011 and nothing had happened. The story got closed down, videos deleted, original source retracted claim, etc.

However, some neat forensic research by a group of young German infojocks has found and analysed the video, and (to me, convincingly) shown it to be very recent. That's quite a long piece, but worth it if you want to know why they came to that conclusion - and get the background of the journalism scene in Egypt.

Someone is popping off missiles near Cairo Airport and the Egyptian government really doesn't want anyone to know.

Wow, that was some interesting work.

I automatically believe the exact opposite of anything by Egypt when it comes to aviation security. I didn't believe them when MS990 was brought down by a pilot. I did not believe them when they said Metrojet was not brought down by a bomb. I don't believe anything they say about the MS A320 Paris-Cairo which went missing last year. I didn't believe them when they said the rockets which almost hit an English aircraft on approach was 'an exercise' and was nowhere near the plane on approach to SSH.

In essence, we have had a MANPAD found very recently and very close to the Cairo airport. This is deeply worrying. I'm only glad that my airline don't fly there. I long for a time that Egypt is removed from our route map permanently. Cairo is by a few hours drive from airports served by many tourist airlines.

So from evidence within the extended photo, the image is recent. But a fired launcher is no evidence that it was fired there; it could have been used anywhere and dropped in Cairo just to make people nervous. 'Nervous', after all, is the little brother of 'terrorized'.

Somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better.....

In fact somewhere it would attract less attention then being fired in close proximity to an international airport ...

Interestingly, the photos in the article show a gripstock still attached to the tube - these are valuable and reusable. I wonder why that was discarded?

The UK travel industry is still very keen on returning to Egypt but with this discovery and also the continued attacks on Coptic Christians in the Sinai the possibility of a return must remain remote. Even if the manpad had been planted to promote fears of terrorism the attacks on the Coptics is very real.

I would think that a manpad would not often fail to hit a commercial plane. And even if it had its firing would not be something that went unnoticed. My opinion is that it was dumped there.

Perhaps because it still looks suspicious when stuffed in your carry-on luggage.

Well, he seems to have comprehensively owned Egyptian security services.