New additions to the Taliban armory are the 12.6mm DshK heavy machine guns mounted on trucks, and new IEDs strapped to legs rather than to the waist hiding them from soldiers who demand suspects show inside their top clothing.
It has been reported that a surface-to-air missile strike by the Taliban that shot down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand in 2007 and killed seven soldiers. Recent reports have indicated a number of near misses.
The U.S. is particularly interested in retrieving unused Stingers from the stockpile of up to 2,000 distributed in the 1980s to the Mujahedeen. Afghan intelligence chiefs are authorized to pay $5,000 for former Soviet SA-7 missiles and $15,000 for a Stinger.
The New York Times, in its normal uninformed or ill-informed reporting, is reporting that the U.S. has been keeping it secret that the Taliban has used Stinger type missiles.
DefenseTech.org reported that during an April 2009 press conference, Lt. Gen. Gary North, U.S. Air Forces Central Commander, acknowledged that the Taliban do in fact use IR MANPADs (heat-seeking, shoulder fired missiles) in response to a reporter’s question on the subject.
An Intelligence report from January 2009 says an Iranian agent had arrived in Marjah in Helmand carrying four Stingers.
Additionally, the noted author James Patterson wrote in his latest book with Maxine Paetro, PRIVATE, that a character who served in Afghanistan was shot down by a Stinger type MANPAD.
It seems that everyone from Air Force generals to fiction writers, except the New York Times, knew that man portable anti-air missiles were being used by insurgents in Afghanistan.
RPGs remain the most lethal weapon system used in theatre accounting for the majority of aircraft losses.
The improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remain the main killer of NATO troops on ground patrols and in road convoys it is also an indiscriminate terror weapon killing and injuring thousands of civilians.
