"The helicopter was flying and passed over us, then we heard the firing of a missile," said Mohammad al-Janabi, a farmer. "The helicopter, then, turned into a ball of fire. It flew in a circle twice, then it went down."Aljazeera
In 1983, the US began to smuggle large number of the Stinger surface-to-air missiles into Afghanistan (as well as a mix of other weapons and tactics), in order to provide the mujaheddin a way to tackle the USSR's Hind-D helicopter. The result was spectacular. The Soviet's lost 333 Hinds. News that a sixth US helicopter was shot down today (the count includes a mix of models including the Blackhawk, a Boeing little bird, a Marine Sea Knight, and the Apache) may indicate a similar line has been crossed. It was likely inevitable, given the growing alignment between regional states with the non-state groups in Iraq (or even worse, the groups have generated sufficient funds/connections from black globalization to bypass states), that high-end weapons would begin to show up. With more effective SAMs in play in combination with barrage tactics (that leverage learning about US evasion tactics), US weapons helicopters are vulnerable like never before in this war. Besides an increase in casualties, these weapons radically increase the range of tactics available to the guerrillas and may result in a rapid innovation cycle similar to what the US faces in IEDs. Are advanced ATGWs and associated tactics next?