five years, so any battery supplied in the 1980s would now be inoperative but during the Syrian Civil War, insurgents showed how easily they switched to different batteries, including widespread car batteries, as power sources for several MANPADS models. Libyan invasion of Chad The French army used 15 firing positions and 30 missiles purchased in 1983 for operations in Chad. The 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment made an unsuccessful fire during a Libyan bombardment on 10 September 1987 and shot down a Hercules transport aircraft on 7 July 1988. The Chadian government received Stinger missiles from the United States, when Libya invaded the northern part of the African country. On 8 October 1987, a Libyan Su-22MK was shot down by a FIM-92A fired by Chadian forces. The pilot, Capt. Diya al-Din, ejected and was captured. He was later granted political asylum by the French government. During the recovery operation, a Libyan MiG-23MS was shot down by a FIM-92A. Tajik civil war Tajik Islamist opposition forces operating from Afghanistan during the 1992–97 Tajik civil war encountered a heavy air campaign launched by Russia and Uzbekistan to prop up the government in Dushanbe that included border and cross-border raids. During one of these operations, a Sukhoi Su-24M was shot down on 3 May 1993 with a Stinger fired by opposition. Both Russian pilots were rescued. Chechen War Russian officials claimed several times that the Chechen militia and insurgents possessed US-made Stinger missiles. They attributed a few of their aerial losses to the American MANPADS. The presence of such missiles was confirmed by photo evidence even though their actual number and origin were not clear. It is believed one Sukhoi Su-24 was shot down by a Stinger missile during the Second Chechen War. Sri Lankan civil war The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam also managed to acquire one or several Stingers, possibly from former Mujahideen stocks, and used at least one to down a Sri Lanka Air Force Mi-24 on 10 November 1997. United States In 2000, the U.S. inventory contained 13,400 missiles. The total cost of the program is $7,281,000,000. It is rumored that the United States Secret Service has Stinger missiles to defend the President, a notion that has never been dispelled; however, U.S. Secret Service plans favor moving the President to a safer place in the event of an attack rather than shooting down the plane, lest the missile (or the