Islamic State Might Have Taken Advanced MANPADS from Syrian Airfield
August 25th, 2014Laying the backstory for the next spectacle.
Via: Washington Post:
Islamic State militants stormed a Syrian airbase over the weekend, routing the remaining elements of the country’s army from northern Raqqah province and reportedly seizing a cache of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
The seizure of Tabqa air base, while not the first installation of its type to fall to militants, highlights the Islamic State’s gains in the region and the group’s continued pilfering of advanced military equipment, particularly the surface-to-air missile systems known as MANPADS, short for Man Portable Air Defense Systems.
Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher at the Switzerland-based research group Small Arms Survey and author of a recent report on MANPADS in Syria, believes that the takeover of Tabqa airbase could mark a “significant proliferation” of the weapons across the region.
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Even so, both Spleeters and Schroeder stressed that MANPADS are “systems” made up of various components that have to be assembled before they can be used to shoot down an aircraft.
“There’s a limited shelf life for these type of weapons,” Spleeters said. “There’s a lot of parameters in the picture.”
Most MANPADS, for instance, depend on batteries, which usually lasts only a few years when in storage and a few seconds when activated. When powered, the battery allows the missile to lock on to its target, but only for “a brief window,” Spleeters explained. Once the battery is expended, the weapon is useless.
It’s possible militants are trying to work around that limitation by using a homemade recharging system for one particular MANPADS variant. C.J. Chivers, of the New York Times, first reported the case of a Syrian rebel with the SA-7 outfitted with such a system.
“If they have a recharging capability there’s no telling how many SA-7s might be available to them,” Spleeters said.
