Word: stinger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sold sophisticated AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia, and conducted joint military exercises with Egypt and other countries. And the CIA began one of its longest and most expensive covert operations, supplying billions of dollars in arms to a collection of Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviets. The arms shipments included Stinger missiles, the shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that were used with deadly accuracy against Soviet helicopters and that are now in circulation among terrorists who have fired such weapons at commercial airliners. Among the rebel recipients of U.S. arms: Osama bin Laden...
...thing, these activities have led to weapons ending up in the wrong hands. In the aftermath of the operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s, hundreds of Stinger missiles that the CIA used to arm the Afghan rebels remain unaccounted for. The agency has been trying to buy them back but has recovered perhaps only a hundred or so. Among the seven Afghan rebel groups, all the major ones received the agency's shoulder-fired Stingers, which can effectively bring down an aircraft at an altitude of 6,000 to 8,000 ft. or more. Twenty-four...
...antiquated Soviet-era SA-7 Strela that missed only because of equipment malfunction or operator error. Shoulder-launched SAMs are efficient and easy to fire and require little instruction; al-Qaeda trainees were taught how to use them in the Afghan camps. The U.S. supplied hundreds of shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to the mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan; Washington was so concerned about their potential for trouble afterward that it offered as much as $100,000 per missile to try to buy them back. But shoulder-fired missiles made in Yugoslavia, Pakistan and China slosh around the weapons black...
...missile found in Saudi Arabia remained in its tube, burn marks suggested a bungled effort to fire it, U.S. officials said. A Sudanese with possible al Qaeda links was arrested in connection with the missile. "The FBI possesses no information indicating that al-Qaeda is planning to use 'Stinger' missiles or any type of MANPAD (MAN Portable Air Defense) weapons system against commercial aircraft in the United States," the FBI warning said. "However, given al-Qaeda's demonstrated objective to target the U.S. airline industry, its access to U.S. and Russian-made MANPAD systems, and recent apparent targeting...
...November 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, the chairman of a panel established to study U.S. vulnerabilities to terrorism talked about the SAM threat. "Nobody knows whether or not the enemy has their hands on a Stinger missile and can get it delivered into this country," James Gilmore, a former governor of Virginia, told the committee. "But it's a lot easier to do that, and a lot more available than, for example, a smallpox attack, which would be more difficult to get, and to deliver, into this country...