Emu

Well yeah, people's eyes glow on NVG under the right conditions but the FLIR imagery in the original video is clearly less over-exposed. You showed a FLIR video of a Hellfire warhead strike, which having similar weight to an R-73 warhead, made a flash of similar size. I think you inadvertently proved my case by underestimating the size of a strike eagle. A Dutch aviation magazine with an inside source suggests R-73 shrapnel too. A missile strike would also produce shrapnel though. A rod warhead will cut things off and the repair people will take the view of, "well this bit is gone and it needs replacing." Because if you count the time between the flares, the third one would be just releasing just before impact. No but I have proven that Iglas/Stinger only burn for the first 2km and after 10s of afterburner the F-15 has exceeded that distance, even if the missile wasn't taking an even longer path. It's as big as the flash on your FLIR video of a Hellfire strike. Have you seen a jet on afterburner at night in normal video? Have a look before responding. So they got training rounds instead of live ones from the black market and they got past the blockade? They won't buy from Amazon again. Umm no, I'm assuming a very moderate 250m/s start speed and near sonic after 10s of afterburner, so about 3km total. The missile takes a diagonal route which is longer, even assuming it's straight, which it isn't because the target speed is increasing. It also has to gain altitude if ground launched.

Optical plus laser rangefinder does the same job as radar.

It means it has all the sensors of a live weapon but doesn't fire, it is captive in the launcher or on the launch rail, like a CATM-120. Flight friction is very hot, especially at Mach 2. In your green video everything remotely hot appears as a perfect sphere of light with no definition because it is highly over-exposed. In the original shoot-down video, you can clearly see the shape of the glow and its trail and the F-15 is clearly distinguishable. In your green video, these would all just be balls of light. Right back at you, you show me one that produces a 20+m wide flash on imagery of the same quality (not over-exposed). It's not my assertion that it does, it is therefore up to you to prove the positive for a missile of similar size and speed, not for me to prove a negative. On the inert Brimstone video there is nothing even in the way of flame or fire to cause such a flash and a Brimstone weighs 5x what an Igla weighs. My explanation doesn't rely on silly things being true. It doesn't require the aircraft to be ridiculously low. It doesn't require a dud missile or an inert training round. It doesn't require militants having IR missiles that are immune to the flare package on an F-15SA. They're probably not as dumb as you think. They did get 2 kills during Desert Storm. And producing a huge flash similar in size to hellfire strikes in FLIR, a missile with a similar sized warhead as an R-73. Well there are several possibilities, or impossibilities since we're now being absurd. Either the missile was in storage in Yemen, in which case one would have thought the instructions and labelling would be in Yemeni since that is the norm when supply weapons to a foreign nation. I can directly attest to that. Or Iran supplied Houthis with inert rounds for a bit of a laugh hoping that they would break them open on the 1st of April. I can and have. The plane was in afterburner for 10s, it's done more than 2km, which is the burn range of a Igla/Stinger. The missile approaches at an angle, so has travelled further, even if it flew straight. Hence it can't be a MANPADS.

Inert missiles tend to be used for testing more commonly. Training rounds are generally captive, except for various A2G munitions which may be inert to preserve mock targets for longer. Not really, the green video is clearly suffering from glare because it's using lower grade optics like the kind found in goggles, this magnifies any light source. Sure IR makes hot things a bit bigger but the idea the flash was caused just by kinetic friction is preposterous. The plane and missile are both generating friction throughout flight, yet the massive flash only occurs on impact, it's also very sudden and short in duration, not like that associated with a rocket motor combusting. The afterburner is also burning copious amounts of fuel per second to produce that heat. A kinetic only impact would have been entirely absorbed by the AB's heat signature. No but you can see the appreciable difference between kinetic strikes and live warheads and we've already seen a live hellfire in your earlier video on FLIR imagery of similar quality. Now if you image the inert strikes on FLIR, seriously, where does the 20m wide flash come from? There just isn't one. This video also shows live strikes in FLIR, again you're looking at something approximating 20m (would it be roughly the same with no warhead?). I'm sure you can image an inert strike on FLIR and you know it doesn't produce a large flash >20m in diamater but if you can provide evidence to the contrary, I'm happy to watch. Well it kind of is all part of the point. The arguments to justify the possibilty of MANPADS have become beyond absurd at this point. They rely on the following being true. 1. The aircraft flying ridiculously low and close to the launcher at a slant range of <2km such that the motor was still burning. Not a tactic any sane air force would use. 2. Every part of the missile immediately exploding on impact except the warhead, which had a dual failure of the proximity fuse and the contact fuse and failed to go off when the rocket motor exploded. So the missile had enough fuel left to cause this explosion the range was so short. OR 3. The use of some kind of inert training round stored some place in Yemen that Yemenis couldn't ID as a training round. 4. The missile exploded with no warhead on impact, and produced no shrapnel as it came apart, yet had a flash duration similar to a warhead explosion. Sorry but the complexity and absurdity of the case for MANPADS is now beyond a joke. It's just not a MANPADS. The more sensible explanation is that a larger missile was used, quite possibly from an aerial vehicle like a MiG, against an F-15 flying at a sane altitude (thus explaining the rocket motor still burning), the missile exploded near a flare with a rod warhead that cut off the stab but the plane survived due to it not being a direct hit. I know which argument requires less special conditions.

Doesn't look like the same picture, I can't match any part of that with the former picture. But don't forget there were likely things around the missile when it exploded, so you might be looking at secondary shrapnel. But note that the extraneous shrapnel damage is inside the rod, not outside, so that would put it in the part that broke off.

I posted pictures back on page 7. The continuous rod warhead cuts in a line, tending to cause a failure along that line, whereas fragmentation warheads spray schrapnel everywhere. With a rod warhead the bit breaks off along with the schrapnel, unless very sturdy, like a ship tower. In testing, it's common to use no warhead, in training the missile is usually either captive, if using live bait or live if using dead bait.

Training missiles don't tend to fire at all. NVG is not the same as FLIR and I think it depends on sensitivity, the target was burning well after being hit in that video, indicating burning fuel. The explosion in the original video is more than 20m in diameter and the aura around it is twice as large again and if the F-15 had actually been hit directly and itsfuel exploded, it would be much bigger. If that were the case (independent of warhead size) then the 30mm HE round in your Apache video would create a similar effect, containing ~50g of filling and travelling at 800+ m/s. I've also seen inert Brimstone tests on IR and they do not produce a flash that size. You can see the clear difference in this video, the two are not confusable. How long was the MANPADS motor burning in that video? Well, i'd say we can only be about 90% sure due to lack of official info. And the F-15 possibly could have been low as i have pointed out earlier (still not sure if the f-15 in the video is saudi though): It could have been low (unlikley in itself) but it would have been travelling fairly fast and given the approach aspect, the missile motor would not have been burning if it was a MANPADS.

Shells big enough to reach that high usually just have an altitude fuse. Mk1 eyeball will spot AAA, not just the aircraft being fired on but also the rest of his flight. If your AAA is radar guided, the tracers are pointless and counter-productive. Even when planes were a lot slower and flew lower whilst strafing and rocketing, they still flew through plenty of tracer fire without being dissuaded. These days though, it's just like, "hi, I'm here, come kill me."

Well that was my only point here. A missile with no warhead? Manufacturing accident? And the car had a dozen or more gallons of petrol and probably some mortar rounds too. Completely different distances. E.g. how big is a strike Eagle relative to a typical car? Different everything. It's like throwing a grenade into a gas station and noting that the flash blinds a FLIR and assuming all grenades should do the same minus the gas station. Or maybe there was a great big flash that was equally as big as the one in your Apache video but it just looked smaller next to a huge 20m-long strike eagle. Place this explosion over the eagle in the images above relative to the cars. It's not a MANPADS, I'm 100% sure.

I was joking. Tracers are a dumb idea unless you really need them, even when pilots are using the Mk1 eyeball. When they have DAS, it's just asking for trouble. When bombing 'passes' are conducted from 20+kft or include glide bombs and missiles fired from tens of km away, I feel there is very little dissuasion. Oh no, help, that AAA is firing bright lights at me, I better not hit him with a Maverick from 8 miles away in case he gets angry and explodes.

Did the AA/SAM get taken out by the Israelis?

Could have used a Hellfire. Hellfires have been used A2A on drones before.

That was an incorrect statement made before I watched it in slow motion. They probably have a source aside from someone on the internet. That only means they know what part broke not how it happened. They are not incident investigators. There is no way a rocket motor explodes that quickly from a kinetic impact if the warhead (which has a dual redundant trigger mechanism) fails. And the idea that a MANPADS not only had sufficient fuel to be burning on impact but also enough spare to explode like that is preposterous. Also preposterous is the idea that both a proximity fuse and impact fuse failed but the rocket motor exploded so willingly and fast and yet this sudden explosion also failed to trigger the warhead. That's just a comical assertion. Every part of the missile exploded immediately apart from the part that was supposed to? The contractor needs to rethink that one. I guess this warhead is now just sitting in the sand somewhere having a Hamlet cigar???

Show of force.... :smilewink:

A Dutch Aviation magazine also claims schrapnel. Now a journalist would normally have a source.

Not really, not many people who fix planes have dealt with SAM strikes, furthermore the pictures show that the damage can be done by a continuous rod warhead. The video also shows a clear and sudden flash on the strike. If the missile hit with the motor still burning and the warhead didn't go off, I would expect the flash to be of longer duration and to see the burning rocket motor violently change direction before the missile was destroyed. I would expect the flash to drag out in distance too.

What are the two missiles on the inner wing pylon?

We're assuming a ground-based FLIR, as depicted in the video. Not really, and far better than leaps of faith, like the rocket motor immediately exploding on impact but not the warhead, with no visible spinning of that motor before the explosion and no fragmentation from it. That and a MANPADS motor still having unspent fuel after catching an F-15 after 10s of afterburner and from an angle. The simpler explanation is that it was a continuous rod warhead that cut the stab.

To mind mind the missile came from the side and behind diagonally. A SAM would have to come from below. And if the flash was the rest of the rocket motor burning off it sure as hell wasn't a MANPADS. To be still burning on impact and have enough fuel left for a flash would be quite something for a little iddy-biddy rocket.

Read the whole thread. You don't show force by putting expensive military equipment in a position where it can be shot down by cheap military equipment. That's like pulling your pants down as a show of force in a pub brawl. Didn't see any strafing, which would definitely show on FLIR. 500ft or 5,000ft? Also, again note that the rocket motor was still burning from a side-on tail chase after 10s of afterburner. Note MANPADS burn time of ~3s for Igla and Stinger and speed. The damage is not consistent with an Igla warhead either.

Clint Eastwood stole the real MiG-31 from Russia in 1982 and destroyed the other prototype. They had to make do with a mildly updated Foxbat as a result. True story.

Playing Devil's Advocate... Fly at 20,000ft and you're immune to MANPADS unless you're flying by a mountain. F-15SAs have the necessary hardware to hit targets precisely from that altitude, so why fly lower?

The fact you're ignoring is that the missile's motor is still burning when the warhead goes off. I've already shown umpteen videos of Iglas and Stingers in this thread at twilight where the burn time can be easily seen. It's literally 3s, for some MANPADS it's less. That's circa 2km (6,600ft) of travel. Could the F-15 have been inside that range after 10s of afterburner from Mach 0.8 (240m/s), especially with the missile approaching at an angle? Super unlikely. The damage is also inconsistent with the fragmentation warhead of an Igla, the cut off stab is more consistent with a continuous rod warhead. It is also very difficult to see how close the missile got because of the angle (side-on and tail chase). Furthermore, insiders doing the repair have ID'd it as an R-73 that hit/exploded near a flare. So regardless of how much anyone wants it to be a MANPADS, it wasn't. Now here's the problem, some would argue that the Saudi's aren't great pilots but at the same time they argue that there's no way a MiG-29 could have snuck up on one, even though an Iraqi pilot did just that to a USN F-18 pilot in Desert Storm. Dumb enough to fly well below 5,000ft, but not dumb enough to be surprised in air combat? That's a strange claim. So all things considered, I still maintain it was most likely hit by an air-launched R-73.