IRAQ: The tactics used by Iraqi insurgents to shoot down a US helicopter on Sunday were perfected under American tutelage, writes Tom Clonan.
Sunday's missile attack on a US CH-47 D Chinook heavy-lift helicopter in Iraq was most likely carried out by guerrillas using low-tech Soviet-manufactured SA-7 surface-to-air missiles.
Easily concealed about the person, these missiles weigh as little as 15 kilos and are a mere five feet in length when fully assembled. Fired from the shoulder, the missile uses an infrared heat-seeking mechanism to lock on to the target aircraft. It has a range of up to 12,000 feet and is most effective against large, slow-moving aircraft - particularly in the take-off or landing phase of flight.
The US Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, with its distinctive twin rotors and massive fuselage, is particularly vulnerable to such attack.
Ironically, the tactics used by Iraqi insurgents to shoot down the helicopter were perfected under American tutelage by Mujahideen guerrillas during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Using the US Stinger Missile, the Afghan mujahideen were able to destroy dozens of Soviet Mi-24 Hind and Mi-8 Hip helicopter gunships.
Borrowing from the mujahideen tactics, it is likely that guerrillas in Iraq will attempt to use the SA-7 to the same effect against US targets.
The C-47 D Chinook is equipped with a number of features and counter-measures designed to defeat incoming missile attack. The Raytheon APR/39A radar warning system will detect incoming radar guided missiles and will automatically dispense metal "chaff" to deflect hostile fire. In the case of heat-seeking missiles such as the SA-7, there is a comprehensive range of on-board equipment designed to evade attack.
US military Chinooks are fitted with the Lockheed Martin AN/AAR 47 Missile approach detector and the Systems Integrated Defence Solutions M-130 flare dispenser. In short, when the guerrilla locks on to the aircraft using the infrared acquisition device on the shoulder launcher, the helicopter automatically senses this and fires out clusters of high-intensity heat flares as decoys to draw the heat-seeking missile away from the aircraft's engines. This system is deemed to be 90 per cent effective against missile attack.
However, in Iraq, during the policing of the no-fly zones, it is believed that Iraqi soldiers were trained to fire SA-7 missiles at hostile aircraft without activating the infrared locking device. In other words, outmatched by superior US and British technology, it is believed that Iraqi gunners were training to fire missiles at opportunity targets by line of sight only.
In this way, the on-board sensors and missile detection systems on state-of-the-art US and British aircraft would be unable to monitor the approach of missiles fired by an attacker relying simply on the human eye and sheer luck to hit the target. Such a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem may well have been employed in Sunday's attack on a relatively slow-moving US target.
Indeed, SA-7s were used in an attack on an Israeli passenger airliner in Mozambique last November.
The SA-7 has also been fired at US aircraft at Baghdad airport on several occasions since the cessation of major conflict on May 1st. The relatively slow-moving Chinook, with its twin engines mounted on a massive rear tail assembly, represented the ideal opportunity target for Iraqi guerrillas on Sunday.
In such a situation, the pilot's only response to the catastrophic failure associated with a missile strike would have been to try to "auto-rotate" the aircraft to the ground and to evacuate crew and passengers. Pictures suggest that the aircraft came down very heavily and later burst into flames. It is a testimony to the skill of the pilot that anyone survived the attack at all.
Dr Tom Clonan is a retired Army officer with experience in the Middle East and former Yugo- slavia. He is a fellow of the US- based Inter University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. He lectures in the school of media, DIT.