The Looting of Qaddafi Munitions Depots Continues.

Wednesday, September 7 2011

The Looting of Qaddafi Munitions Depots Continues.

….details on The New York Times. The ongoing theft and disappearance of heat-seeking missiles and other lethal arms points to a failure of the de facto authorities that could cost people — in Libya and elsewhere — their lives. The Federation of American Scientists and Human Rights Watch wonder aloud, justifiably: When will Libya’s new leaders get this right?

But a point of clarification is in order, for those who follow closely weapons and their distribution.

At the latest depot known to be looted, in Tripoli, nine cases of SA-7s and one case of SA-24s were found emptied and left behind. Each case had held two missiles and two battery/cooling units required to fire them. Earlier reports suggested that the single crate of SA-24 heat-seeking, anti-aircraft missiles discovered at the depot had contained the shoulder-fired variety of this missile, and described these weapons as modern, Russian-made Stinger equivalents now loose in Libya. Based on what we know so far, that’s not quite right, no matter the story going viral out there as I type this.

Here’s why: While the SA-24 is one of Russia’s state-of-the-art short-range anti-aircraft missiles — with a greater resistance to countermeasures, a more powerful warhead and a more menacing engagement envelope for ground-to-air use— to date the only known launchers for the system in Libya have been of the bulky, vehicle-mounted variety. The Russian manufacturer confirmed to Aviation Week in the spring that it had sold SA-24s to Libya, but said it sold only the multiple-tube launchers to go with them. Whether this is true or not is an open question, and there are ample grounds to view Russian arms-export statements with skepticism. But it is also important to be precise: as yet there is no known evidence that the manufacturer’s claim is false, or that Libya possessed the so-called “grip stocks” that would allow a shooter to fire these missiles from the shoulder, which would make these weapons, once loose, a much more worrisome bit of post-conflict contraband.

More reporting would be welcome here, as would vigilance in examining grip stocks in the field or grip-stock cases left in arsenals, and in closely perusing the available photographs and videos of Libyans handling MANPADS* and their components.

But as of this writing, the findings at the latest looted depot point more toward continued failures of Libya’s new authorities to secure inherited stocks of lethal arms than to any any new types of weapons breaking out. Considering the potential dangers of a complete set of shoulder-fired SA-24s falling into the wrong hands, this could be a good bit of news in an otherwise dreary report.

More reporting, and background, on the Libyan MANPADS can be found here.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

A pair of looted SA-7s found along the road to a Libyan arms depot under rebel control. July, in the mountains of Libya’s west. By the author.

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*MANPADS = man-portable air defense systems, the bureaucrat’s label for a class of lightweight, heat-seeking, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which have been near the top of the list of worries in counterterrorism and aviation security circles for several years. The best known variety, at least for American readers, is the Stinger. The prevalent system found in Libya to date has been the SA-7, a Soviet-designed pre-Stinger system that is no longer especially effective against modern military aircraft but still a grave threat to civilian aircraft. The Libyan military had, according to the available records found by journalists and arms researchers to date, at least 7,000 of them — though the United States government has estimated that the actual MANPADS procurement in Libya over the years might have been almost three times that. By way of background, MANPADS typically require three components to be complete — the missile in the tube, the battery/cooling unit that activates the weapon and a grip stock that allows an individual shooter to aim the weapon, acquire a target, and fire the missile. Untold numbers of Libya’s SA-7s are now loose, along with grip stocks to fire them — one of the unwelcome consequences of the war.