Man-portable Air-defense Systems - Countermeasures

Countermeasures

Man-portable air defense systems are a popular black market item for insurgent forces. Their proliferation became the subject of the Wassenaar Arrangement's (WA)22 Elements for Export Controls of MANPADS, the G8 Action Plan of 2 June 2003, the October 2003 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, Bangkok Declaration on Partnership for the Future and in July 2003 the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Forum for Security Co-operation, Decision No. 7/03: Man-portable Air Defense Systems.

Understanding the problem in 2003, Colin Powell remarked that there was “no threat more serious to aviation” than the missiles, which can be used to shoot down helicopters and commercial airliners, and are sold illegally for as little as a few hundred dollars. The U.S. has led a global effort to dismantle these weapons, with over 30,000 voluntarily destroyed since 2003, but probably hundreds of thousands are still in the hands of insurgents, especially in Iraq, where they were looted from the military arsenals of the former dictator Saddam Hussein, and in Afghanistan as well. In August 2010, a report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) confirmed that “only a handful” of illicit MANPADS were recovered from national resistance caches in Iraq in 2009, according to media reports and interviews with military sources.

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