The 9K34 Strela-3 is a man-portable air defensemissile system developed in the Soviet Union as a response to the poor performance of the earlier 9K32 Strela 2 system. The missile was largely based on the earlier Strela 2, and thus development proceeded rapidly. The new weapon was accepted into service in the Soviet Army in January 1974.
Description
The most significant change over the Strela 2 was the introduction of an all-new infra-red homingseeker head. The new seeker worked on FM modulation principle, which is less vulnerable to jamming and decoy flares than the earlier AM seekers, which were easily fooled by flares and even the most primitive infraredjammers. The new seeker also introduced detector element cooling in the form of a pressurizednitrogen bottle attached to the launcher. The effect of cooling was to expand the seeker's lead sulphide detector element's sensitivity range to longer wavelengths. In practice this made possible the tracking of cooler targets over longer ranges, and enabled forward-hemisphere engagement of jets under favourable circumstances. The seeker also had better tracking rate, enabling the missile to track maneuvering of fast and approaching targets. A negative side effect from the aforementioned improvements was increased missile weight, which caused a slight decrease in the kinematic performance of the original Strela-2. Against relatively slow, low-altitude battlefield air threats the overall effectiveness was much improved. Strela-3 missiles have been exported to over 30 countries. The original Strela-3 missile was the 9M36. The follow-on to the Strela-3 was Igla. The naval version of this missile has the NATO reporting name of SA-N-8.
Operational history
Iraq
On 22 November 2003 an Airbus A300 cargo plane was hit by a Strela-3 missile after takeoff from Baghdad International Airport, but managed to land safely despite losing hydraulic power. On 6 May 2006, a British Westland Lynx AH.7 of the Royal Navy from 847 Squadron was shot down with a Strela-3 over Basra, killing five crewmen and crashing into a house.
Georgia
During the War in Abkhazia, a Russian Mi-8 helicopter was shot down by a Georgian Army SA-14 on December 14, 1992, resulting in the death of 3 crew and 58 passengers, most of them Russian refugees. A Georgian Air ForceSu-25 was shot down over Nizhnaya Eshera on 4 July 1993 by SA-14, and several other aircraft on both sides may have been shot down by SA-14s.
Former Yugoslavia
A British BAE Sea Harrier of 801 Naval Air Squadron, operating from aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, was shot down during its attack on two Serbian T-55 tanks in Bosnia. The pilot, Lieutenant Nick Richardson, ejected and landed in territory controlled by friendly Bosnian Muslims.
– some of them were looted after the Iraq War in 2003, being used in the post war insurgency and subsequent regional wars and finding their way in the black market.
