The Stinger Finds a Home

...Fourth, Afghan guerrillas can better besiege isolated Soviet and Afghan government garrisons, which can be resupplied only by helicopter...

...Anti-Stinger forces argued that some of the missiles might fall into the hands of terrorists, since foreign-supplied weapons move briskly on the Pakistan black market...

...This reduces the threat from Stingers, but exposes the helicopters to heavy machine gun fire or even to rocket-propelled grenades...

...programs for assisting anti-Communist insurgencies (except the contras), 208 was dominated by a coalition, led by Deputy Director of the CIA John McMahon, which opposed providing the Stinger to guerrilla movements...

...Press leaks from government For seven years a coalition of second-level members of the Reagan Administration succeeded in blunting pressure to provide any weapons beyond heavy machine guns and foreign copies of the obsolete SA-7...

...assistance to the Afghans was a political plus worldwide, as the Pakistanis' continuing support of U.S...

...Supporters of the Afghan resistance in the United States had long drawn attention to the need to send effective air defense weapons like the Stinger...

...over seven years to summon the nerve to send the Stingers...

...In fact, a well-placed heavy machine gun could do the job...

...As a result, fewer Soviet aircraft are shot down, but virtually none of their rockets and bombs hit their targets...

...In Afghanistan, not only is there no concrete, reinforced or otherwise, but there is certainly no chance of finding or building a munitions bunker that complies with Army drawings 652-686 through 652-693...

...It took almost a year after the decision to send Stingers before the U.S...

...Though moderately effective, this tactic increases the number of aircraft needed for a mission and warns the resistance of the impending attack...

...For unlike American policy-makers, the Soviets understand that war cannot be finessed...

...Anti-Stinger forces argued that, since American public diplomacy in the Afghan war concentrated almost exclusively on the unmitigated evil of Soviet actions, any visible American support would cast the war as an East-West conflict rather than another cruel consequence of Soviet expansionism...

...While it did not formally seek to terminate Stinger shipments, it would have had the same effect...

...In addition, the U.S...

...It is little wonder that the Afghan resistance has agitated on behalf of Stinger shipments since the early years of the war...

...Marin Strmecki, a former editorial assistant for Richard Nixon, is a research associate in the office of Zbigniew Brzezinski at the Center for Strategic and International Studies...

...Furthermore, the "exterior doors shall be class 5 steel vault doors secured by two-key operated high-security padlock and hasp (mil spec P-43607...

...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987 sources indicate that this step will be taken in late 1987, though the range of the specific weapons systems under consideration may be too short to threaten the most important Soviet air bases...

...From interviews with some of the participants, a picture of the arguments each side employed emerges...

...When the Kremlin provided surface-to-air missile sites to defend Hanoi and Haiphong and SA-7s to arm units in the field, it did not parcel them out one by one—it shipped them in by the ton...

...The contrast to Soviet actions in support of the Communist Vietnamese could not be more stark...

...High performance aircraft could be shot down by heavy machine guns, but the kill rate was low...

...Pundits often remark thatthe war in Afghanistan is the Soviet Union's Vietnam, but it has been the United States which has pursued a policy similar to its tentative, gradually deepening engagement in the 1960s...

...Resistance operators say they have scored hits at a remarkable rate of about 60 percent of all Stingers fired...

...must overcome a fundamental problem in its approach to helping not only the Afghans but also the other anti-Communist insurgencies: incremental escalation...

...At this point, while Stingers still enjoy superiority in the skies, the United States should think ahead to the next phase of the air war...

...The amendment stipulated, in part, that Stingers should not be supplied to the Afghan resistance unless the missiles were stored in "magazines of reinforced concrete, arch-type, and earth-covered whose construction is at least equivalent in strength to the requirements of the Chief of Engineers (Department of the Army) drawings 652-686 through 652-693...

...The latter might work well for Western troops tutored on the home version of Atari's Missile Command, but a typical Afghan, who has no experience in video game parlors, finds it very difficult to use against an almost-invisible target flying at several hundred miles an hour at an altitude of several thousand feet...

...Administration sources say that at a critical moment in President Reagan's deliberations, CIA Director William Casey interceded to advise the President to approve the shipments...

...Early on, the issue fell under the jurisdiction of the 208 Committee, an inter-agency task force named after its meeting room in the Old Executive Office Building...

...The SA-7 could be easily diverted if aircraft dropped aerial flares...

...The two major deliveries of Stingers to the Afghans have been widely reported: about 200 were sent to Pakistan in late 1986 and 600 in mid-1987, to be parcelled out to the resistance as the missiles were expended in combat (though as much as a quarter of them may have been diverted into Pakistani armories...

...Second, resistance supply caravans are less susceptible to strafing or surprise attack by airborne commandos...

...Pro-Stinger policy-makers responded that the missiles, by raising the costs of the war, would encourage the Kremlin to settle the conflict politically, and perhaps even impel the Soviets at last to take up more seriously divisive regional issues in the U.S.-Soviet relationship...

...Moreover, there was no commitment to replenishing supplies as the resistance expended the initial shipment, resulting in a prolonged period in early 1987 during which no Stingers were available...

...W hile the Stingers have greatly bolstered resistance capabilities and morale, it would be wrong to become complacent...

...Third, resistance forces can mount larger attacks on Soviet positions because the Stingers can stop close-in air support of Soviet ground units...

...But for seven years a coalition of second-level members of the Reagan Administration—not only in the State Department but also in the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency—succeeded in blunting pressure to provide any weapons beyond heavy machine guns and foreign copies of the obsolete SA-7...

...Thus was created the so-called "Ever-Ready line," which forbade the provision of even Ever-Ready batteries since they too were traceable to the United States...

...policy showed...

...The battle was played out in interagency committees...

...Pro-Stinger forces pointed out that the missile sent to the resistance—the Stinger Basic—was not the state-of-the-art version...

...moreover, its technology was already in Soviet hands...

...When it did, it sent a small number—almost a trial sample—and gave the Soviets about six-months warning of the shipment through leaks while thedecision was being made...

...If the Red Army failed to cope with the Stinger, it was not for lack of opportunity...

...Opponents of sending Stingers had long argued that leaders in Islamabad wanted to tread a very careful line in supporting the resistance in order not to provoke direct Soviet retaliation against Pakistan...

...could establish strict accounting for the Stingers sent to the Afghans in order to minimize the risk of diversion...

...role would be undeniable...

...On July 16, in an uncharacteristically candid statement, Deputy Foreign Minister Spokesman Boris Pradyshev conceded to the foreign press in Moscow that "increased military supplies" from the United States—including the Stingers —had given the guerrillas "a short-lived superiority...

...The Russians are no longer using helicopters," one resistance general said following a major military operation last July...

...In May 1987, Senator Dennis DeConcini, along with allies in the Pentagon, sought to cut off the resupply of Stingers through an amendment he introduced to the Nunn-Goldwater military reform act...

...Provoking the Kremlin...

...weapons stocks and technological superiority...

...He added that while countermeasures were being taken, these weapons had created "additional difficulties," leading to greater casualties for the Soviet and Afghan government air forces...

...Their previous air defense weapons—small arms, 12.7mm heavy machine guns, some 14.5mm anti-aircraft guns, and a handful of foreign-made copies of the Soviet SA-7--provided a minimal kind of air defense...

...The Red Army has taken several countermeasures, which have varied widely in effectiveness: •All air strikes are conducted from much higher altitudes...

...With Stingers in Afghanistan, the U.S...

...Some resistance groups, moreover, were purported to sympathize with the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini...

...In early 1986, after a massive letter campaign by the pro-Afghan lobby and pressure from congressional supporters like Senator Gordon Humphrey, Senator Robert Dole, and Representative Charles Wilson (a Texas Democrat), the White House brought the Stinger issue out of room 208...

...There were powerful coalitions on both sides of the Stinger issue, though a general split developed in several departments between political appointees who were in favor of sending the Stingers and career bureaucrats who opposed doing so...

...Unlike its technologically primitive predecessors, such as the U.S...

...On the battlefield, the Stingers have had four significant effects...

...It should focus on providing long-range mortars and specialized training so that resistance forces can strike major Soviet airbases from a range of five miles, destroying not only runways but also exposed aircraft...

...But the bureaucratic and congressional opponents of sending more Stingers will almost certainly regroup and try again, probably arguing that the risk of terrorist diversion remains too high to continue the policy...

...A Stinger is a 35-pound, shoulder- borne, heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile with a cross-terrain range of three miles and a vertical range of 4,500 meters...

...Anti-Stinger policy-makers in the Pentagon opposed sending the missiles on the grounds that the shipment would deplete our weapons stocks...

...Clausewitz aptly wrote that "war is not an exercise of the will directed at inanimate matter" but rather one in which "the will is directed at an animate object that reacts...

...Redeye and the Soviet SA-7, the Stinger does not need to rely on the intense heat of a jet's rear exhaust to home in on its target...

...That tactic has the potential of dealing a devastating blow to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan...

...As one opponent put it, "There will not be an airplane or an airport in the civilized world which will be safe...

...Apparently, before Wilson's meeting with Zia, high-level American officials had never raised the Stinger issue with their Pakistani counterparts...

...Charged with developing U.S...

...The Soviets themselves have begun to acknowledge the damage...

...Again, while this tactic often works, it also increases the complexity of air strikes and therefore reduces the number of sorties run against resistance forces...

...Stingers have also proved decisively superior to the approximately 300 British Blowpipe missiles the resistance has received from Britain and the United States...

...We must also accept that the Soviet Union will eventually develop countermeasures to the Stinger...

...When Soviet helicopters try to attack resistance positions in valleys, they fly at tree-top altitude because the Stinger cannot fire down from mountain tops or along depressed trajectories...

...The cause was further aided when the leader of the UNITA insurgency in Angola, Jonas Savimbi, visited Washington and drew support from an even broader political spectrum to send Stingers to anti-Communist forces, including the mujahedeen...

...By pressing the Stinger issue, the U.S...

...In the end, advice to the President split within each executive department...

...Then another pair of jets will swoop over resistance forces from an unexpected direction in a low-altiTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987 19 tude, high-speed bombing run and escape before Stinger teams can redirect their weapons...

...First, permanent resistance base camps near the front and major logistics centers near the Afghan-Pakistani border are now almost invulnerable...

...While visiting President Zia ul-Haq in early 1986, Congressman Wilson had asked whether the United States could send the missiles to the Afghans, and Zia had raised no objections...

...This translates into an average loss of between 475 to 511 Soviet aircraft per year, enough to put 'See my "Road to Kabul," TAS, April 1986...

...Terrorist diversion...

...Anti-Stinger officials argued that Stinger shipments might spoil the U.N.-sponsored Afghan peace talks and provoke the Soviet Union to supply advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Communist insurgencies in pro-American countries...

...It took the U.S...

...During this recent operation, I did not see a single helicopter, and heard only one in the distance...

...And should a bomber slip past, the Stinger's speed—Mach 2.2—enables it to overtake the fleeing quarry...

...W hen I traveled with the resistance into Afghanistan in the spring of 1985,' the mujahedeen reiterated at virtually every step that if America sent them missiles to shoot down Soviet jets and helicopters, they could march all the way to Moscow...

...While the resistance has not yet opened up offices in the Kremlin, the Stinger missiles have enabled the Afghan guerrillas to wound the Soviets as never before in the eight-year Afghan war...

...Pro-Stinger officials countered that plenty of weapons capable of shooting down civilian airliners were available to the world's terrorists, such as the SA-7 which, although less effective than the Stinger, could certainly shoot down alumbering civilian airliner...

...instead, its infra-red sensors can fix on a target from any angle, which means an operator does not have to wait for the enemy aircraft to pass over him and take its best shot before he can fire...

...But before that happens, the U.S...

...When Soviet air forces choose to subject an area to saturation bombing, they first release several clusters of high-intensity illumination flares attached to parachutes, hoping their light will confuse the Stinger's infra-red sensor...

...Replacing those losses could potentially consume one-third to one-half of the Soviet Union's annual production of combat aircraft...

...In the fall of 1986, the United States delivered the first batch of sophisticated Stinger antiaircraft missiles...

...the Afghan government air force—which has only about 115 combat aircraft—out of business...

...his intervention was apparently decisive...

...Resistance and Western sources confirm that in areas in which guerrilla forces received sufficient supplies of Stingers, even the Mi-24 flying tank has virtually been grounded...

...sent a number adequate to establish a continuing flow of about 100 missiles per month to the front...

...Pakistani sensitivity...

...About half a dozen fighter-bombers will circle over the battlefield above the range of the missile...

...When Soviet jets attempt close-in air support of ground units, they try to deceive the Stinger operator...

...Congress and conservative organizations weighed in on the side of sending the missiles...

...Some suspected that the Pakistanis had entered into tacit agreements with the Soviet Union about what they would and would not do to help the Afghans...

...There had even been veiled threats on Capitol Hill that if the Administration failed to act there would be a push to earmark part of the Afghan appropriation to the purchase of Stingers...

...But it soon became clear that Pakistan did not object...

...and they could not destroy the heavily armored Mi-24 helicopter gunship, the so-called "flying tank" that had wreaked havoc with the resistance since the beginning of the war...

...Fortunately, a motion to table the amendment prevailed...

...A bureaucratic victory in the United States was an essential precondition for this military victory in Afghanistan...

...Whereas the Stinger is a true "fire and forget" weapon—once launched it steers itself—the Blowpipe requires the operator to guide themissile with a radio-relayed thumb control...

...Also, of the hundreds of Stingers in Afghanistan some would undoubtedly be captured by the Soviets, enabling them to study the technology not only to devise countermeasures but also to improve their own anti-aircraft capabilities...

...Or it might lead Gorbachev to cut off the nascent American-Soviet detente...

...Pro-Stinger officials countered that people around the world still recalled that the war began with Moscow...

...Plausible deniability...

...They were not afraid to attack because we did not have anything to shoot them down...

...Before, they would hover so close above us that our clothes would flap from the wind...

...would be exposing an ally to unwarranted perils...