There was a TV show in the US last night describing the activities of the US in aiding the Afgan resistance in the early to mid 80’s after the Soviet intervention there.
In one activity, against the advice of all the professionals involved, Pres. Reagan and Congressman Wilson (the leader of the congressional faction supporting the Afgan resistance) decided to send “Stinger” surface to air missiles to the resistance fighters. Obviously a dangerous move as these weapons might be turned against the US in the future, but they went ahead and history shows it to a successful decision with few if any of the missiles ever being used against western aircraft.
My question is: how hard is it to use these weapons? According to the story the Army generals were convinced that untrained Afgans couldn’t use them. And in the story the first deployment of the missiles didn’t go well-the missile left the tube but the engine did not ignite and it fell to the ground in front of the operator. Was that a misfire due to operator error (that is do these missiles eject but not ignite if the operator makes a mistake), or a defective missile? Are these missiles all that tricky to use? Like any weapon, I am sure there is a world of difference between firing the weapon and using it successfully and effectively, but can someone learn how to fire this weapon without extensive training? In the story, were the generals correct or was Charlie?
Never fired one but have had them explained to me. IIRC, there is nothing the operator can do that would cause an ejection of the missle but not have the motor ignite.
Must have been a faulty missle. I saw the program you mentioned and I love Charlies line that “if it has a trigger they can use it!”
The Stinger man-fired missile does use a two-stage launch - a gas launch from the tube, before the rocket motor ignites. There is also an argon/chemical gas recharge step to power up the missile systems before firing, and if this is not done, then the missile may fail to fire the rocket motor.
This was used as a plot point in a book I read (maybe a Dale Brown technothriller), so it may have been an issue for the Afghan rebels.
The Russian missle (the Arrow) comes out of the launch tube with the main rocket motor flaming. As a result the gunner tends to loose his eyebrows. As a result, the gunner is less accurate.
The Stinger is more advanced. A gas generator pops the missile out of the launch tube (a ‘cold launch’). Once a safe distance away, the main rocket ignites and the missile goes downrange.
One result of all this is that the Stinger gunner must superelevate his aim. That is he must aim well above his target. This is because of the missile’s loopy behavior in the first few meters of flight. So the Stinger is not so easy to fire.
Thanks!
I can well imagine that hitting a target with one of these is not easy. I was concentrating on the firing step (one step at a time! ). Out of curiosity, is there a lot of recoil in firing one of these missiles? While it doesn’t leave the tube very fast, it does have a lot of mass (compared to a bullet say), so I wag that F=ma means there is a significant kick. Yet the few videos I have seen, the operator is just calmly standing there.
Very little recoil. The rocket exhaust (even from the cold launch) kicks high velocity mass backwards (it is a rocket, not a gun) to balance the small mass going slowly forward, and the “equal and opposite reaction” is into the air behind the operator. He is just holding the guide rail. If someone stuck their chest on the end of the rocket as it fired, they would feel the recoil as the rocket exhaust blew a hole right through them.
They are recoiless. That is to say, rockets don’t work like a gun where the expanding gas pushes the projectile forward and the weapon backwards with equal and opposite force.
A rocket end pushes gas out the back and the rest of the projectile forward. It’s in a tube so it doesn’t really push against the launcher all that much.
When we first returned looking for our former friend, Osama, we had a buy-back program for missiles we had donated during the Soviet Era. After paying some pretty good money for junk, the program was ended. Evaluation was that normal aging plus storage under crappy conditions rendered any remaining missiles unserviceable.
The launch motor is actually a rocket motor (you could argue that all rocket propellant motors are gas generators) rather than a specific gas generator. The Stinger has plenty of back blast. A missile with a gas generator is the Javelin, you can fire it from a confined space like a bunker without blasting your compatriots out the windows and doors. There is a new version of the LAW rocket designated CS (confined space) also to lower back blast. Other soft launch missiles may have a “moving mass” that shifts rearward to balance the forward acceleration of the missile.
The initial Afghan use had some teething pains. The steps regarding interrogation of friend or foe could be skipped, if it flew - it was a bad guy. But you do have to acquire the target. The missile sends both a tone and vibration to indicate acquisition. A lot of operators would get excited with a Soviet Helicopter in the sight and fire early. In a somewhat poor design sequence, you can launch the missile without acquisition but the Safety and Arming controls won’t fire the flight motor or arm the warhead. That’s the plunk that happens a few meters outside the launch tube = no flight motor. Early missiles didn’t have this “feature”. There’s at least one incident of an early missile being fired without a lock; flying aimlessly, and deciding the reviewing stand was kinda warm looking to the IR sensor. Another incident had the missile fall to the ground; roll around a bit; then had the flight motor kick in with unintended results.
The launch motor actually has a lanyard that attaches it to the flight motor. The launch motor gets things going, yanks the lanyard to the flight motor ignition system as it falls away, and assuming acquisition - the flight motor kicks in. One version of the Stinger had something called the low cost launch motor. Some problems with dimensions and a really heavy lanyard would propel the parts back at the operator from the kick in of the flight motor. Resulted is some nasty facial injuries.
Kind of getting off the OP. But some more. The super elevation requirement has gone away in the latest versions. This was driven by increased usage on aviation platforms where controlling the amount of up-pitch was problematic. You could lose the acquisition lock.
One thing I’ve wondered about the Stinger system: What are the boxy radiator-like flat things on the right side of the launcher? Something to do with keeping the IR seeker cool, perhaps?
Immediately after 9/11 there was a thread asking about Stinger missiles and a Doper with some experience with them stated that Stingers were pretty fragile things and that they were “status symbols” for Afghanis, who really had no idea (or the means) to store them properly.
). Out of curiosity, is there a lot of recoil in firing one of these missiles? While it doesn’t leave the tube very fast, it does have a lot of mass (compared to a bullet say), so I wag that F=ma means there is a significant kick. Yet the few videos I have seen, the operator is just calmly standing there.