Stinger as An AT Weapon

[JOHN THURSTON]

Well, I knew it was possible, theoretically, but actually seeing a film clip of Mujahadeen during the Soviet/Afghan War use what was clearrly a MANPADS "Stinger" in the Anti Tank Role was -ah-a bit unusual.

Well, to be sure I could see the "Muj" and the Lancher, the firing and the missiles 'sidewinder' like trail curving and recurving and recurving towards an unidentifiable Amored vehicle, and the strike of the missile, but I could not precisely determine the vehicle hit, except to say that it was not a truck.

Perhaps the "Muj" might have wasted a missile on a BMP or other light armored vehicle.

I recall a clip, amny many years old, of a sidewinder missile itself actual being used against a ground heat source.

But-no==never any films.

It is possible that if the attach had been undertaken in the winter, when the contrast between the vehicles engine and related heat was highest, that it would have made such an attempt even more likely to succeed.

the "Stinger's" cousin, the Sidewinder missile, now issued in the Mk "M" mode ("lima" mode was in service at this time of the Falklands war and without this mark being supplied to the British, the Harriers would have had a much harder time dealing with the doughty Skyhawks and svelt Mirages with which the Argentine Airforce was then equipped.

I Know the Super Entendards were operation-able from the Veintecinco de Mayo (sp) and one assumes that the A-4, originally designed as a a carrier aircraft, could have also operating or trained to operate from Argentina's sole carrier. The Carrier was retired and not replaced in 2000.

the Skyhawk was another possible launch platform for the sidewinder, but I have never received any reliable data that Argentine A-4's caried them of if the A-4's in Argentine Service were operational from the "20th of May".

after the sinking of the General Belgrano (a former US Light Cruiser and Survivor the Pearl Harbor Attack (as the USS Phoenix) Argentine Suface forces took "the better part of valor" and stayed ostensibly where British Undersea assets could not reach them.

This is a bit off the original track.

But if a Stinger could be used in the AT mode, the Sidewinder could as well, in a pinch, also be so used.

J