Reply #16: Reading the Refuse of a Revolution…

[tabatha]

…to try to determine how many heat-seeking, shoulder-fired anti-aircaft missiles were amassed by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi during his decades in power, as he expended Libyan oil revenues both to fortify his government and to assume the role of arms Sugar Daddy in Africa and elsewhere.

Have a look at the stenciling on the crate, in the two images above. This olive-drab wooden box once held a pair of SA-7bs (think: early version of the same class of portable missile as the Stinger). What can this crate, and dozens of others abandoned at former Qaddafi arsenals tell you?

More soon on the At War blog. (For background on the Libya’s SA-7s and the risks they pose beyond Libya’s borders, go here. Or here. Or here, which is an earlier post on this blog.)

Do the photographs above stump you? Hints: 9M32M is the Eastern bloc designation for SA-7b missile tubes. The case numbers tell you both where this crate fit in a particular arms shipment, and the total number of crates in that shipment. The six-digit numbers are the missile-tube serial numbers. And the 11 inside two broken circles is a common factory symbol for arms and munitions manufactured in Bulgaria. There’s more to discuss, and we’ll take these and other themes up on At War.

http://cjchivers.com/post/7998471203/reading-the-refuse-of-a-revolution