Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters and also used against low-flying cruise missiles. These short-range missiles can also be fired from vehicles, tripods, weapon platforms, and warships.
Overview
MANPADS were developed in the 1950s to provide military ground forces with protection from jet aircraft. They have received a great deal of attention, partly because armed terrorist groups have used them against commercial airliners. These missiles, affordable and widely available through a variety of sources, have been used successfully over the past three decades, both in military conflicts, by militant groups, and by terrorist organizations.Footnote 1 in original source (CRS RL31741): "Shoulder-fired SAMs have been used effectively in a variety of conflicts ranging from the Arab-Israeli Wars, Vietnam, the Iran-Iraq War, to the Falklands Conflict, as well as conflicts in Nicaragua, Yemen, Angola, and Uganda, the Chad-Libya Conflict, and the Balkans Conflict in the 1990s. Some analysts claim that Afghan mujahedin downed 269 Soviet aircraft using 340 shoulder-fired SAMs during the Soviet-Afghan War and that 12 of 29 Allied aircraft shot down during the 1991 Gulf War were downed by MANPADS."
Twenty-five countries, including China, Iran, Poland, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States produce man-portable air defense systems.CRS RL31741 page 1Wade Bose, "Wassenaar Agreement Agrees on MANPADS Export Criteria", Arms Control Today, January/February 2001, p. 1., quoted in CRS RL31741 Possession, export, and trafficking of such weapons is tightly controlled due to the threat they pose to civil aviation although such efforts have not always been successful.
The missiles are about in length and weigh about , depending on the model. MANPADS generally have a target detection range of about and an engagement range of about ; aircraft flying at or higher are relatively safe.Marvin B. Schaffer, "Concerns About Terrorists With Manportable SAMS", RAND Corporation Reports, October 1993, quoted in CRS RL31741
Missile types
Infrared
Infrared homing missiles are designed to home-in on a heat source on an aircraft, typically the engine exhaust plume, and detonate a warhead near the heat source to destroy or otherwise damage the aircraft. These missiles use passive guidance, meaning that they do not emit heat signatures, making them difficult to detect by aircraft employing countermeasure systems.CRS RL31741 page 1-2
First generation
The first missiles deployed in the 1960s were infrared missiles. First generation MANPADS, such as the early prototypes of the American Redeye, early versions of the Soviet 9K32 Strela-2, and the Chinese HN-5 (A copy of the Soviet Strela-2), are considered "tail-chase weapons" as their uncooled spin-scan seekers can only discern the superheated interior of the target's jet engine from background noise. This means they are only capable of accurately tracking the aircraft from the rear when the engines are fully exposed to the missile's seeker and provide a sufficient thermal signature for engagement. First generation IR missiles are also highly susceptible to interfering thermal signatures from background sources, including the sun, which many experts feel makes them somewhat unreliable, and they are prone to erratic behaviour in the terminal phase of engagement.CRS RL31741 page 2 While less effective than more modern weapons, they remain common in irregular forces as they are not limited by the short shelf-life of gas coolant cartridges used by later systems, requiring only a battery, but the missiles themselves have degraded over the years; For instance, during the Syrian Civil War, the Ahfad al-Rasul Brigades captured 50 Strela-2M missiles (decades past their warranty) from a Syrian Army base in late 2012, but none of them worked.
Second generation In 1967, the American FIM-43C Redeye was the first mass-produced design to make use of cooled-detector technology, followed by the Soviet Strela-3 in 1975 and Chinese HN-5A, QW-1 in the late 1980s. They use gas-cooled seeker heads and a conical scanning technique, which enables the seeker to filter out most interfering background IR sources as well as locking on the cooler portions of the jet exhaust plume and other IR-emitting portions of the aircraft, giving them a limited capability of head-on and side engagements.
Third generation Third generation infrared MANPADS, such as the Chinese QW-2, and the Soviet 9K38 Igla, uses dual waveband infra-red tracking; while Chinese HN-6B, French Mistral, and the US FIM-92B, use rosette scanning detectors to produce a quasi-image of the target. Their seeker compares input from multiple detection bands, either two widely separated IR bands or IR and UV, giving them much greater ability to discern and reject countermeasures deployed by the target aircraft.
Fourth generation Fourth generation missiles, such as the canceled American FIM-92 Stinger Block 2, Russian Verba, Chinese QW-4, and Japanese Type 91 surface-to-air missile use imaging infrared focal plane array guidance systems and other advanced sensor systems, which permit engagement at greater ranges."Raytheon Electronic Systems FIM-92 Stinger Low-Altitude Surface-to-Air Missile System Family", Jane's Defence, October 13, 2000, quoted in CRS RL31741
Command line-of-sight
Command guidance (CLOS) missiles do not home in on a particular aspect (heat source or radio or radar transmissions) of the targeted aircraft. Instead, the missile operator or gunner visually acquires the target using a magnified optical sight and then uses radio controls to "fly" the missile into the aircraft. One of the benefits of such a missile is that it is virtually immune to flares and other basic countermeasure systems that are designed primarily to defeat IR missiles. The major drawback of CLOS missiles is that they require highly trained and skilled operators. Numerous reports from the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s cite Afghan mujahedin as being disappointed with the British-supplied Blowpipe CLOS missile because it was too difficult to learn to use and highly inaccurate, particularly when employed against fast-moving jet aircraft.Timothy Gusinov, "Portable Weapons May Become the Next Weapon of Choice for Terrorists", Washington Diplomat, January 2003, p. 2., quoted in CRS RL31741 Given these considerations, many experts believe that CLOS missiles are not as ideally suited for untrained personnel use as IR missiles, which sometimes are referred to as "fire and forget" missiles.CRS RL31741 page 2-3
Later versions of CLOS missiles, such as the British Javelin, use a solid-state television camera in lieu of the optical tracker to make the gunner's task easier. The Javelin's manufacturer, Thales Air Defence, claims that their missile is virtually impervious to countermeasures."Land-Based Air Defence 2003-2004", Jane's, 2003, p. 37., quoted in CRS RL31741
Laser guided
Laser guided MANPADS can use laser beam-riding guidance where a sensor in the missile's tail detects the emissions from a laser on the launcher and attempts to steer the missile to fly at the exact middle of the beam, or between two beams. Missiles such as Sweden's RBS-70 and Britain's Starstreak can engage aircraft from all angles and only require the operator to continuously track the target using a joystick to keep the laser aim point on the target: the latest version of RBS 70 features a tracking engagement mode where fine aim adjustments of the laser emitter are handled by the launcher itself, with the user only having to make coarse aim corrections. Because there are no radio data links from the ground to the missile, the missile cannot be effectively jammed after it is launched. Even though beam-riding missiles require relatively extensive training and skill to operate, many experts consider these missiles particularly menacing due to the missiles' resistance to most conventional countermeasures in use today.CRS RL31741 page 3Richardson, Mark, and Al-Jaberi, Mubarak, "The vulnerability of laser warning systems against guided weapons based on low power lasers", Cranfield University, April 28, 2006
Another laser guidance method is the semi-active laser (SAL) homing, which the missile seeker head tracks the target that is being continuously painted by the shooter. The QW-3 utilizes a SAL seeker, which is highly resistant to infrared countermeasures. The QW-3 is the only MANPADS in the world using SAL guidance mode.
Notable uses
Against military aircraft List of Soviet aircraft losses during the Soviet–Afghan War Falklands War order of battle: Argentine air forces#Casualties and aircraft losses Falklands War order of battle: British air forces#Casualties and aircraft losses On 27 February 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, an USAF F-16 was shot down by an Igla-1. On 1 August 1992, during the Battle of Bahadur Post, Indian forces shot down a Pakistani Lama helicopter, carrying the local commanding officer Brigadier Masood Anwari, was struck, killing him and two others. On 16 April 1994, during Operation Deny Flight a Sea Harrier of the 801 Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy, operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, was brought down by an Igla-1. On 30 August 1995, during Operation Deliberate Force, a French Air Force Mirage 2000D was shot down over Bosnia by a heat-seeking 9K38 Igla missile fired by air defense units of Army of Republika Srpska, prompting efforts to obtain improved defensive systems. On 27 May 1999, the Pakistani Army Air Defence corps used Anza Mk-II was used to attack Indian attack aircraft during Operation Safed Sagar.The missile aided to shoot down an MiG-27 of the Indian Air Force that suffered a subsequent flameout of its engines and the Pilot, Kambampati Nachiketa was captured. An FIM-92 Stinger was also used to shoot down an Indian MiG-21, piloted by Ajay Ahuja the following day. List of Russian aircraft losses in the Second Chechen War List of Coalition aircraft crashes in Afghanistan List of aviation shootdowns and accidents during the Iraq War 2002 Khankala Mi-26 crash: On 19 August 2002, a Russian-made Igla shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile hit an overloaded Mil Mi-26 helicopter, causing it to crash into a minefield at the main military base at Khankala near the capital city of Grozny, Chechnya. 127 Russian troops and crew were killed. In the 2008 South Ossetia War, Polish made PZR Grom MANPADS were used by Georgia. Syrian Civil War On 3 February 2018, a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 piloted by Major Roman Filipov was shot down by a MANPADS over rebel-held territory while conducting airstrikes over Syria's northwestern city of Saraqib. War in Donbas Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)
Against civilian aircraft Air Rhodesia Flight 825 is the first example of a civilian airliner shot down by a man-portable surface-to-air missile. The pilot of the aircraft managed to make a controlled crash landing. Air Rhodesia Flight 827 was also shot down in February 1979 by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army with a Strela 2 missile. All 59 passengers and crew were killed. The 1993 Sukhumi airliner attacks involved 5 civilian aircraft shot down within a total of 4 days in Sukhumi, Abkhazia, Georgia, killing 108 people.Northrop Grumman fact sheet On 6 April 1994, a surface-to-air missile struck the wing of a Dassault Falcon 50 as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda. A second missile hit its tail. Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira were among the nine passengers on board. The plane erupted into flames in mid-air before crashing into the garden of the presidential palace, exploding on impact. This incident was the ignition spark of the Rwandan genocide.