HZ-FAB A320 Possible Missile Attack Saudi Arabia

[INSCRINIUM]

If the history of warfare has taught us anything, it's that any sufficiently large population will contain individuals at the tail of the bell curve for smarts, out of the box thinking and technical brilliance.

The big challenge is for those people to be recognised, brought along and their insights acted upon. AQ was a good example of this (9/11 in particular). The Houthi insurgency? Who knows (but the Iranians are no slouchs, that's for sure...).

The enemy are not idiots (usually). Cemeteries are overflowing with those who underestimated the opposition...

[fdr]

Originally Posted by metro301

fdr;

Not Ramp Rash... Puncture from a winged UAV that did not detonate or only partially detonated. Same type of UAV that has been used for years in the local area.

You are right. It is a bunch of weird markings though, without central foci, so there probably wasn't much of note in the way of an explosive charge, it looks like it is mainly kinetic., with a very small charge if any.

Against a cost of 200m/day for prosecuting the war, a small bit of gear like this looks pretty asymmetric and cost-effective as a strategic response. The volume that has to be defended is quite large and is only good against control systems that require video or external flight control and are not programmed to a GPS location. There are systems being developed in various countries, but it is still a problem for defenses. These are not sophisticated devices; if they become sophisticated, they will be a major irritant. Being unsophisticated, the defensive problem is only considerable, if it gets more advanced, then the issue will become a major burden to the receiving team.

[jmelson]

Originally Posted by fdr

The volume that has to be defended is quite large and is only good against control systems that require video or external flight control and are not programmed to a GPS location.

Either the people who sent this got incredibly lucky, or they had real-time video from the drone, to steer it to a target. Anybody know? If they had real-time video, then the controller/pilot must have been close to the airport. At least, I don't THINK they have satellite links on these things.