How come Stinger missiles don work against US aircraft?
While there could be a system on the Stinger that prevents friendly fire, I wouldn’t know about it. But from what I read in the Time Magazine years ago, their batteries had a somewhat short life span – the alternatives were to get more from the US (fat chance) or get copies from China (probably difficult in their position anyway). Not to mention it had been well over a decade since the anti-Soviet groups in Afghanistan received Stingers up to the time when they could have used them against these new American aircraft cropping up in the sky – it’s like most simply didn’t survive without proper maintenance, were passed around, mistreated or were even “lost”.