WEAPONS, U.S. Expands List of Lost Missiles Options

[CrowNotAngelGRL]

WEAPONS
U.S. Expands List of Lost Missiles
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: November 6, 2004


ASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - American intelligence agencies have tripled their
formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems
believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least
4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted
for, government officials said Friday.

A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be
outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of
2,000, American officials said.

The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq
remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a
senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence
that they have left the country.''

It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel
removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or
whether they disappeared from warehouses after major combat ended.

Shoulder-fired missiles - which are small, lethal and easy to use -
are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western
intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that
Al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down planes. In 2002, attackers
who launched two small Russian-made SA-7 missiles almost hit a
commercial aircraft taking off from Mombasa, Kenya. The new estimate
of a larger number of the missile systems was discussed at a
classified Defense Intelligence Agency conference in Alabama this
week, the officials said. They declined to discuss the methods by
which the new estimate had been reached, saying that it was
classified.

American intelligence analysts have said in the past that during
Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraq stockpiled at least 5,000 of these
missile systems, and that fewer than a third had been recovered. The
shelf life of the missiles can vary, with battery life depending on
the conditions under which they are stored.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last fall that "no threat is
more serious to aviation" than the shoulder-fired missiles, which can
be bought on the black market for as little as $5,000, are about five
feet long and weigh as little as 35 pounds. More than 40 aircraft
have been struck by shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles since the
1970's, causing at least 24 crashes and more than 600 deaths
worldwide, according to a State Department estimate. In Iraq, the
missiles have been used in more than a dozen attacks on American
planes and helicopters, including those taking off and landing at
Baghdad's international airport.

In recent months, the number of successful missile attacks on
American aircraft and helicopters in Iraq has declined, but American
officials have said the reason has largely been the precautionary
measures taken by the United States military.

An unclassified study released in June 2004 by what is now the
Government Accountability Office cited "U.S. government estimates"
that a few thousand of the portable missiles were "outside government
controls.'' A separate study released in November 2003 by the
Congressional Research Service cited counterterrorism experts in
saying that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 shoulder-fired missiles might
be available to Iraqi insurgents.

The new estimate by American intelligence agencies was described by
government officials who had access to the classified intelligence
report. They said the tripling of the number represented the first
formal effort to determine how unaccounted Iraqi stockpiles may have
compounded the surface-to-air missile threat. Only several hundred
shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles from the Iraqi arsenals have
been turned in to American forces in a buyout program, the government
officials said.

A Defense Department official said Friday that more than one million
shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles had been produced since the
weapons were first manufactured in the 1950's, with 20 countries
producing more than 35 different types of weapons. According to the
accountability office study, 500,000 to 750,000 shoulder-fired
surface-to-air missiles are still believed to be in the worldwide
inventory. Many of the older missiles are militarily obsolete and
have been destroyed.

Until the invasion of Iraq, many of the shoulder-fired weapons
believed to be outside government controls were those provided by the
United States and its allies to mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan to
assist in their resistance against Soviet forces during the 1980's.
Those weapons included American-made Stinger and British-made
Blowpipe missiles, but by December 2002, American-led forces in
Afghanistan had captured more than 5,000 of the missiles from the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, according to news reports at the time.

The Defense Intelligence Agency conference on the worldwide threat to
civil aviation posed by these portable air defense systems was held
Wednesday and Thursday by the agency's Missile and Space Intelligence
Center, at Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Ala.

The range and accuracy of the weapons can vary widely by type, with
the Russian-made SA-16 regarded as the most lethal in Iraq's prewar
arsenal. It is not known how many of the missiles may have been fired
at American planes and helicopters during the invasion in 2003.

In an effort to address the missile threat, the Department of
Homeland Security has asked government contractors to find a way to
protect passenger jets from small shoulder-fired missiles. The
technology has been installed on military planes for years, using
laser-jamming equipment and decoy flares to deflect the missiles, and
some contractors have determined that passenger planes could be
outfitted with antimissile technology relatively soon.

The State Department has also started an aggressive effort to
persuade other countries to join in an effort to limit the
availability and proliferation of the weapons. In July, the House of
Representatives passed a bill that calls on the president to pursue
even stronger measures, and directs the administration to expedite
approval of new antimissile technologies. The Senate has not yet
acted on the bill.

The new government estimate follows the disclosure late last month
that more than 300 tons of powerful explosives had disappeared since
early March 2003 from an Iraqi site previously monitored by the
International Atomic Energy Agency. Video images that emerged after
that report appears to suggest that at least some of the explosive
material disappeared after the fall of the Iraqi government. Unlike
those explosives, surface-to-air missiles in Iraq were not sealed or
monitored by weapons inspectors before the war and may have been
widely dispersed among the Iraqi forces in the field.

===

The U.S. produces most of the "lost" weapons in the world.
Maybe we ought to think about this.

Andy Johnson

You know, I love my country. Despite all the money, despite
all the trickery, despite all the lies, despite all the
manipulation, I sincerely believe that most people in my
country were in favor of defeating George Bush last week.