Way ot, but I sure many USAF techs presently or veteran are here. Press reports that the baddies in Afghanistan may have as many as 100-200 left over shoulder fired US Stinger heat seeker SAMs. Causes me to wonder. AS all of these were given them by the CIA during the Soviet invasion, they must all be about 20 or so years old...As they are heat seeking guided, surely the missle itself if not the launchers posses electronics powered by a battery of some sort obviously...Forgive my ignorance but I am unaware of any single use, even lithium batteries with 20 year shelf life, are there any? Further again, obviously these are all of about 1980 manufacture dates...Any USAF types here know the specifics? One wonders if the baddies were able to purchase and install replacements...At the rate the FBI is digging out literally hundreds of Ben Laden's
moles here in the US I fully expect within a week or two it will be anounced by the feds they have found at least a couple dozen of them in the sales departments of our military contractors and suppliers, who have happily shipping him weapons/replacement parts for years under the DOD, FBI's and CIA's noses! So let's all hope all the stingers are now useless! If anyone feels my comments in bad taste or a waste of list bandwidth I apologize..