October 7, 2007: Egypt is buying 25 Avenger anti-aircraft systems from the United States, as well as 176 of the Stinger missiles the Avenger vehicles use. The U.S. Army developed the Avenger system, which is a hummer armed with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, a .50 caliber machinegun, radar and laser range finder. The hummer has a turret mounted on the back that contains two missile pods (each containing four Stinger anti-aircraft missiles). Under one pod there is an M3P .50 caliber machine gun. The weapons operator has use of a FLIR (night vision) and a laser range finder. The machine-gun, however, can't be depressed sufficiently to fire at ground targets towards the front of the vehicle. The Stinger has a range of 4.5 kilometers. Effective range of the .50 caliber machine-gun is more like two kilometers. Avenger is particularly deadly against helicopters. Each Avenger system will cost $3.3 million.