Manpaby Tom Withingtond threat increases as weapons fall into hostile hands
The statistics are sobering: as many as 700,000 anti-aircraft missiles for man-portable air defense systems (Manpads) have been manufactured since the 1970

The statistics are sobering: as many as 700,000 anti-aircraft missiles for man-portable air defense systems (Manpads) have been manufactured since the 1970s. Up to 7,000 missiles may be outside state control, possibly in the hands of terrorists. Since these weapons began proliferating in the 1960s, there have been some 35 documented Manpads attacks on civil aircraft.

“There’s little or no information on what’s been lost,” James Bevan, a researcher with the Small Arms Survey, told AIN. “There’s very little way to gauge what’s out there: how many missiles, how many complete systems [missiles and missile-launchers] and whose hands they are in.” Thousands of these weapons have been built in and exported from the Soviet Union [and later Russia], China, France, Sweden, the UK and the U.S.