CNN now trying to disprove insurgents shot down British C-130.

[hector459]

They sure as hell don't want anyone to think that the insurgents have captured heat sinking missiles or laser weapontry.

[DistantWind88]

1. Laser Weapontry (sic) ????

WTF???

[Cooley Hurd]

2. CNN's analyst (Don Shepard) says missle acted like radar-guided...

...and then pronounced that such a missle would "unlikely be in the hands of terrorists.":crazy::freak:

[Oreo]

3. Huh?

Here's an article that was submitted to Congress discussing the dangers of shoulder fired SAMs and their danger to civilian air traffic

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31741.pdf

"Unclassified estimates suggest that between 25 and 30 non-state groups possess shoulder-fired SAMs."

[DistantWind88]

4. Shoulder-fired SAMs

are not radar guided; so it is true that the "terrorists" in Iraq would be unlikely to have radar-guided missiles.

[Oreo]

6. But how does he know how the missiles acted?

If his words were taken verbatim... how does he know how they flew?
Would a radar based SAM act differently than a heat-seeker? C-130's fly pretty slow and would be an easy targer either way.

[DistantWind88]

8. Dunno how he knows

what he claims to know. He'd have to have more info than we do to make a claim like that.

[Cooley Hurd]

9. He said specifically that, according to the video he saw...

...the missle flew in a spiral, which indicated to him that it was radar-guided.

[DistantWind88]

11. Interesting

I have not heard his comments, but I don't think he was there, so I don't think he really knows WTF happened.

[lectrobyte]

13. Didn't al Jazeera release a video of the shoot down? Maybe he's

seen that.

[DistantWind88]

14. Like I said

Dunno what he knows or how he knows it.

[Cooley Hurd]

7. Why wouldn't they have radar-guided missles?

Given that we now know that huge stockpiles of weapons weren't guarded at the start of the war, and we also know Saddam's army had radar-guided missles (since he liked to fire at our planes in the no-fly zone all through the 90's), I think it's likely they have them, don't you?:shrug:

[DistantWind88]

10. Well, if it was a

MANPAD (shoulder-fired) it was not radar guided. I'm sure there may be some unaccounted for radar-guided SAMS out there, but I'll bet that's one of the first things the AF destroyed in the opening days of the war. Problem with radar guided weapons systems is that they tend to give their location away when employed...so we pretty much knew where they all were.

If this WAS a radar guided SAM, which I HIGHLY doubt, the military already knows since they will have collected the ELINT from the launch.

[lectrobyte]

16. Well, if they wait for a plane to get in range, power up the radar

and launch, then shut down before the wild weasel or whatever we have now can get there, it seems possible.

[DistantWind88]

18. We'd still KNOW it was

active. Maybe we couldn't get a HARM on it, but we'd know it was active. Plus, the C-130 RWR would have gone off letting the crew know it was being tracked and targeted.

We still have wild weasels; we use F-16CJs for that purpose.

[Maestro]

19. Shoulder fired anti-air missiles

are infared seekers, probably SA-7's, seeking the heat signature of a plane. These do not show up on the planes RWR protection system because they are not radar guided. The big installations are most probably old SA-2 stations that were taken out by various types of planes that can carry HARM missiles which seek out the radar signature of the site and knock it out. When that fails, use dumb bombs or cluster bombs. If the C-130 was brought I can almost guarantee it was from a heat seeking shoulder mounted system. The muhajadeen used the American form extensively in Afghanistan against the USSR.

[Old and In the Way]

21. Saddam troops would "paint" the planes, but I don't think they were

firing actual missles.

[Maestro]

22. That was back when they had the big

SA-2, SAM, missile sites. Now, if they have anything, they are the shoulder fired IR heat seeking missles.

[Old and In the Way]

24. I agree.

My post was in response to the poster saying that Saddam firing on our planes in the 90s. AFAIK, Iraq never fired....but they did turn their tracking radar on. Just trying to set the record straight.

[DistantWind88]

25. Actually, they fired all the time

They just never hit anything.

[Old and In the Way]

26. OK, I stand corrected

from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/southern_watch-2002.htm

February 16, 2001 -- In response to recent surface-to-air missile (SAM) and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) fire against coalition forces that enforce United Nations Security Council Resolutions, Operation SOUTHERN WATCH aircraft struck Iraqi integrated air defense system sites at approximately 1215 Eastern Standard Time. United States and Britain planes on 16 February targeted six Iraqi command centers, including radar and communications centers, in order to prevent Iraq from being able to fire upon and bring down allied planes in future raids. US officials explained the necessity of this massive raid by pointing out that Iraqi air defenses had fired some 13 missiles at allied pilots in the first six weeks of this year, compared to one missile per month prior to that time.

After this date, I couldn't find any incidence of Iraq firing missles (some antiaircraft cannon, though) at US fighters patrolling the No Fly zone.

[Stirk]

5. Is he suggesting Iran is to blame?

Or some malfunction with a United States SAM?

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AP]

15. The British gov't is basically saying, "Oh, definitely shot down."

It's very funny.

Usually governments want to say things like this are just accidents until their proven otherwise.

The Labour official I heard on NPR said basically, the crew was incredibly well trained, and the British keep up their equipment. So the presumption is that it didn't fall out of the sky but was shot down.

They clearly feel more can be gained by saying the opposite of what the Americans are saying.

It's kind of interesting, and it's really interesting that they frame the event within the context of having a very skilled army. That forecloses the argument that the British don't care about their soldiers.

[GregW]

17. It was probably a Patriot missile

We know how successful they were at downing scuds in GW-I - right?

:eyes:

[Maestro]

20. No Patriot installations are too big.

but I bet your post was tongue and cheek. :)

[DistantWind88]

23. Pretty sure it was LOL