Emu

The flash is not a combination of the burners with something, it is a far bigger separate explosion that grows for over a second and stretches to over 50m in length. So why is it not over in an instant then? Clearly not a kinetic impact. The explosion does indeed continue upwards, the images attached earlier show it. The explosion plume grows to over 50m. So make up your mind, is it a kinetic strike, or an exploding rocket motor that somehow blew up so readily as if a warhead had gone off, whilst the warhead itself failed? The sudden flash at the beginning is not indicative of a rocket motor catching fire and see above point. You're clutching at straws here, the more reliable explanation is that it was a warhead. No, a kinetic strike would give off heat energy instantly and the amount given up here is not large enough to cause such a flash. The shape of the explosion is exactly the same. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3409697&postcount=288 Yes, it is. Very slight bulge in the burner plume. So do I, as in not guessing. The flash is pathetically small, not even rudder size. Your measurements are wrong and you're failing to understand that it's a volume, cubic dimension, not a linear one. So even 60% diameter would be ~20% volume. Err, no, and the explosion plume clearly does not last for just one frame. Try again. Plus, rocket motors do not give a sudden 50m wide flash like that. Equally, my explanation does not rely on suddenly exploding rocket motors despite failed warheads, or extremely low flying aircraft, or incredible long range MANPADS... or other such concoctions established to evade the probable.:lol:

There isn't though, so it's irrelevant. It's like asking, "what if the sun was in the shot." It wasn't, the end. Technically a bullet is dumping KE from the moment it leaves the barrel. After it hits a human a rifle bullet will spin and dump KE rapidly thereafter. The explosion visibly continues upwards in the video, so it is still dumping KE. I.e. there was no sudden dump of all KE. But you are right, a KE dump would be very short, and would not take place over several seconds like in the video, or get bigger and crucially, the missile would stop, or at least see a massive reduction in upwards momentum, which isn't apparent in the video, not nearly, the a/c and missile explosion continue at roughly the same speed and in the same direction. Now calculate the temperature a KE missile strike would generate and the area it would be confined to. A larger surface area or volume takes more heat energy to raise the temperature by X degrees. You could probably do a calc to determine the force required to overcome drag and then multiply by distance per second to work out the energy involved to overcome air resistance. Nope, a KE impact transfers energy only for a short period. *You even said this yourself only 2 paragraphs above. You are now effectively arguing with yourself even. Not really, it's pretty clear. It's there just before impact, very subtle. You can't visibly see if the missile is close enough to target with telemetry, due to potential for faults. The flash is also very small, not much bigger than a/c rudder in diameter, order of magnitude smaller than huge explosion in video, which grows to 50m after a second.

Wouldn't give a clear indication of where the missile was relative to a/c at the time. Proximity measurement could be wrong. Besides, the flash is brief and trivial compared to that in the OP video.

There is no KE with 90% of the energy of the burners, so it's a false question. Well the movement hasn't stopped even after one second, and a 50m long plume can be seen. Quite possibly more than that. Yes, an explosion does, not a KE impact. Nope, the shape of the explosion mirrors the SA-2 photo. Looks like a third to me and definitely less than a half. It would also be good if you could find a BTU/lb figure for the flares. I saw a bulge and I doubt the plane was just pleased to see it. They would need a way of verifying the proximity fuse if you think about it. Can't test that with no warhead, so maybe they used a small warhead. Depends how much fuel you think an R-73 has. AIM-9s only burn for around 5s. Missile failures also tend to be more erratic in shape.

Test shots require some indicative way of testing the proximity fuse.

Kolga - The order of magnitude comparison is clear, the KE available is tens of times too low to produce a flash bigger than the burners. Even if it were all perfectly converted to heat, which would involve the missile coming to a dead stop. Yes it is a factor, hence why there is a trail after the afterburner plume. The air is also heated by travelling over the aircraft at 600-700mph beforehand. Nope go back, the explosion happens for longer. See 0:46-0:47. Still of similar size to aircraft. Files attached. Probably continues longer if it wasn't off-shot. In the second shot it is longer than afterburner plume and a/c together and similar in shape to SA-2 explosion above (but smaller obviously). A kinetic strike produced a plume 50m long? Possibly even a MANPADS kinetic strike according to some. Come now. In the first shot it also eclipses the afterburner and a/c. It's quite possible this explosion is even happening in the foreground in front of a/c, making it look bigger, whilst also creating the illusion of a strike. I do not know the energy content of a flare but I expect it is pretty high. Also see 3rd attachment, the diameter of flare on FLIR is ~1/3rd, as a cubed function, that makes it only 1/27th of volume of afterburner plume. Whereas explosion at ~2 times is 8 times bigger volume. Perhaps there is a small charge to set off the missile in the event of a miss for safety reasons but I can't see any stab fragments and they appear to remain attached.

Let's face it, there are a dozen instrumented shots and you picked just one because none of the others show anything like what you want. I still don't think that was a direct hit, nor do I think that little flash would be over 20m wide on FLIR. Equally, there are more direct impacts in the same videos that sown no spark or flash. the flash is also tiny.

I run through para by para, quicker that way. The burners have have many orders of magnitude more energy than the KE of either a MANPADS or R-73 and are burning continuously, heating the air around them continuously. https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3401607&postcount=257 Again, chemical energy, designed purely for putting out heat and IR emissions. It's a bit like asking if a tiny chaff or TRD can put out the same RCS as a 20m long aircraft. I see no evidence, missile appeared to miss and I'm still waiting for an inert strike to produce a 20+m wide glow on FLIR of similar quality.

That looks more like debris than a flash and in the other image the stab is still attached.

So you really think it was one of these?

You're even taking the claim seriously? SA-2 is RF guided, so why would the aircraft eject flares? Secondly, SA-2s are freaking huge. They have a 440lb warhead and could take F-4s down from a burst 120m away. Neither the missile motor's signature nor the flash is even close in size to that required for an SA-2, which is 35ft long. There's no flying away if an SA-2 explodes that close to you. Also not the shape of the blast in the picture below, see how a trail continues in the direction of the missile's flight.

MANPADS is definitely impossible for this video, even in a horribly contrived set of unrealistic circumstances for reasons already alluded to. There was a reason for lighting the burners and it was probably to escape the range of a MANPADS, only it wasn't a MANPADS. Additionally, IR missiles have no lock warning, so any warning would have coming after launch. The flash proves it. A small missile strike with no warhead will not light up the sky brighter than afterburner. It looks like it missed the aircraft entirely, so what made it explode if it was inert. Sure you can be sure. A MANPADS motor burns for 2-3s or 2km maximum. It is not catching an F-15 after 10s of afterburner form rear aspect with its motor still burning, even if the F-15 was skimming the tree-tops. However, more realistically, even if the F-15 was unusually low, it would still have to climb 2km to even get to the same altitude. Yes, but it would produce visible heat as well, not just kick up a little dust. That isn't what you've been saying though. In the case of a Hellfire you were claiming that inert strikes can produce a flash of similar size and they can't. Therefore when a live Hellfire strike has the same-sized flash as in the video, it seems logical that a warhead of similar size went off. Because YT doesn't have frame advance and that flash lasts far longer than 1 frame. You could easily look up those rocket failures on YT if you had intellectually invested yourself in a fundamentally flawed argument. Of course there's no glow, the target is travelling at 30mph vs 600mph. The quality of the FLIR is similar though. You're also wrong though, the glow of the missile can be seen even though the motor has expired, hence my point on skin friction. I do not know the amount of energy in a flare, but it is stored chemical energy, so the amount of energy could well be very large and it is purpose-built to emit large IR signature. People argued a case for MANPADS earlier. If you want to get from A-B fast you would use afterburners, but if loitering over a combat zone something would have to provoke their use. That's still the blast happening in roughly the same spot but the aircraft continues away from that spot at ~600-700mph. It's in the video if you look carefully, the bottom of the afterburner aura bulges slightly before the flash. Proximity fuse triggered burst, just as the Dutch Aviation magazine source stated. So what's your point? Afterburners are hot? Yes we know. On the same FLIR most fighter afterburner will be the same size relative to the aircraft for reasons already mentioned. Sheesh. When you've mathematically proved someone wrong and they just keep going.

The surface of an aircraft travelling at 600mph through air has a signature on any functional FLIR. I said it is one of the ways the yield of a nuclear device can be accurately estimated. Lastly higher energy heat does indeed lead to larger signatures on FLIR and temperature itself is a measure of average molecule KE (so it does indeed all boil down to energy), hence why the afterburner is larger than non-afterburner and why Hellfire warheads give a bigger flash than 30mm strikes. You can't produce higher temperatures without putting in energy, whether that energy be chemical energy in a warhead or flare, or kinetic energy from a collision. The FLIR video in question is not that high sensitivity at all. You can clearly see the smoke trail of the missile and the afterburner glow come down to a point at the rear, with smoke thereafter. On super-high sensitivity, these would all appear as spheres.

I believe several people actually do think it's most likely and it seems unlikely that a jet would ignite afterburners mid-flight and start popping flares for no reason, so this gives us and indication of the launch time. It broke up because it exploded. What video, you can't even be sure that is with an inert warhead. If the target is travelling in roughly one direction, it very much does, as is the case here. Try setting them on fire and you can see them quite easily. We are talking about a huge flash larger than afterburner here, that would take enough energy to produce effects visible in the visible band. Allowing for incomplete conversion of energy, it would take a 100+kg object doing Mach 10 on impact to produce a flash similar to F-15E afterburners. They largely are and I think you know that. The Hellfire blast on the zoomed out view is roughly the same size in FLIR as the one in the video, even with the addition of heated dust around it. I think if it only last 1 frame I would not have been able to use YT pause to capture it as an image. It peaks quickly, which is again indicative of a warhead blast not a rocket failure but you can see that debris continues on after the strike still glowing larger than the afterburners because of the heat produced by the blast. I keep mentioning it because some people out there believe it still to be a possibility, which it isn't. He puts the burners on during the video. If he's just flying about with no threat, there's no much reason to do that. The only difference is that in an A2A intercept everything is moving very fast as it explodes, whereas the ground stops an A2G missile, so the explosion happens in one place. Watch the original video again. The blast doesn't stop and start just as the missile passes near the plane. I believe there is evidence, it's very subtle due to the afterburner glow, but it's there. Is it definitely an inert missile in that one though? I would call this a proxy burst not a hit too. But you were claiming some glowed brighter than other, to me, in your video, some are in afterburner and some aren't. On afterburner, all show produce a similar IR signature relative to the plane's size, because all have similar lb/lbf.hr and similar TWR.

You can clearly see the engine exhaust before afterburner activation on any function FLIR. The size of the flash is very much determined by the energy. The size of nuclear explosion could even be accurately estimated by the flash duration.

We don't need to, the missile is faster, so in the 10s the F-15 was on afterburner the missile would have flown further. We also know the missile doesn't burn that long. Difficult to answer that. A kinetic impact from an early AIM-9 simply stuck in a Chinese MiG over the Taiwan straight and it flew home after. The missile was then copied by the Soviets to produce the AA-2. But a MANPADS is way more flimsy and lighter Just look up rocket failures. They burn over a period of time after, they don't produce a sudden, short flash immediately. Both the missile and plane are travelling left to right. Look at the trail of the missile. Yes you can see heat in the visible band, it's just not as big, but energy excited airborne electrons to to higher energy states, they then give up that energy as photons, as per a fire. What I'm trying to say is simple. The maximum amount of heat that can possibly be generated by a kinetic-only strike, is limited by the kinetic energy, which is far lower than the energy in the warhead, hence it can't produce the same sized flash in IR or visible band. The Hellfire is live but the motor has still burnt out when it reaches the target. Doesn't really work that way, the afterburners are heating the air continuously, and that heat does not dissipate instantly. And that figure for the R-73 is the absolute theoretical maximum amount of heat a kinetic strike could produce if it hit a solid lead wall, came to rest instantly and produced no sound and still it's less than what the afterburner kicks out in 0.1s, yet it somehow produced a bigger flash that lasted nearer 1s. That should tell you that you're wrong. The above is the mathematical description of a MANPADS kinetic-only strike with a completely perfect conversion of KE to heat, which is impossible in practice, yet it still falls short of energy requirements. It was launched before the guy went to afterburner and certainly before flares, which were ejecting 3s before impact. And the zoomed out view shows a flash similar in size to the flash in the video. Think you're clutching at straws here. The missile detonated at a flare or on a flare, Minor quibble over wording. Far smaller than the flash in the video and an AIM-9 is bigger and faster than a MANPADS. You're also looking at an air-launched missile at very close range at medium altitude, big difference. The missile takes a few seconds to impact even launched at this similar altitude and with a faster missile. That should make you rethink the idea of a SAM strike. Difficult to tell which planes are in afterburner and which aren't. But nearly all fighters have a specific fuel consumption of 1.5-2.0 lb/lbf.hr on reheat.

The chance of MANPADS is exactly zero due to range and fuel quantity. The likely altitude of the F-15 is just a further problem. A direct impact would still produce fragmentation-like shrapnel but a cut stab is indicative of a rod warhead. Source - every rocket failure, plenty of videos. MANPADS does not burn for long enough to catch an F-15 in tail chase after 10s of aft, even if it was flying stupidly low. Nor should a 2.6lb warhead make as big a flash as a 20lb warhead. Not really, a missile with no warhead can't produce the same-sized flash as the same missile with a warhead in any band. Quick calc. KE 0.5 x 50 x 450^2 = 5,062,500J 1kg TNT = 4MJ. Modern weapons use more powerful explosive but lets work with this. 9 x 4,000,000 = 36,000,000 +KE = 41,062,500J The live missile has 8x the energy, even assuming the inert missile has an inert warhead of equal mass to a live warhead, if not, repeat first calc. with 41kg instead of 50. The heated dust kicked up from a ground explosion also makes the FLIR flash appear bigger. There is no bleeding because the Hellfire missile motor has burnt out by the time it reaches the target, even though it's far larger than an Igla and is going after an extremely slow ground target. Bigger than the F-15 but smaller than the flash despite being the net result of 33lbs of jet fuel per second. Quick calc again: 1lb jet fuel = 18,500BTU/lb = 19,517,500J/lb 33 x 19,517,500 = 644,077,500J KE of Igla at Mach 2 0.5 x 10.8 x 680^2 = 2,496,960J So the energy of 33lbs of jet fuel is >250 times that of the KE of an Igla, even if it was brought to rest immediately (which it wasn't) and all KE converted to heat. KE of R-73 - Mach 2.5 at altitude, where Mach 1 ~300m/s. 0.5 x 105 x 750^2 = 29,531,250J 4-5% if missile immediately came to rest with all energy converted to heat instantly, which wasn't even nearly the case, nor could it be from rear aspect, angled approach. Half that at best and realistically nearer a quarter. The flash is separate, as clearly shown on the video and the addition of an extra 0.4% (Igla) or 4% (R-73) would not be noticeable. I think your argument is mathematically dead here, whether you continue is up to you. Surprised it flew at all if safety interlocks weren't removed. In which case the impact and conversion of KE to heat would be even lower. It really doesn't matter. Call the missile launch point t=0 seconds and the impact point t=x seconds. If the missile is moving faster during that x seconds between launch and impact, which it is, it must have travelled further. You cannot travel faster for a given period of time and travel a smaller distance. They use the same size warheads, they are in fact based on the same design, but with a new seeker. A third flare wouldn't be visible until it left the aura of the afterburner. Depending on the type of proxy fuse used, the RF cross-section or light emitted from the flare could trigger the warhead. It is of course possible that the jet caused the proximity burst too. AAMs are not known for having perfect Pk.

Well I'm confused here because I keep hearing that MANPADS can't be ruled out. At impact there is a sudden flash, rocket fuel does not burn that quickly just from impact. I can be 100% sure it wasn't MANPADS, especially if the argument is that it was a kinetic only strike from a missile with 23lb launch vs two afterburners burning 33lbs of jet fuel per second. You can see the difference relative to a live Brimstone hit and you have seen a live hit in FLIR too. So if a live hit produces a flash of a given size in FLIR and a given size in normal and an inert strike produces a far smaller (non-flash) in normal, ditto for FLIR. It's called reading between the lines. I have, the entire area covered by the flash is less than 20m. Well I think this has been ruled it out, especially for a kinetic strike, which was the argument put forward. The two jet engines are burning ~33lbs/second and the BTU/kg of jet fuel is higher than rocket fuel (18443BTU/lb vs 8345BTU/lb) and an Igla weighs 23lbs total at launch. You would also be surprised to note that it's 4361BTU/lb for TNT. See why that afterburner is so large on FLIR now? The warhead went dud before the rocket motor and electronics? Wonder why they're still scared of unexploded bombs from WWII then. You could but the direction of both the aircraft and missile are left to right as the video clearly shows. If the missile trail was right to left, then you would have a point. However, the missile will always travel further than the aircraft from launch to intercept due to the fact that it's going more than twice the speed, hence the distance covered in any fixed interval is twice as high. Yeah they are really. If the area covered by you FLIR is smaller than the area covered by the flash, then it has a blinding effect. Here's a suitably zoomed out view of a Brimstone vs T-72(?) on FLIR (0.55). Flash but entire image is not obscured. A T-72 is less than half as long as an F-15E.

It's nowhere near a direct comparison for reasons already mentioned. Every heat source is a perfect sphere in your video. Because the FLIR footage was covering a much wider area. That vehicle in your video is about 5m long, an F-15 is 20m long, it would cover the screen end-to-end and more in your video. Go look what an afterburner looks like at night in normal footage. There is no way in hell there is enough fuel left in a MANPADS to make an impact bigger than afterburner on FLIR. Afterburner on an F-15E burns more more lbs of fuel per second than the entire weight of an Igla - 33.3lbs vs 23lb (entire missile weight). Subtract 3lbs warhead weight, missile body weight and electronics plus fuel already spent (i.e. more than all of it) and you're telling me that a few pounds of remaining fuel can light up the sky larger than 2 afterburners on an F-15E, even assuming it did all ignite instantaneously, which it wouldn't. No the source of a Dutch Aviation magazine claimed R-73 shrapnel. The repair people only claimed a kinetic strike and specified no missile. Not the way I see it. No picture attached. Yes but it isn't even FLIR. You massively underestimate how much fuel afterburner uses and overestimate how much fuel a MANPADS has. No because there's a blockade. Leftover Yemeni military hardware is about all they have access to. What do you imagine this to show? The missile is approaching from a side and rear aspect that's why the trail is left to right, same as a/c. The a/c is also flying more or less straight but accelerating. Therefore the curved path is the missile here assuming proportional navigation. ??? The other thing with Hellfire videos is that you get a lot of heated dust kicked up. But I see nothing bigger than ~20m wide in terms of the flash.

We've already got one showing a Hellfire warhead (9kg) making a similar 20m wide flash on FLIR. So again we're back to the assertion that the proximity fuse and the impact fuse failed and the warhead survived the rocket motor exploding too. And this MANPADS had so much fuel left that it made a flash as big as a live Hellfire warhead. A flash larger than afterburners which are burning more than an entire MANPADS weight in fuel every second. Let's see an inert strike on FLIR.

Show me a FLIR video of a kinetic only impact involving missile and target of similar speeds making a 20+m wide flash.

There's significant spread and often air-bursting rounds to cover inaccuracy.

Same way you get your laser on a moving ground target with targeting pod. Indeed there are some SAMs that rely on this ability for guidance. The Vikhr also relies on this for A2A, as does the Starstreak and Starstreak II SAM. Think Rapier even used optical SACLOS with no laser originally. Laser designator is slaved to optical line of sight. Most AAA tend to be high rate spam fire weapons and/or airburst too, so there's some margin for error.

Link's not working for me. And the flash is similar in size to that on the video from your first Hellfire video. This link is dead too. Might be my ad-blocker.