(Original image via DVIDS, adjustments by Code and Dagger)
The United States said it has destroyed tens of thousands of MANPADs — man-portable shoulder-fired missiles — since it started hunting the dangerous weapons 15 years ago, but the threat is hardly gone, according to a new report.
In a report published today the U.S. State Department claimed the government’s inter-agency MANPAD Task Force (MTF) had worked with foreign nations to “eliminate[] more than 41,000 MANPADS and Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM) which pose a similar threat around the world.”
MANPADS have long been acute fears of security professionals for two reasons: they’re powerful enough to take out commercial airliners and small enough to smuggle with relative ease around the world. Or, as the State report puts it, “The most common types can fit into an automobile trunk.”
The U.S. task force, which is headed by the State Department but includes the intelligence community, was stood up in 2006, but U.S. officials and experts went public with especially dire warnings after the popular revolution in Libya in 2011.
After the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, military stockpiles were looted by local militias, strongmen and, it was feared, terrorist groups. Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL and one of the Americans who was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, told me weeks before his death that chasing down MANPADS was part of his job in the country.
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The recent State Department report doesn’t give specific figures on the progress the anti-MANPAD effort has made in Libya, but says that since 2011, the U.S. government has spent more than $49 million removing MANPADs and other ordinance there.
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The report notes, however, that the illicit MANPAD threat is hardly restricted to Libya. A dizzying map created by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey shows their presence in around the world.
(Credit: Small Arms Survey)
The organization reports that it’s believed more than 500,000 MANPADs are currently in service globally, and more than 80 non-governmental groups have at one time been in possession of at least some of them since 1998.
“[I]n the hands of terrorists, criminals, or other non-state actors, MANPADS pose a serious threat to commercial and military aircraft around the world,” the State Department report says. “Non-state actors obtain MANPADS from a number of sources, including regional black markets and state sponsors.”
The Small Arms Survey says that in the last 50 years more than 40 civilians airliners have been hit by MANPADS.
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