1 "Pardon me, sir; is this your anti-tank weapon?"

"What?"

"You appear to have dropped a missile, sir; is this yours?"

2 I would be surprised if it was truly intended to go to Portland as opposed to being diverted somewhere en route.  Probably Europe as I've long had a suspicion that a mass muslim uprising would be the source of our next great European Adventure (along the lines and scale of the two previous Adventures from the early part of last century).

3 At least they didn't end up shipped to Cuba again.

I can see the dedicated TSA agents now:

Dog: *Woof*
Agent 1: "Woah! Check this out!"
Agent 2: "It had better be a bomb; we have too many packages to check."
Agent 1: "It's a Hellfire Missile!"
Agent 2: "Bad dog!"
Dog: *Whine*
Agent 1: "But he found a missile! He's a good boy!"
Agent 2: "He's a bomb-sniffing dog. It's not a bomb. Let's keep moving."
Agent 1: "But it's a dangerous item!"
Agent 2: "Orders are to look for bombs.  This is a propelled weapon; ergo, it isn't a bomb, now, is it?  You're new, you'll get used to it..."

4

I was reading about this somewhere else, and it got pointed out that a Hellfire isn't "man portable". It is in fact pretty complicated to launch. For one thing it requires a significant avionics package on the launch vehicle to designate a target.

It's not an ideal terrorist weapon. About the only thing a terrorist could do is disassemble it enough to get the warhead out and use that as a bomb -- but if that was the intention, why not do that before it got shipped?

5

Update at your link: they're warhead-less training missiles that the Lebanese army was returning to their manufacturer (in Portland, Maine).

And, according to the comments, "paperwork was provided", so it may just be that Serbia's TSA is as good as ours...

6

If there was no warhead, how did the dog spot them? It was sniffing for explosives.

Sounds like a fuckup all around.

7 You can't discount inaccurate initial reporting, especially coming from a distant country where English is not the primary language, but that latest conflicts with what was reported last night in significant ways.  Most notably, the initial reports were that that missiles were hidden in false compartments, and that the shipping crates were, in fact, wooden coffins.

8 Move along! Nothing to see here!  Absolutely no terrorism involved!

9 It would be nice if they'd say that once in a while when it's obviously true instead of obviously being bullshit.

10 Even with the original reports I assumed that "wooden coffin" was a mistranslation. The word is cognate with "coffer" and comes from a Greek or Latin word that meant something like, well, "box". So there are presumably similar-looking words in other languages.

11 Not to mention that a pair of coffins wouldn't have enough room for two Hellfires and associated electronics, let alone hide them in a secret compartment.