Gregga and Capt PPrune;
In North America, if one hears hoof beats behind you one assumes that it is likely a horse, not a zebra.
Dependent and independent variables and all that.
Gregga, the China Lake tests were carried out on a Tomcat on a tower with a full FBI team to develop forsenic patterns for future terrorist detection. As little as I can gleam, a stinger, in daytime, leaves little missile trail as it tavels at Mach 4, which would be maybe 1.5 seconds at 1500 to 2900 feet. There is little missile trail, if any. Also, again based on the little that I know, a stinger does not drop a plane with fragmentation or a large combustile explosion, but rather with a sharp hard explosion of about 2 pounds of some explosive which through shock waves "breaks" off pieces of the plane. While it is infra guided, it is not infra triggered, but depends on a rather complex program to allow explosion prior to blasting past a contail. At that attitude, traveling at Mach 4, it would not hit the engine, but seek proximity, likely blowing as it streaks by on a trajectory that woudl be 90 degrees, roughly, to the climbing plane. The blast, as the plane flies overhead, would be behind the engines and perhaps above the center line. The stinger would trigger at the point it felt it was about to pass the plane. The stinger explosion is white and very bright, which like a photo flash in daytime could be missed.
I cannot find any information regarding the actual forsenics - but I have been able to find that most assume, it seems incorrectly, that a stinger leaves shrapnel or foreign debris. My understanding is that there is little or any foreign debris remaining as the explosion self destructs the stinger body, and to prove a launch one must find the first stage and other material from the launch site. There is no shrapnel. In fact I think the nose and body of the stinger that encases the explosive is composite material.
My point is that there is a wierd desire these days, when it is more likely than any other time in history, to NOT suspect a MANPAD. But that desire is being denied without any specific facts to eliminate that possibility. Instead, because of the loons working on TWA 800 and other grassy hill folks, it is pigeon holed as conspiracy wonks and drive on. Folks, there is no conspiracy, but actuality during these times.
I think the possibility of a stinger can be eliminated easily with the forsenics the FBI has gathered on a stinger at China Lake. Or some with military background could easily provide some info. Shrapnel and drone talk, with respect Gregga, imply you are neither.
All I request is that such information be available so that we can move on past the first obvious concern. What reasonable man would not suspect a stinger during these times?
From a Washington Post article on TWA 800 (which ironically was not a terrorist action but pursued intially as if it were - the opposite of 587):
"Stingers carry infrared guidance systems that zero in on aircraft engines or other heat sources. Direct hits on military planes often have resulted not in the kind of fiery explosion seen when the TWA flight blew up, but rather in the noncombustive loss of an engine or wing, followed by the aircraft's free fall."
This sounds very familiar.
In anycase, as more and more confusion develops: the AA investigation of the the remaining A 300 planes turning up nothing, the discarding of the 747 wake and the GE engines as a cause; we could use some definitive disproof of a MANPAD so that when folks are set to chew over what will likely be a detailed and hotly debated dialogue over composite materials they do not have a underground of conspiracy chatter to eliminate focus.
To NOT prove that a stinger was NOT the cause prior to such a long argument and exploration, which will likely end without hard evidence, would only end with true conspiracy folks coming out fo the wood work and be very bad for the industry.
There is a large difference between proof and a brief, and now wierdly habitual, brushing aside so called "conspiracy theories", of which, after the WTC, considering a stinger strike is certainly NOT a conspiracy theorey.
So I ask for some info on the possibilities of a stinger hit with the reply not based on consideration of what my motives or vantage point as the main point of debate, but on physics and physicality of the situation.
As a frequent flier, trust me, I would be very relieved to know definitively that a stnger was NOT the cause. Composite material I can handle as I know the industry will immediately provide cure, stingers give me the willies as their use and misues does not fall under the domain of the FAA.
