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Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

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Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#251

Post by a1369209993 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #181
yucky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Missile damage to aircraft leaves very distinct and VERY obvious traces And conveniently the CIA prevented the NTSB from doing their normal investigation, so I guess we'll never know what obvious traces may or may not have been.

That theory falls apart instantly. The NTSB housed the 95% reconstructed fuselage and used it for training for more than two decades.

> The NTSB housed the 95% reconstructed fuselage

To anyone familiar with the CIA's behaviour over the past half a century or so, that says "the CIA discretely disposed of the 5% of the fuselage that did have obvious traces of missile damage". We don't know that that's actually true, but that's the level of trust the CIA has earned.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#252

Post by w10-1 »

If the FBI and CIA found the real cause, they could have released all the evidence.

Having a valid cause of action (due to new evidence) means you can ask them to release all the evidence now (or at least let the attorneys see it). Remember: discovery is the starting-point of the investigation, not the end.

To refuse discovery, the government would have to cite some other reason (e.g., national security secrets incidentally involved, like disclosing the location of the test site). But while those reasons might have been sufficient when those programs were active (and capabilities unknown) 20+ years ago, it's unlikely those reasons are still valid now, because the secrets don't convey any current capabilities. And the political will to hide them might also have changed.

So if the system works, they can hide when needed, but now they should provide all the information gathered and sequestered.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#253

Post by orangepurple »

thriftwy wrote: post #234
MichaelCollins wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Europe lost their taste for war a few generations ago, and have since tried to create a world where constant invasions of their neighbors is no longer the status quo. They are weary of Russia because Russia never got with the program. Russia does not believe that a peaceful future is possible, assumes the old status quo will continue, and act accordingly by continuing to invade their neighbors. And just to pr…

Few generations is not enough. Having a few generations between large-scale war is how Europe operated in the last 200+ years. Maybe it's just few generations o'clock. Add to that how Europe absolutely botched both Bosnia and Kosovo and had full-scale wars there. Your arguments about world peace are bogus. Europe is encircled in a ring of fire made from ex-USSR, Middle East and Maghreb. All the wars in the world happ…

Not sure if all the wars in the world happen around Europe, unless you literally mean AROUND not IN. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#254

Post by landemva »

thunderbird120 wrote: post #120
tyingq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That would not be caused by an inert missile impact Why not? Inert missile punches through a fuel tank, aerosolizing the fuel, and either the missile engine or a damaged aircraft engine ignites it.

That would cause a fire, not a detonation. The same way gas tanks don't actually explode if you shoot them, they spring leaks and those leaks may catch fire but actual booms require very specific circumstances. Specifically, they require the correct mixture of air and fuel vapors but that doesn't require a missile impact to ignite. Something much more mundane like a spark is just as effective and about 5 orders of ma…

> a spark is just as effective and about 5 orders of magnitude more likely to occur.

Seems you know of data about commercial airline fuel tank spark explosions. I didn't find much about this problem online. When else did this seemingly under-reported catastrophic commercial airline event happen?

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#255

Post by PraetorianGourd »

synu wrote: post #122
jeffbee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is new. They said that at the time. Dozens/hundreds of witnesses said same. Exactly zero of whom have ever seen a missile before and would know what one looks like.

I’ve now seen hundreds of missiles striking their targets thanks to the Ukraine war. It looks pretty much exactly like you would guess it looks like.

In person or via videos online? I have to imagine a video, where you know ahead of time what the topic content are, is different than mowing the lawn one evening and seeing an explosion with no context or immediate explanation.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#256

Post by JustLurking2022 »

throwoutway wrote: post #202
jp57 wrote: post #175

When the incident happened I worked with a woman who had served in the Navy at sea. Her opinion was that if the they had accidentally shot down an airliner during a training/practice exercise, hundreds of people on the ship would know about it and it would be impossible to keep them all from talking. Is there anyone from that ship who is on record saying "yeah, we shot down that plane?"

From the docket, the claim is that it was from land not from a naval warship: > Although the SPY-ID(V) would later become a key component aboard the next wave of Navy destroyer ships, in 1996 the only option with the hardware and computing power sufficient to operate the SPY-ID(V) was a New Jersey land-based testing site called the Combat Systems Engineering and Development Site (“CSEDS”).

There are still hundreds of people at a testing facility - and many of those would likely be civilian contractors, so not even under the military's direct control.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#257

Post by sumofproducts »

sudosysgen wrote: post #249
sumofproducts wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of SM-3, not SM-2, and SM-3's minimum altitude is somewhere in the rarefied upper atmosphere when it burns out and can separate the kill vehicle. Not even the abortive SM-2 Block IV was hit-to-kill. That said, all SAMs without nose proxy fuzing are /theoretically/ capable of directly impacting their targets. Only a scant handful of ABM-specialized interceptors are designed to do so in order to ensure…

I'm not. The SM-2 has contact fuze capability in some models. Look it up. This was almost under active development at the time, as the SM-2 Block IV. I'm not talking about therotically here. The SM-2 was at the time in a development program that involved direct hits. A test warhead for direct hit capability is something that was tested for the SM-2 repeatedly, and was almost certainly being tested around the time thi…

Ahh, I'm so used to thinking of SM-2 IV as stone tablet-tier ancient history that it didn't even occur to me that there was a time when it was under development!

If you're talking low TRL dev shots where you dgaf about putting the real boom in since you're just measuring miss distance (presuming you're referring to the IVA's new steering/seeker/dorsals before uhh... 97 or whenever they shipped it?), that makes a great deal more sense.

I am still extremely skeptical that one could punch a missile that huge and that speedy through an airliner without it being blindingly obvious, but it certainly wouldn't have any standard frag bits flying around.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#258

Post by MichaelCollins »

growse wrote: post #209
MichaelCollins wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to the claim "there is literally zero evidence for it" by pointing out that there is circumstantial evidence, and eyewitness accounts.

The problem is that this circumstantial evidence contradicts actual hard evidence on the wreckage.

Circumstantial evidence that seems to be contradicted by other evidence is still evidence. To claim that there is 'literally zero evidence' is literally wrong.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#259

Post by hyperbovine »

sudosysgen wrote: post #109
hyperbovine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 This is what seals it for me. Sadly, so much time has elapsed, and the world has turned to such shit, that we have multiple other incidents to compare to . Not just MH17, but also PS752, and many others that did not receive as much attention ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc... ). TWA800 looks nothing like these.

Test missiles often have dummy or instrumented warheads. You would not expect it to look anything like. And while normal warheads typically try to narrowly miss to maximize fragmentation, the SM-2 is quite unique in that it is specifically designed with a contact fuze as fragmentation doesn't work very well for many of its intended targets.

Occam’s razor, alas.

Re: Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

#260

Post by avh02 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #245
avh02 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of everything you said > A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing. Is doing some very heavy assuming.

It's not an assumption. Here's what a tail-heavy 747 does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUWC2jfjqI

you will notice a rapid lack of upwards ('vertical') movement in that video.
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