Man-portable missiles imperil both military, civilian aircraft.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Shoulder-fired missiles remain a menace to U.S. military aircraft operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the threat has been downgraded from "high," to "moderate," said Air Force Gen. John W. Handy, head of the U.S. Transportation Command.

The widespread availability of man-portable airdefense missiles, known as "manpads," worries U.S. military commanders, who often joke that manpads make for popular wedding gifts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This is not really true," Handy told reporters. "But that is how folks will describe the threat [of manpads]. There are just an awful lot of them."

Although U.S. forces have had overwhelming control of the air space in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, they have not been able to curtail the proliferation of manpads. Nonetheless, said Handy, the threat has diminished somewhat.

"The man-portable missile threat is perhaps the greatest threat that we face anywhere in the world, and the proliferation of manpads is well documented," he noted. "Afghanistan still remains a threatening area, certainly not a high threat--in our terms, it is a moderate threat. Iraq is somewhere between high and moderate, depending upon what part of the country you are in.... In Iraq, it remains our greatest concern."

The Air Mobility Command requires that all C17 and C-130 cargo aircraft flying into Iraq be equipped with defensive missile-spoofing systems, such as chaff and flares.

Manpads most often are heat-seeking missiles, employing sensors that home in on the target's infrared signature, such as the engine. Aircraft operators fear heat-seeking missiles mainly because the energy from IR-guided weapons often cannot be detected by the targeted aircraft. Radar-guided surface-to-air weapons, conversely, are relatively easy to detect.

"You have to defeat heat with other sources of heat that aren't your engines," said Handy. Chaff and flares typically are employed to deflect heat-seeking missiles. Many U.S. military transports have a directional IR countermeasure system, which can detect a missile plume, track the incoming threat and send a modulated beam of IR energy to the missile seeker, jamming the guidance signal and veering the weapon off course.

Approximately 50 percent of the Air Mobility Command fleet has anti-missile defensive systems. But 100 percent of AMC's C-17s (105 aircraft), and 90 percent of the C-130s (approximately 500) are so equipped.

The C-130, C-17 and C-5 fleets have flare-based...