Yesterday CENTCOM confirmed the loss of another helicopter, a Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight with seven Americans aboard near Baghdad, bringing the total of recent lost choppers to six, including a private military company’s machine, lost Jan 31, which had not previously been revealed. It has not yet been announced whether this helicopter was also operated by Blackwater, whose air fleet was briefly discussed here. It appears this company might have the State Department security contract for Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 7 — With two more helicopter crashes near Baghdad, including a Marine transport crash on Wednesday that killed seven people, the number of helicopters that have gone down in Iraq over the past three weeks rose to six. American officials say the streak strongly suggests that insurgents have adapted their tactics and are now putting more effort into shooting down the aircraft.

Some aspects of the recent crashes indicate that insurgents have become smarter about anticipating American flight patterns and finding ways to use old weapons to down helicopters, according to military and witness reports. The aircraft, many of which are equipped with sophisticated antimissile technology, still can be vulnerable to more conventional weapons fired from the ground.

Details about the Marine helicopter, a CH-46 Sea Knight transport that crashed into an open field in an insurgent-heavy region northwest of Baghdad, were still sketchy Wednesday night. Witnesses said the aircraft appeared to have been shot down, but some military officials suggested that the crash might have been caused by a mechanical failure.

It’s understandable that CENTCOM would be reluctant to admit the cause of the missing helicopters, because admitting the machines were shot down opens up a lot of inconvenient questions. Some of the lost helicopters were equipped with anti-missile systems, which the military tends to describe as “sophisticated.”

The private security helicopter shot down last week was being flown in support of State Department operations and was forced down 10 miles south of the capital after insurgents attacked it with heavy-caliber ground fire as it flew from Hilla to Baghdad, American officials said Wednesday. Another American helicopter quickly swooped in to rescue the passengers and crew.

There have been four other fatal downings of American helicopters since mid-January that killed at least 20 people and that military officials have suggested were all caused by small-arms fire. In some cases, however, witnesses indicated that missiles had been fired from the ground.

American officials emphasize that a new sense of coordinated aggressiveness on the part of insurgents toward attacking aircraft, or even luck, may be playing as large a role in the high pace of crashes as improved skill and tactics among insurgents.

Readers with long memories will remember that the notorious circumstances behind the film “BlackHawk Down” occurred because warlords carefully watched the way US troops operated in and around Mogadishu as they performed raids. They noted the pattern was exactly the same time after time, and developed a solid reaction plan based upon these observations. It is possible that the same circumstances apply here.

Historically, improved tactics in shooting down helicopters have proved to be important factors in conflicts in which guerrillas have achieved victories against major powers, including battles in Somalia, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

A senior military official in Washington said Wednesday that, while the episodes were still under investigation, the rash of helicopter shoot-downs appeared to be part of an insurgent strategy to inflict heavier losses on American forces at the start of the new push to secure Baghdad.

Well, do the same thing again and again and even “ignorant towelheaded savages” figure it out, gentlemen.

In related news, IraqSlogger is reporting a story on the same theme with some more detail:

Pan-Arab al-Hayat offered an explanation for the frequent downings of American choppers in the last few weeks: Iraqi insurgents are now in possession of a new generation of SA-7 (Strela) anti-aircraft missiles.

Quoting sources "close to the armed groups", al-Hayat claimed that the insurgents have acquired an improved version of the portable anti-aircraft missile. The ‘sources’ indicated that the newly-purchased missiles were responsible for shooting down four out of five choppers that the US Army has lost in Iraq this year.

No details were given as to the provenance of these missiles, or to the exact type that the insurgents are using. According to the paper's description, the missiles are a "new generation" of Strelas (the Russian name for SA-7), but that could refer to any of the improved versions of the initial system, or to the much more advanced SA-18 (Igla), a version of which is locally produced in Iran, and was successfully used by Hizbullah during last summer’s war with Israel.

The original SA-7, which was part of the arsenal of the Iraqi army, is a late 1960s design with limited effectiveness, especially against choppers: it has a very limited range, a dated guidance system and can be blinded by the sun or other heat sources. However, if the modern SA-18 is now in the hands of the Iraqi insurgency, it could constitute a serious threat to the US army that extensively deploys helicopters, many of which are virtually defenseless.

Despite the documented fact that the Iraqi Army was well-equipped with ordnance of this type prior to our country’s illegal war of aggression, we will now begin to be told that these missiles, which have so far only been speculated about, could only have been supplied by the evil and Nazi-Germany-like Iran, and is yet one more example of their evil and danger to humanity.

Perhaps if we had actually bothered to secure the many ammunition dumps we knew about before we invaded, we would not be faced with this danger today. But, as history has shown, our priority was securing the Oil Ministry, not the means of resistance.