Thursday, December 22, 2011

What's Up With This?

I assume we can track down who we originally sold these Patriot missiles to:

Finnish authorities on Wednesday impounded 160 tons of explosives and 69 surface-to-air missiles found on a British-flagged cargo ship ultimately destined for Shanghai, China, officials said.

I don't know how many you need to reverse engineer something or to figure out counter-measures, so going to China as the final destination seems odd. But I'm no engineer.

Where else was this ship going? Why would any of our usual customers for Patriots need to smuggle them?

When weapons smuggling comes up, I immediately suspect Iran. But could they really use Patriots without launchers? Do they think they can jury rig their older American-made equipment to fire them?

I look forward to reading what this is about.

Thank you, Finland.

UPDATE: Ah, bad paperwork for a legitimate sale by Germany to South Korea.