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A version of this article, titled “Protect Airliners From SAM Threat” was published on February 17, 2014, in Aviation Week & Space Technology’s Viewpoint section (p. 58).
Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, former CIA director General David Petraeus issued a serious warning about the international threats posed by shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (Manpads) in the hands of al Qaeda and other terrorists. Petraeus referred to the January 27th downing of an Egyptian military helicopter by a Russian Strela-2 missile (aka SA-7) by al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar Beit al-Maqdis in the Sinai Peninsula. “Shooting down a helicopter with an apparent shoulder-fired missile is a big deal. … Our worst nightmare [was] that a civilian airliner would be shot down by one,” he said. … “The concern over an attack on civilian aviation flows not only from the loss of passengers’ lives, but also from the likely economic consequences that would follow—a worldwide grounding of air traffic that might bring the global economy to a screeching halt.”
The threat of Manpads in the hands of al Qaeda and terrorist groups has escalated dramatically. After Moammar Gadhafi’s killing by rebels in Libya, on October 20, 2011, some 20,000 Manpads went missing. Months later only 5,000 were reportedly destroyed. Where the remaining 15,000 missiles are is unclear.
While the Obama Administration issued a statement assuring Americans that most of Libya’s weapons, including shoulder-fired Manpads, had been secured, NATO’s then-military committee chairman, Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, was not so sure. His fear that Libyan Manpads could be scattered “from Kenya to Kunduz [Afghanistan]” subsequently materialized.
Libyan, Iranian and possibly Syrian MANPADs found their way to Salafi Bedouins, Hamas and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups in the Sinai, forcing restriction of Israeli military and civilian air traffic in the area. A year after Gadhafi’s fall, Israeli officials reported that an SA-7 had been fired at one of their military aircraft over the Gaza Strip (AW&ST March 12,2012).