Stingers Stung Hamas

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CyraxHB

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GAZA CITY — The Hamas regime acquired U.S.-origin air defense systems but was unable to use them in combat.

Hamas sources said the Islamic military has acquired the Stinger man-portable air defense system. The sources said the Stingers were acquired from smugglers in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in 2008 and deployed in the 22-day war against Israel in January 2009.

"We were disappointed by them, and they were found to have been useless," a Hamas source said.

The source said Hamas smuggled four Stinger systems in 2008. The source said the Hamas military deployed the Stingers against Israel Air Force AH-64 Apache attack helicopters during strike missions in the northern Gaza Strip.

"Our gunners couldn't fire the weapon," the source recalled. "A notice came up on the display saying 'friendly aircraft.'"
Industry sources said Raytheon, producer of Stinger, installed identification friend/foe capabilities more than a decade ago. The sources said this would prevent Stinger from being fired against any aircraft used by the U.S. military.

Another Hamas source said gunners deployed Stinger along with heavy machine guns in attacks on Israeli helicopters during the war in the Gaza Strip. The source said one Stinger surface-to-air missile was launched, but the projectile veered off course and struck a Hamas gunner squad.

"The Stinger was drawn by the heat of our guns rather than the engines of the Israeli helicopters," the source said. "At that point, we stopped using this weapon."

The sources said Hamas has abandoned plans to acquire additional Stingers. Instead, the Islamic army has been ordering the Russian-origin SA-16, or Igla-1, surface-to-air missile system, with a range of five kilometers.
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Source: http://digg.com/d1o0xE

The advantages of modern weaponry.
 
An entire article and subsequent thread about Hamas' weapons firing skew!? Wow, must be a slow news day...
 
DJK said:
An entire article and subsequent thread about Hamas' weapons firing skew!? Wow, must be a slow news day...
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Actually the point is intelligent US weapons that cannot be used by their enemies.
 
LOL.. maybe they were just too dumb to actually read the instructions! :D
 
BrandonH said:
Actually the point is intelligent US weapons that cannot be used by their enemies.
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That's not the purpose of Friend or Foe Identification. It's to prevent friendly fire casualties in combat. You never know who your alies will continue to be, the systems can probably be modified to delist the Israelis from the friend list, otherwise the enemy could just emulate the beacon from a captured craft on their own and win the war that way.
 
PeterCH said:
That's not the purpose of Friend or Foe Identification. It's to prevent friendly fire casualties in combat. You never know who your alies will continue to be, the systems can probably be modified to delist the Israelis from the friend list, otherwise the enemy could just emulate the beacon from a captured craft on their own and win the war that way.
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That's why I find the story a bit fishy.
 
Ever hear of PgP encryption, well the IFF codes work on a similar manner, in that the stingers have the public key of the aircraft. Removing this from the system will make the system fail. The cycle is check for IFF, check friendly list, check standard enemy list, then no iff found, before shooting. So they would only be able to hit an IAF aircraft if it's IFF was down.
 
So these stingers don't work in the presence of friendly aircraft? Being heat seekers & all, they'd have no way of 'knowing' if u targetting an enemy or friendly!
 
larrychang said:
So these stingers don't work in the presence of friendly aircraft? Being heat seekers & all, they'd have no way of 'knowing' if u targetting an enemy or friendly!
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This is how they work.

The integrated IFF subsystem allows the Stinger operator to query a target aircraft to determine if it is friendly. Before firing, the operator depresses a button on the gripstock assembly, emitting a coded radio signal. Aircraft equipped with friendly IFF systems will recognize the coded signal and respond with the appropriate coded reply. The IFF subsystem emits one tone if it authenticates a friendly aircraft, and another if the aircraft is unknown. The IFF subsystem is intended to prevent friendly-fire incidents.
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Source: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/stinger.htm
 
Interesting info there, thanks.
So hamas was 2 stupid to realize the weapon wouldn't stop them shooting down friendlies, it just informs you that the 'copter is a friend. Hope they not reading this:d
 
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