Britannia Radio

Thursday, April 02, 2009
Hamas couldn't fire smuggled Stingers against Israelis due to embedded ID system

Hilarious.

Hamas smuggled a bunch of Stingers into Gaza and tried to use them against IAF's AH-64 Apache helicopters during Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

"We were disappointed by them, and they were found to have been useless," a Hamas source said. [...]

"Our gunners couldn't fire the weapon," the source recalled. "A notice came up on the display saying 'friendly aircraft.'"

Industry sources said Raytheon, producer of Stinger, installed identification friend/foe capabilities more than a decade ago. The sources said this would prevent Stinger from being fired against any aircraft used by the U.S. military.

Another Hamas source said gunners deployed Stinger along with heavy machine guns in attacks on Israeli helicopters during the war in the Gaza Strip. The source said one Stinger surface-to-air missile was launched, but the projectile veered off course and struck a Hamas gunner squad.

"The Stinger was drawn by the heat of our guns rather than the engines of the Israeli helicopters," the source said. "At that point, we stopped using this weapon."