Working my way through Youtube videos posted from Libya and I came across a set of three videos recording abandoned and looted weapons at a dump outside Sirte in Libya posted by a US reporter who travelled to Libya.
Kudos to Kevin Dawes for going to Sirte, filming the site and then uploading the footage for folks like me to take an interest in.
At first it didn’t seem like anything too exceptional, yet more mortar bombs and SAM-7 Strela’s. The SAM-7s are nothing to be blase about but in truth they pose a very limited threat to any modern military aircraft and without proper training and good placement they represent a limited threat to civilian aircraft.
Having said that, at about 1 minute into the second video we get a good shot of the markings on the side of one of the crates and the news is not pretty. The label on the crate is 9M342 which means that this missile was an IGLA-S, one of the latest models of Russian MANPADS (NATO designation SA-24). This is a much more capable missile that is significantly less vulnerable to the usual anti-MANPADS counter-measures such as flares. Its capability against civilian aircraft, which generally lack even the most basic countermeasures, is likely to be much greater than that of the SA-7.
Skip forward to 3 minutes into the video and we get excellent closeups of the various stencils and ID plates on the crates, something which is a little harder to find on the internet than you might initially expect.
The possibility that any number of these missiles is now circulating in terrorist or other non-governmental circles constitutes a significant increase in the MANPADS threat, initially in the Eastern Mediterranean but more than likely globally over time. The current disorganization in Libya, combined with the weakness of the Egyptian state, adds to the problem by potentially making it easier for the weapons to leave Libya destined for any of a number of different conflict zones.
It is not unreasonable to assume that if these abandoned crates are lying about totally unsecured there is a better than even chance that additional crates, in better condition, have left the area. I expect that the Libyan civil war has those folks working the MANPADS proliferation issue tearing their hair out.
The increasingly likely prospect of a syrian civil war can’t be making things look anymore positive either.
Update
SA-18 gripstock case
Here we go. The third video features a lot more MANPADS footage, though the missiles look more like SA-7s than SA-24s. Also note the silver missile tube at the 18 second point. This is an inert training round definitely looks like a SA-7.
There were two things I did not notice in either of the videos, or to put it another way, I noticed their absence. There were no battery / cooling units and no gripstock / launcher units. These elements in working condition are much more valuable than the missile tubes. I have actually inferred the presence of at least a few gripstocks, probably for the SA-7s from the fellow at 21 seconds who has what look a lot like the standard Strela goggles around his neck. These are found in the briefcase like box that contains the gripstock.
Proliferating Thoughts 