Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
The old shoulder-fired ManPADS systems should both be susceptible to standard countermeasures (flares, IR dazzlers) and have a weak punch (later Russian-made ManPADS have a substantially enlarged warhead).
The warhead size of a shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile doesn't make much difference if your target is a small ISR airplane. The kinetic energy of the hit will almost certainly be enough to destroy the airplane. We use a lot of small manned ISR airplanes.

The SA-24 is a very good missile. Venezuela operates those and so far, as far as I know, jolly Ceasar has hung onto the ones he has. If a missile like that got out, we would have a very hard time keeping all those ISR assets flying.

Those missiles will eventually get out so we should probably start thinking about what we will do when they do.