yodude
Banned
My sense of the whole thing is that right up until the ruskies parked an aircraft carrier off the coast as a posturing device the conflict was pretty much guerrilla warfare vs conventional troops for the most part. Once there was total air superiority in the Aleppo region from the Syrian government side and western nations dare not intervene it was a one sided bloodbath (hence the WHO statement). I think things would have looked a lot different for Aleppo if there was a supply of blowpipe missiles around or similar and people that knew how to use them.
no doubt
https://www.google.ca/search?client...ahideen+afghanistan+shoulder+fired+air+to+air
According to a 1993 US Air Defense Artillery publication, the Mujahideen gunners used the supplied Stingers to score approximately 269 total aircraft kills in about 340 engagements, a 79-percent kill ratio.[SUP][24][/SUP] Which if accurate, would make it responsible for over half of the 451 Soviet aircraft losses in Afghanistan.[SUP][21][/SUP] Such detailed statistics are based on Mujahedin self-reporting, the reliability of which is unknown. Selig Harrison rejects such figures, quoting a Russian general who claims the United States "greatly exaggerated" Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses during the war. According to Soviet figures, in 1987-1988, only 35 aircraft and 63 helicopters were destroyed by all causes[SUP][25][/SUP] The Pakistan Army fired twenty-eight Stingers at enemy aircraft without a single kill.[SUP][21][/SUP]
An analysis of the Stinger's role in the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, the statistics supporting the Stinger's unusually high kill ratio and the chronology leading up to the decision to deploy the weapon, was made in 1999.[SUP][21][/SUP]
According to Crile, who includes information from Alexander Prokhanov, the Stinger was a "turning point".[SUP][12][/SUP] Milt Bearden saw it as a "force multiplier" and morale booster.[SUP][12][/SUP] Charlie Wilson, the congressman behind the United States' Operation Cyclone, described the first Stinger Mi-24 shootdowns in 1986 as one of the three crucial moments of his experience in the war, saying "we never really won a set piece battle before September 26, and then we never lost one afterwards".[SUP][26][/SUP][SUP][27][/SUP] He was given the first spent Stinger tube as a gift and kept it on his office wall.[SUP][12][/SUP][SUP][27][/SUP] That launch tube is now on exhibit at the US Army Air Defense Artillery Museum, Fort Sill, OK.