Word: stinger
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet Il-76 cargo plane lifted slowly into the bright morning air over Kabul International Airport last week. As it did, a string of incandescent flares dropped from the aircraft, a necessary defense against Stinger missiles, the U.S.-made, heat-seeking, antiaircraft weapons used by the mujahedin, Afghanistan's resistance. On the airport perimeter, sunburned Soviet soldiers stood around a formidable new stone-and-cement guard post topped by a hammer-and-sickle flag. Their thoughts were turning toward withdrawal from their flinty outpost. "Who wouldn't like to go home?" asked Victor Avershin, a blond, 19-year-old private...
...Mobile. Among those greeting Bush at the airport is a bevy of Azalea Trail maids in phosphorescent Scarlett O'Hara crinolines. One reporter wonders whether the Secret Service has checked under the hoopskirts: "You could hide a Stinger missile in there." Bruce Zanca, a Bush advanceman, uses a ramp phone resting on the runway to call Air Force Two. The telephone is one of the 101 special phone lines that will be installed for the Bush entourage that day at Government expense...
...everywhere on the offensive. Soviet and government troops have firm control only over the largest cities, while the rebels, thought to be 200,000 strong, are more unified and better armed than ever and range freely across the countryside. An important reason for their new mobility: U.S.-supplied Stinger antiaircraft missiles that are being used with increasing success to deprive Soviet ground forces of the air support they long used to protect troops and supply lines...
...rocket launcher at Nawa Pass, southeast of Asadabad, completely annihilated an Afghan army post in the valley below. In the past an operation of such scope and intensity would have been rendered impossible by attacking Soviet aircraft. "We are not afraid of the Russian jets anymore," a Stinger operator boasted to TIME's Rob Schultheis. "If they fly high enough to escape the Stingers, they are too high to hit us with their bombs anyway...
...number of years" and is believed to have up to 5,000 troops in the country, mostly in the Aozou Strip. The Reagan Administration has provided $33 million in military aid to Chad over the past ten months and last week was considering a new request for antiaircraft Stinger missiles. The White House hopes that Libya's losses in the war will help lead to a popular uprising against Gaddafi. But though the Libyan leader acknowledged in a speech two weeks ago that defections from his army have become a major problem, he is not about to give...