Terror threat

Even More US-Made Anti-Tank Weapons Are Turning Up In ISIS Hands

With the heart of ISIS’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” in Mosul in ruins and Secretary of Defense James Mattis in Baghdad to assess the U.S.-led campaign against the terror group, Iraqi security forces are working overtime to expunge more than 2,000 militants from the strategically crucial city of Tal Afar. The offensive could signal “the end of ISIS’s military presence” in the country’s northern region, according to a spokesman for the U.S. coalition, but the ISF and their Western military partners have run into a familiar obstacle: American-made anti-tank weapons.

Raw footage posted to YouTube by Iraqi television station Al-Mawsleya appears to show an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile and launcher among a cache of weapons recovered just outside Tal Afar. The Javelin has a range of up to 2.7 miles with an 18-pound tandem warhead (two shaped charges, one to pierce reactive armor the other to wreak havoc) and designed to penetrate even the toughest armor — including the skin of the Pentagon’s beloved M1 Abrams tank.