It appears the Stinger uses fairly sophisticated electronics and guidance systems that may be adversely affected by long term storage, especially under poor conditions. How operational would decade-old units be? Have any been used by the Taliban during the current conflict? How likely that they have been able to get newer similar missiles?

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

So, it seems that a dodgy, European Government-built aeroplane was to blame. When will we ever learn to stop spending billions of taxpayers' pounds, francs and deutschmarks on building deathtrap airliners? First there was the R101 airship in 1930 (crashed on its first flight killing all but 5 on board), then the Bristol Brabazon (design was so fundamentally flawed it never even entered service), then Concorde (probably the only reason why all of them haven't crashed by now is because they fly 10% of the miles on 2000% of the maintenance hours done by a conventional airliner, and if Concorde doesn't kill us by crashing it probably will by destroying the environment), then Airbuses that crashed because their fly-by-wire computers did likewise, and now Airbuses that fall to pieces in mid-air.

As for the Taliban, they claimed to have shot down an Allied helicopter shortly after the bombing started - a claim which, of course, was denied by the British and US authorities, who said that it crashed accidentally in bad weather and that everyone on board survived. Of course you wouldn't need a missile to do that - buckshot from a Crimean War musket (several hundred of which are reputed to still be in use by various Afghan militias) would do the job if it found its way into the rotor shaft. The problem is that we really don't know what they've got, apart from large amounts of money. But given that they were regarded by the west as good guys right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, I think it would be fair to speculate that they probably have rather more in the way of nasty things that go bang than we'd like them to.

True, we've got no proof that Bin Liner has a cave full of Stingers somewhere (and if he did, that would still leave him with the problem of getting them into the US). But neither do we have any proof that he has any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but nevertheless the military and civillian authorities are planning for the possibility that he may do.

Let's hope that Bush and Blair don't just give the order to pack up and go home as soon as the Tailban have been kicked out of office, but stay to finish the job of making sure that if they are sitting on any weapons of mass destruction, that they won't be for very much longer. Goodness knows what would have happened by now if the west had walked right out of Iraq in 1993.