Middle East A Syrian Rebel Advance Off the Battlefield: A Longer-Lasting Battery for Missiles By C. J. CHIVERSJULY 25, 2014 Rebels in Syria are designing rechargeable batteries for shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, a development that could make them more lethal against Syrian warplanes but that also carries potential risks to civilian aircraft, according to a rebel behind the new design and to Western analysts who have assessed his work. The batteries are matched to the SA-7b missile system, or Strela-2, an early variant of heat-seeking missile that originated in a Soviet design bureau in the late 1960s and has been reproduced in several countries, including China, North Korea and Pakistan. A weapon of a class often colloquially called Stingers, as the best-known American model is known, Strelas have for decades been the most commonly seen antiaircraft missiles among rebel and terrorist groups. But the limited availability and short life span of their batteries, which are attached to the exterior of the tube that contains the missile, has meant that nonstate groups often struggle with power supply, posing limits on the Strela’s use.Improvised batteries have been documented in the Syrian conflict, and a missile system powered by one apparently was used to shoot down a helicopter last year. The designer of the rechargeable battery, Abu al-Baraa, said he was a Syrian Air Force major until defecting to the rebels in 2012. Abu al-Baraa, who asked that his full name not be used because of concern for the safety of his relatives, said rebels in Syria could now overcome the problem of possessing many more missiles than batteries, and of high rates of battery consumption in marginally trained ranks when using SA-7s, which the Syrians call Cobras. “The need for the battery came due to the misuse of the Cobra guided missile by shooters as they turn the circuit without paying attention to shooting time limit, which leads them to replacing it with another,” he said. “What you get eventually is a missile with no power unit.” The new batteries, Abu al-Baraa added, last longer when activated and can be recharged by connecting to an electrical outlet. Matthew Schroeder, a missile proliferation analyst at Small Arms Survey, an independent research project based in Geneva, said the design was “extremely worrisome.” Strelas have appeared in conflicts since the Vietnam War. Untold numbers were stolen from Libya’s arsenals during the uprising that deposed Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. They have recently been documented in Syria and eastern Ukraine, where a shoulder-fired missile was believed to have hit a Ukrainian military transport plane near Luhansk in June, killing 49 troops. “If these devices proliferate,” Mr. Schroeder said of the improvised batteries, “black-market missiles that are currently unusable because their batteries are dead could become operational again, with potentially devastating consequences.” Abu al-Baraa said he was not a member of any rebel group, but collaborated with several of them, including the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. He claimed to have attended two rebel training sessions in Qatar, and to have shot down two Syrian Air Force aircraft with factory-made missile systems, including a Chinese-made FN-6. Government aircraft are hated and feared in rebel-held territory in Syria, which both rebels and human rights activists alike say has suffered from a sustained and indiscriminate aerial bombing campaign. Abu al-Baraa first posted images of a prototype missile battery this month, shortly before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a much larger missile system over eastern Ukraine. Soon after he posted the images, his Facebook profile vanished for at least two days, but not before Damien Spleeters, an investigator for Conflict Armament Research, a private firm that tracks conventional arms, copied the photographs and shared them with The New York Times. It was not clear why the Facebook profile stopped functioning. Once his profile was active again, Abu al-Baraa agreed to be interviewed on Skype several times over the past week, described his design process, and provided photographs and a video of a newer battery prototype. Neil Gibson, a missile analyst at IHS Jane’s, the defense consultancy, examined the design description of the improvised batteries and suggested they would function. “There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work,” he wrote in an email. Abu al-Baraa said he decided to design a battery after hearing that Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist fighting group, had produced improvised batteries for Strelas. The batteries were sufficient to fire the missile, he said, but the missiles were failing in flight. At least once, he said, a Strela failed to track the aircraft and veered off. “Too many missiles were wasted this way,” he said. He said he tested the voltage of an Ahrar-made battery with an Avometer, and found that after the battery was activated the voltage dropped sharply. Upon comparing voltages with those he recorded for a factory-grade Strela battery, he said, he noted the difference and thought he had found the problem. Working at his home in rural Idlib Province, he said, he assembled a unit with three groups of AA lithium-ion batteries salvaged from laptops, and managed to match the voltage for the factory-made sample. His total cost, he said, was about $50. “It took me one day to finish it,” he said. “My wife helped me, and my kids were playing around me. It could take less time, but there is no electricity to turn the soldering iron on, so I used the stove.” The factory-made SA-7 batteries, Abu al-Baraa said, tended to last only 40 seconds once a missile system was switched on — just long enough to lock on a target and fire a missile. Mr. Gibson said the brief life of the battery was rooted in its design as a thermal battery, also known as a molten-salt battery, which provides for reliability and long storage. This was ideal for military service, he said. “There is no loss of capability if the battery is left unused, unlike more normal dry and wet cell types, which decay more or less as soon as they are charged,” he said. For his design, Abu al-Baraa said, he chose lithium batteries, which can power a missile system for as long as 30 minutes. “My invention that brought life back to Cobras,” he said, was also made from “electrical wires taken from my neighbor Abu al-Abid” and “damaged plastic water pipes.” To this, he said, he added “electronic devices from a broken radio and a capacitor from an old fridge.” He added: “You would laugh if you see me assembling it.” The SA-7, as an early-generation system, is not as capable as more modern missiles. Its seeker head is more easily deceived by countermeasures, such as flares, and it has a shorter range and flies to lower maximum elevations than newer Soviet or Russian models, such as the SA-14, SA-16, SA-18 and SA-24. The SA-7 is sometimes referred to as a “tail-chase” system, meaning that its seeker head performs better when oriented at an aircraft that has already passed by, and is not as effective at frontal and side shots. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Schroeder noted the design used by Abu al-Baraa could not be applied to manufacturing batteries for more modern systems. “The battery units for later generation Manpads include the coolant required for the proper functioning of the missile seeker,” Mr. Schroeder said. “Unless an improvised cooling system can be developed, this technology won’t be of much use with second- and third-generation Manpads.” Abu al-Baraa agreed. He also suggested that he was working on one item at a time. On Friday, he said he had been hunting with a Strela equipped with a second generation of his battery and aimed the system at a Syrian jet. His battery powered the system, he said, but the jet was too high, and he held his fire. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Istanbul. A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Syrian Rebel Advance Off the Battlefield: A Longer-Lasting Battery for Missiles. Order Reprints|Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 06:23:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015