Word: oerlikon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...their throats, or throw them off a cliff." Despite heavy Soviet pressure, the resistance fighters remain confident. "The mujahedin are better organized than before, better unified than before, with better morale than before," says Massood Khalili, a guerrilla political officer. New weapons like surface-to-surface rockets, Oerlikon antiaircraft guns and the Stingers have helped immensely. The Stingers, for example, are potent weapons against the once omnipotent Mi- 24 helicopter gunship. Battlefield communication and coordination among mujahedin groups have also improved with the introduction of field radios and walkie-talkies...
...newest and most important additions to the local guerrilla arsenal, however, are two highly accurate rapid-firing Swiss 20-mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns that keep the deadly Soviet Mi-24 helicopter gunships at bay. There are reportedly some 40 Oerlikons now in Afghanistan. In the absence of reliable shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, they give the rebels effective antihelicopter weapons for the first time...
Next morning four MiGs attack the BM-13 and Oerlikon positions, dropping their tons of high explosives and vanishing as quickly as they appeared. The bombs miss by a wide margin. Less than an hour later mujahedin rockets are once again falling on Barikot. The war goes...
...hunting tanks, five times as many A-10 planes could be bought for the same money as F-15Es. For ground-to-air defense, the same outlay would buy 30 Oerlikon 35-mm guns for every DIVAD, the new and troubled computer-guided artillery. For antitank warfare, 30 times as many 106-mm recoilless rifles could be bought as TOW missiles. A comparison of antitank ammunition shows that the unproven Maverick, an air-to-ground missile with heat-seeking sensors, is 75 times as expensive as reliable 30-mm shells...