Shoulder-Fired Missiles an Ever-Present Threat to U.S. Planes
Back when the Afghan mujahideen were fighting the infidel Russians, the weapon of choice to take down Russian aircraft was the shoulder-fired missile, or SFM. So prevalent were these missiles, the fighters created a special kind of donkey saddle to get the missiles higher up into the mountains and closer to the targeted airplanes. The preferred model was the 50-pound SA-7 — ironically built by the Soviets.
The recent WikiLeaks leak has revealed information regarding the status of SFMs in Afghanistan today. The biggest revelation is not that incidents involving SFMs have happened, but that they haven’t happened more often.
One incident, in May of 2007, involved an American Chinook helicopter struck by an SFM while crossing the Helmand River. All seven on board were killed: five Americans, a Briton, and a Canadian. The concern with these weapon is how easily transportable they are, which makes them considerably more dangerous than traditional surface-to-air missile systems run by nation states. You can’t target and destroy a missile that’s hidden in someone’s garage or cave — hence their appeal to terrorists. When a couple hundred-dollar weapon is able to take out an aircraft full of soldiers, cargo, and weaponry, the scales tip in favor of the terrorists.
Which is what nearly happened in Nimroz in 2007, as originally reported by the Telegraph’s Tom Coghlan in Kabul (and recently confirmed by WikiLeaks). An American C-130 Hercules flying in southwestern Afghanistan was nearly struck by an SA-7 as it refueled at 11,000 feet. In that instance, flares were fired from the plane to throw the missile off course — which worked.
During the Iraq War, these kinds of near misses were a lot more common because Saddam Hussein had stockpiled thousands of SFMs during his reign. When coalition forces neglected to secure weapons depots immediately after the invasion, many SFMs fell into the wrong hands. Colleagues who traveled in and out of Iraq relayed to me stories of corkscrew landings — hair-raising, spiraled descents meant to confuse the heat-seeking missiles. In November 2004, the Washington Post reported that as many as 4,000 of these missiles may have gone missing:
U.S. officials fear that the shoulder-launched missiles were among the items carried off by groups willing to sell them on the black market to terrorist organizations.
The numbers were likely inflated, or more U.S. and NATO aircraft would be falling out of the air in Afghanistan.
The threat, however, is still there. This past February, the Federation of American Scientists’ Arms Sale Monitoring Project produced a report detailing from which countries the most SFMs are entering the market. Not surprisingly, North Korea won the prize:
A North Korean arms shipment seized by Thai officials in December contained “five crates of MANPADS SAM[s]“, according to an official Thai government report. [MANPAD = man-portable air defense system.]
Runner-up, says FAS, is the United Wa State Army, a Burmese insurgent group in Myanmar, in possession of hundreds of “more sophisticated HN-5Ns from China.”
All this has the Department of Homeland Security — pardon the expression — up in arms. The quiet fear among U.S. aviation bureaucrats is what might happen if a commercial passenger jet were to be shot down by an SFM over the continental United States. Many Americans would stop flying, certainly for a while.
Annie Jacobsen
-Thank you for bringing to light some of the information gleaned from Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. This info, along with Pakistan’s I.S.I’s involvement with the Taliban should give every American pause when thinking of supporting continued war in Afghanistan.
@Annie Jacobsen
You’re light a few zeros.
Did you mean $200,000 per SFM?
Maybe the Russians, Chinese, Iranians
and North Koreans can sell them for $50,000.
Still a good deal if you down a $50,000,000 aircraft.
At least the NATO troops and pilots in Afghanistan understand the threat of shoulder-fired missiles (SFMs) and have countermeasures to avoid them. In addition, they are also on the lookout for them, so at least they are aware of their existance. No such claim can be made for American commercial pilots here in the United States. If an SFM brings down a jumbo jet at a commercial airport here in the United States, it could potentially kill hundreds of people, both on the plane and on the ground. If the terrorists could coordinate several of these attacks in different cities in one day, they could potentially kill more people than on 9/11. It also wouldn’t be that hard to smuggle these weapons into the country.
Actually, I’m surprised that al Qaeda hasn’t tried this already. Either they don’t have the money or the means to get these missiles into the United States, or their availability on the underground arms market isn’t as widespread as we think. Could it just be dumb luck that al Qaeda hasn’t thought of this yet? I doubt it, so it probably means they don’t have enough people to either get a large number of missiles into the country or to coordinate a missile attack in several cities in one day. So I guess this shows some of the tactical limitations of al Qaeda these days.
Which is why al Qaeda is desperately trying to find home-grown jihadists right here in the United States. They would know the territory, not have to worry about getting into the United States, and they would be able to move around airports without any suspicion. But even with all that, you’d still have to get the missiles into the country and al Qaeda hasn’t had much success lately in moving objects like that into the United States. That is why border security, both on our borders with Mexico and Canada as well as our ports, is critical. We also need to beef up security around the perimeter of our airports.
A few years ago al Qaeda tried to shoot down an Israeli El Al jet flying out of Kenya. Fortunately, the missile didn’t hit its target. But it does show that this operation has been planned by al Qaeda in the past. But it seems that the only thing stopping them from shooting down an airliner here in the United States is the means of buying the weapons in quantity and getting them here into the United States. If we continue our lousy security at our borders, we may NOT be lucky for much longer.
Wait til the drug cartels in Mexico get these lovely little beasts. Instead of the Gaza Strip, we’ll have the Sinaloa Strip. And if the outposts in Arizona get em…
Outright war on US soil is a definite possibility in the near future.
The US has sold over 7,000 Stinger missiles since 1982. These are sales to foreign countries, this does not include transfers of Russian missiles CIA arranged to Afghan forces to fight the Russians.
Did we think they would not make their way back into the marketplace.?
The Stingers sold then are almost all fired, and would now be dead in any case, and generaly the same with Russian missiles. If you want these to be useful decades later, you need to take out the batteries and pyrotechnics–some of those must be replaced with new later, good luck getting them, and also the whole mess placed in climate controlled storage.
Complain about soemthing real, if you have to.
I agree – The odds are very, very slim that any of the old US Stingers are still operational. They required care, maintenance, and spares that aren’t generally available. The threat is from new Russian designed systems, sold to whomever has the money, or copied by the Chinese and North Koreans for sale.
Thank you for another good reason not to fly. I don’t anyway because of all the regulations prohibiting any sort of comfort or convenience during the process. What no one in government is willing to admit and most civilians won’t either, is that if I were to be flying on the same plane as you and I was allowed to carry my 357 revolver, you would be much safer from terrorists than you are now. The whole system is now designed so that should there be any sort of terrorist attack in an airliner you cannot defend yourself or anyone else. So I refuse to fly. The threat of SFM’s doesn’t make any difference to me.
That’s pretty much true. The defenseless on board plus the absurd security processes in US airports make it a very unpleasant experience these days. I think it also depends on which airport you fly through. My worst experience was in Toronto several days after the Christmas bomber. No carry-ons, three searches, endless lines, no announcements that flights were being held for passengers who thought, as I did, that we had missed them. The good side was that people were pretty nice, all in the same boat, and tried to help one another. A Canadian guy I was stuck with in line told me that the Pearson Airport was the worst in North America for on-time performance. I believed him, but the Underwear Bomber certainly wreaked havoc – while supplying part or full-time work to new security personnel.
No profiling = no real safety or convenience. At the same time, there are too many people traveling in North America to really use Israeli-style measures.
The ISI is supporting and arming Taliban (Haqani Network) to teeth to attack the occupying forces in Afghanistan just like the CIA is arming and supporting Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) to launch attacks inside Pakistan against innocent civilians. Fair game? Hell yea.
Ignorant blather.
Cite a credible source or be labeled a fool.
UPDATE: President Obama has been seen working tirelessly on his jump shot in order to alleviate the growing threat to our service men & women.
“Corkscrew” is neo-con code for “black.” You are a racist bigot.
Actually, in the context, it is an accurate description of an infra-red homing SFSAM (Shoulder-Fired Surface-to-Air Missile) in “hunt” mode, i.e., it hasn’t gotten a hard lock on the infrared source (the aircraft’s jet engines) and is swinging its seeker head around by flipping its rudders back and forth until it gets a solid IR “footprint” to home in on. The smoke trail left by the solid rocket motor has a distinctive spiral shape when the missile is doing this.
Or did you just forget your /sarc/ tag?
clear ether
eon
Racist Bigot?
When the labels have lost their sting due to groundless and repeated abuse,
it’s time to double up with tautology!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric)
Correct me if I m wrong, but wasn’t there credible evidence that Flight 800 was downed by a missile?
Jack Cashill presented evidence for this in his book on Flight 800. However, it was his theory that these were two US Navy missiles fired at a target near the TWA plane during a drill – in the context of fears about Iran attacking the Olympics in Atlanta. His research, which included highlighting the FBI seizing control of the investigation early on, fit with the eyewitness testimony of about two hundred people on the ground and in boats nearby.
In other words, the FBI killed them, but NEVER took responsibility.
Typical arrogance.
According to Cashill, the President at the time had the FBI usurp the NTSB’s authority. The CIA was also used to create a simulation of the event. The simulation showed the front portion of the jet – severed from the main fuselage and rear by the destructive event – rising something like 3000 feet in elevation after the explosion(s). Cashill’s argument is that this finessed the fact that witnesses saw ‘missile trails’ and then an explosion. He is saying that the Administration-produced simulation turns the missile trails into something else – the sudden ascension scenario. In other words, what the witnesses thought were ascending missiles followed by explosions and the parts of the plane falling were supposed to be the actual explosion and then the amazing rise of the amputated front section. Logic suggests that the official scenario could not be true, given laws of physics.
My mistake. The official claim was that the severing of the two parts of the craft sent the main, larger, back section rising 4000 feet before plummeting to the ocean. Cashill has a six-part series on YouTube.
Followup question:
What is the REAL threat to a rather large passenger airplane from the rather tiny warhead on an SFM? And please do not ask Jane’s or AI/AW: they have a professional interest in making such a threat seem as scary as possible.
You have asked the $64,000 question (heck, with BHO in office, lets make it $64 billion…)
Keep in mind that MANPADS (Man-portable air defence systems) are designed to be used primarily against ground attack aircraft (which tend to be relatively small, often single-engined aircraft – think of something like an F-16) or helicopters, not large transports. This doesn’t mean that such missiles cannot be used against such aircraft, but they are far less effective.
A jumbo jet (747, etc) isn’t going to be seriously affected by even a reasonably modern MANPADS missile. First, these missiles can only engage from the rear of the plane (they are heat-seakers, and will thus target the hot exhaust) which means that the damage (in the event of a hit, which is by no means assured) would only affect the ‘tailpipe’ of the engine that is hit. Given the sheer size of these engines (some are a measurable fraction of the size of the planes that these missiles were designed to shoot down) means that they can absorb a significant amount of damage without catastrophic failure. The normal thrust (i.e. energy output of the engine) is often 3-4 times that of the engines these missiles were designed to go after, hence the missile will likely have far less effect. Finally, large aircraft (particularly passenger aircraft) are multiengined, so a single hit won’t be likely to destroy the target.
Smaller aircraft (such as commuter transports) are better targets, but it is important to keep in mind that these don’t carry the same number of passengers, and are thus often less attractive targets for terrorists. Even so, a MANPADS missile is likely to do little more than damage these aircraft and force an emergency landing. Obviously this is still serious, but hardly the sort of “catastrophic fireball of doom” that Hollywood would lead us to expect.
The short answer is, MANPADS are not likely to be a very serious threat to commercial aviation. It is no surprise that the few dozen cases where such missiles have been used against civilian aircraft, the targets have been largely in the third world, and the attacks have damaged, not destroyed their targets.
Actually, the threat is fairly substantial. These are infrared-seeker guided missiles. They home in on the largest heat source, which in the case of a civilian airliner will be the jet engine exhaust. Even the relatively small warhead of a MANPADS missile, going into a jet engine, can produce enough shrapnel to destroy the engine, possibly wrenching it loose and removing a wing in the process. Thing of it this way – you’re throwing a very large hand grenade into a delicately balanced mechanical device weighing over 1000 pounds, spinning at 40,000 rpm or so, full of flammable liquids. A lot of damage can result.
Exactly so.
Besides the real point of terrorism is to instill fear. How many travelers are really going to be reassured by an FAA statement that the ‘wing is not likely to fall off’?
/(‘Well alright-y then, I’ll take a widow seat just behind the engine so I can enjoy the show.’)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/missile-defense/boldstroke-anti-aircraft-jammer
A new device, called Boldstroke, is the solution to a problem the Army does not want to have: the threat of advanced shoulder-fired missiles to American helicopters. Here are the details.
Interesting to say the least. I just can’t see that type of weapon being used on US soil though. At least not for the forseeable future. What nation would sanction that knowing their future movements here would end double fast. First and foremost the US is a nation of armed citizens. Being that, what would the reaction be if a plane or two, or three, was brought down using a shoulder fired missile, and the firer was a mid-Eastern Islamic terrorist?
I think it’s very likely the people would start profiling on their own.
Excellent point. Hell, we already are riled up enough by the 9/11 mosque and its insensitivity. All it would take is one more attack for all of us to clear out the pool.
I think an air traveler in the US would stand a far greater chance of being in an aircraft struck and downed by lightning.
I hear a lot of talk about shoulder fired missiles, but what about cannons? Think about it, how difficult would it be to smuggle into the country and then conceal an old soviet 23mm cannon on a flatbed, or even under a tarp in the back of a pickup, sit in a parking lot a mile away from an airport right in the flight path of incoming planes and pick off a few planes?
A lot easier, I think, than trying to procure a shoulder fired missile.
Easier to obtain, maybe, but harder to smuggle. Also less effective.
The 23mm cannon you’re talking about is the one used in a quad setup on the ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled, radar-controlled anti-aircraft gun system (SPAAG). Each gun is about seven feet long and weighs about 350 pounds empty. It needs a dedicated mount to handle elevation, depression, traverse, and most of all recoil, and to ensure reliable feeding with its belt-feed system. The result, if done properly, would look a lot like the gadget in the remake of “The Jackal” with Bruce Willis, except even bigger and heavier. (BTW, the gun they called a “ZSU-23-4 14.5mm” in that movie wasn’t a “Zeus 23″ at all; it was the considerably lighter KPV 14.5mm heavy machine gun. The Zeus 23 has never been made in 14.5. They didn’t do their research very well.)
Even if you could whomp up some sort of mount to handle it (like a high-tech Somali “technical”), you’d be missing the thing which makes the Zeus 23 system work; the Sokol radar system. Without it, getting hits on an aircraft, even an airliner in takeoff or landing path, would be next to impossible unless you were literally sitting just at the end of the runway. The radar continually measures everything from aircraft speed and distance to the muzzle velocity of each of the four guns, and automatically compensates for changes. No human gunner, no matter how skilled, can do all that. Plus, you’d only have one gun vs. four; granted, it’s firing about 950 rounds-per-minute, but all that means is that you’ll run through a 150-round belt in about nine and two-thirds seconds. (BTW, the radar system weighs more than the four guns put together.)
And if you got all this together, and assembled, you’re still stuck with something inferior to a MANPAD. The Russian SA-7 Strela, the third such weapon fielded after the U.S. Redeye and British Blowpipe, has a ‘slant range’ of about 4,500 meters, or just under three miles. The maximum effective range of the Zeus 23 with the radar is 1500 meters, or about nine-tenths of a mile vs. an aircraft in flight.
Given the choice between a kludged-up gun that requires a 3/4 ton truck for a mount, and which probably would be caught coming in through customs, and a shoulder-fired homing weapon about the size and weight of a PGA Tour golf bag fully loaded, with three times the range, any tango with two working brain cells will go for the shoulder-fired missile.
Remember, our enemies may be crazy, and definitely are fanatics, but crazy and/or fanatical does not equal stupid. Unfortunately for us.
clear ether
eon
“charged him with conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles powerful enough to take out a fighter jet.”
*ALL* SFM’s are powerful enough to take out a fighter jet, so why the need to have this description?
There’s no way to have security ring around airports that would be big enough to catch something like this. Even 10 – 15 miles away the planes are low enough to easily hit one with a SFM.
I used to work at the Stinger factory and I think his threat is vastly over-rated:
1) No 4-engine aircraft has ever been downed by a MANPAD (Man Portable Air Defense) system, especially not the puny SA-7 (warhead is too small to take a wing off, it just takes out one engine).
2) Civilian airliner kills (about 20) have all been twin-engine aircraft, at low altitude (i.e. no chance to land on one remaining engine). They happened mostly in Africa, so no press coverage.
3) Four terrorists with automatic weapons could hit an airliner on final approach in all four engines by firing from the end of the runaway (evading the cops is another matter entirely, but assume a suicide mentality). There would be significant issues with marksmanship, as well. Note that this is far easier to set up and nobody has even tried it – I wonder why?.
Putting automated IR flare dispenses on thousands of aircraft is way too expensive – not to mention the maintenance costs.
Armored flight deck doors on ALL aircraft over a certain size that fly over the US is a FAR better idea – do we know whether this has been 100% completed yet?
“3) Four terrorists with automatic weapons could hit an airliner on final approach in all four engines by firing from the end of the runaway (evading the cops is another matter entirely, but assume a suicide mentality). There would be significant issues with marksmanship, as well. Note that this is far easier to set up and nobody has even tried it – I wonder why?.”
Most likely because the closest they’d be likely to get would be beyond the outer fence, which at most major airports is about 400 yards beyond the end of the runway for safety reasons. Assuming we’re talking about a 767 or similar airliner here, they’d be trying to shoot up at something which would be either climbing toward them (takeoff) or descending away (landing).
At no point in this geometry would it be less than about 400 yards from them, horizontally or vertically. And the terrorist’s favorite weapon, the AK and its relations, have an effective range of about 300-350 yards. Their chances of hitting the belly of the aircraft are fair; their chances of hitting the engines suck. And at that range, intermediate rounds do a poor job of penetrating aircraft skin intended to stand up to aerodynamic stresses at 500 MPH in flight.
BTW, there have been shoot-downs of jet-powered attack aircraft at very low level (under 300 feet altitude) with “ordinary” rifle fire. In most cases, the aircraft went down because rifle bullets went in its engine intake and did what a pebble does when it hits turbine blades spinning at 40,000 RPM+. FOD, anyone?
cheers
eon
In 1995, just before I retired from the USAF I was invited to an FAA briefing (classified at the time) regarding Man Portable Air Defense (MANPAD) weapons and the threat they posed to large civilian and USAF aircraft. At that time I was a senior counterintelligence manager assigned to the Air Mobility Command and things that could shoot down C-5s, C-17s, C-141s and C-130s were more than just a passing interest.
Previously I had been deployed in Somalia in 1992, 93 and 94 and had been the CI collections manager at the airport at Mogadishu. A few of us with our Somali translators did everything from source development to identification of weapons caches. Contrary to the prevailing view espoused by the CIA we were finding SA-7 MANPADS all over the place. When we began reporting the finds in sufficient numbers to disprove the CIA’s official line they went to phase two, “The missiles weren’t viable after years of inattention.” In fairness, there was a lot of truth to this claim but still, some of the nasty little buggers were capable enough. A quick story. On 12/09/1992, I was on the second plane into Mogadishu the same day of the famous media Marine invasion at the airport.
The next day or so, we had some French Legionnaires coming onto the airfield in an armored vehicle when a local Somali gunman fired what we later identified as a SA-7 at the French, apparently under the impression he was firing some kind of Light Anti-armor Weapon at them. The missile fired and because it hadn’t been “locked” onto any heat source went thermal when it cleared the tube and cork spiraled up towards the sun before it detonated. The French cut down the Somali, but you have to wonder what was going thru his mind when he saw his perfect shot turn into a fireworks display. Anyway, back to the main story
It turns out the SA-7s use some type of chemical two part battery that have to be combined together before the seeker head would operate successfully, unlike our “Stingers” that have a regular dry battery with a finite shelf life. We had found several SA-7s, most sans batteries, but three had their batteries and when we activated them, two worked (we sent the third back to the CIA, never heard if it worked)
Anyway, fast forward to 1995. The FAA, worried about the widespread use of SA-7 et al ran some tests to see how much of a threat they really were; a lot, it turned out.
The FAA had obtained a SA-7 trainer, used to teach troops how to fire them. They had the Russian instructions translated onto a piece a paper then took three G.I.s at random and took them to the end of the runway at Andrews AFB, Md. Then they gave the trainer to each G.I., gave them the translated instructions and told them to shoot down an airplane, no further instructions. The each got three “shots.”
Afterwards they totaled the scores and none of them had anything less than 70% likely success. By the last shots they all scored in the high 80s and low 90s.
One of the planes “shot down” was tail number 27000, (one of the older Air Force One)
At the time the SA-7, while a serious threat, wasn’t considered to be a slam dunk big plane killer because of its small warhead and the anticipated survival of a large aircraft.
Post script, I was on the next to the last USAF airplane out of Somalia in 1994; a C-5 with the entire suite of defense equipment, including an awesome decoy deployer that threw a few hundred high heat flares out. It was a heck of a light show but I was inside and couldn’t see it!!! I saw the video later, pretty amazing. Good thing we hadn’t used them earlier though, we apparently started several (hopefully) minor fires, oh well, that my MANPAD war story.
Have you thought about a book? If not, do think about it. Sounds like it would be a winner! Thank you for your service.
MANPADs are a less likely threat within the US than IEDs
The SA-7 has been a threat since 1968… http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/sa-7.htm
BTW, bird-strikes (http://www.birdstrike.org/) and pilot error (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_error) are far more likely to kill American jet set folks than terrorism.
But 19 terrorists killed nearly 3000 of our families, friends, and neighbors.
Since 2001, our response has been measured. But the cult of death that leading Democrats seem reluctant to name is still looking to push us into all out war on their alleged religion, seeking to kill millions by whatever means possible.
Let’s just say that “peaceful” members of that religion should turn in any armed lunatics among them before something pushes the so-far silent majority over the edge.
“All this has the Department of Homeland Security — pardon the expression — up in arms. The quiet fear among U.S. aviation bureaucrats is what might happen if a commercial passenger jet were to be shot down by an SFM over the continental United States. Many Americans would stop flying, certainly for a while.”
It seems to me the bureaucrats are trying to get Americans to stop flying. What would they be doing differently, if they wanted us to fly?
Well, instead of hiring more TSA baggage checkers, they could require domestic airlines to have the same military defensive flare units on all domestic carriers. (true there are installation and maintenance costs, but chalk it up as “shovel ready” economic pump priming.) Additionally, allow all passengers to pack one Roman short sword or big Bowie knife, and take no prisoners. In other words, while the airplane is in flight make the cockpit and passenger compartments free stabbing zones to combat morons flying while Muslim. Just think of it as immunity from prosecution for passengers–exactly what Muslims diplomats currently enjoy. That should do it I think. Everyone would enjoy flying again, and be on their best behavior.
You mean the Department of Helpless Stupidity? And don’t forget Thousands Standing Around. All highly effective bureaucracies against terrorism I gotta tell ya. (eyeroll)
As for MANPADS…there is at least some threat. Perhaps not as bad as TPTB would like us to think, but some. The real threat to the US? Mexican drug cartels with 120mm mortars and RPGs and 40mm grenade launchers.
Based on my own experience with the old Redeye missile, I would say that OldFan and RetiredE9 are correct. However, even a damaged airplane that landed safely would be a big propaganda victory for the terrorists. That is how asymmetrical warfare works.
If this was such the threat, we would have seen a lot more of it already. What so far? A few helicopters in AF. (Nothing like what the Soviets lost). I think one attack in Iraq. I think one attack in Kenya.
That’s it over the last 10 years?
I’d be more concerned about corruption in the government of AF, since that is what is going to ultimately make or break the effort there.
Perhaps I am merely showing my ignorance here, but I’ll share my thoughts anyway.
I live in southwestern Pennsylvania. For several years, I worked in an office complex across the highway from the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. Driving in the area, mostly on lunch-hour, I got familiar with the locale and the terrain. (After a couple of years, one hardly stopped to look up when a jet was coming in for a landing, not more than a few hundred feet overhead.)
The area is suburbia, but not densely packed, and there are a lot of wooded areas very close to the runways. I suppose that is the case with a lot of American airports. I have often thought it would be relatively easy to establish a small concealed place from which to shoot at incoming or outgoing planes.
Would they actually bring down a plane? (I am addressing several previous commenters here.) Maybe not: I surely don’t know. But a few such attacks, successful or unsuccessful, might bring down the airline industry: terrorism can accomplish its goal even when its mission fails. (I see some others have made this point, too.)
My college roommate and I came up for a techno-thriller plot involving a stolen Redeye and a Pan Am flight back around 1974. Shoulda gone ahead and writ that sucker.
The warhead of all of the russian MANPADS is 400 grams or below of high explosives plus 800 grams of prefragmented shrapnel (metal rods probably).
While it *aims* for the engines, that doesnt’t mean it necessarily will hit the engines. Depending on what the aircraft is doing and where the shooter stands, it might also hit the inboard or outboard wing, the tail assembly or even the bottom rear fuselage.
Wing hits will not break off the wing, but they can hole the fuel tanks which then might catch fire, or they can damage the controls (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident )
There’s also the risk of progressive damage, for example the hydraulics work for the moment but will fail due to minor leaks after some time, hopefully after the plane has made an emergency landing.
Engine hits can destroy the engine, not a certainty since the warhead is so small, but modern civilian jet engines got a kevlar lining designed to keep the fan and turbine blades from spraying out of the engine like shrapnel if they go to pieces. The engine mount is also designed to fall off rather than damage the wing.
However neither is certain. Engines falling off from modern plane have managed to take both large pieces of wing and additional engines with them, leading to crashes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862#Causes )
Also, since the engine is so close to the wing, the missile might inflict damage on both.
Fuselage hits can damage the controls or puncture fuel tanks.
And there is the obvious risk that passengers will be hit by missile shrapnel. While the fragment density is getting really low just a few meters out from the point of explosion, and thus each hit passenger is likely hit only once, and the fragments are going to lose energy from getting through the skin of the aircraft, one fragment can kill if it hits something vital.
Tailplane hits are probably the most dangerous ones. Apart from all the effects of a wing hit apart from fire, the control surfaces in he tail are either non-redundant (rudder) or placed close together (elevator). So a tail strike by even a small warhead could lead to immediate loss of control (compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587 )
So to sum up, while the most *likely* outcome is one destroyed engine, emergency landing and no personal injuries, anything from immediate loss of control to progressive damage that makes it go out of control before it can perform an emergency landing, to emergency landings of various degrees of impact, possibly with a fire on one wing or rear fuselage, is *possible*
My totally wild-ass guess based on reading books about aircraft design, aircraft combat damage, missile guidance, missile warheads and a lot of accident reports is that for a given individual passenger on a large commercial jet that is hit by a small missile on takeoff, the chance of surviving is 70% +- 20%.
I’ll be sure to watch out for SFMs next time I go to Afghanistan, then.
To be honest the SAMS were orginally provided to the majahdeens by the West i.e. America to take down Russian planes now the same group + the Taliban with Pakistani ISI help are directing these missiles at NATO forces to be honest we have digged up our own grave for this to happen “reap what you saw”
A few important facts were missing from tbis important article:
1. The North Korean shipment of missiles found by Thai authorities were headed to terrorists. North Korea had the “intention to smuggle these weapons to Hamas and to Hezbollah,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Lieberman said in Japan, where he was on an official visit earlier this year.
2. Many El Al planes are already equipped with anti-missile devices.
The use of these weapons at the moment stems from old Russian and New Irainian equipment and North Korea not able to supply many terroist groups due to the sanctions from the UN.