From: "design"
Date: Wed Nov 14, 2001 8:19 pm
Subject: Stinger - The truth that dare not speak its name
Who would have thought that an aircraft engine with an impeccable 30 year production history could undergo such an unprecidented total failure as to cause Monday's flight 587 disaster. GE's CF6 series of engines have clocked up more than 212 million flight hours, more than any other commercial aircraft engine ever produced - thats the equivalent of one engine running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for about 23,000 years.
Aircraft engines come apart more frequently than you would imagine, in fact part of the design criteria for engines is to provide "containment" within the engine casing. Composites of ballistically resistant material are used to trap projectiles such as fan blades, should they break off. Perhaps the most famous crash caused by "catastrophic" engine failure was the Souix City DC10 crash in July 1989, an engine on the United Airlines flight 232 broke up severing flight controls, the resulting crash landing claimed more than a hundred lives - though there were many survivors.
For the GE-CF6 engine to have done what is claimed a new category of engine failure would need to be invented, it is completely unheard of for an engine to cause the major airframe damage that flight 587 suffered.
Flight 587's fuselage disintergrated in midair, in the same way an airframe would break apart when hit by 3kg of high explosive travelling at Mach 2.2.
Never heard of MANPADS? - "Manportable Air Defense System" the MANPADS system weighs 34.5 pounds and consists of the missile, disposable launch tube, detachable gripstock, and integral IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system, more commonly known as a Stinger.
Guess who are the most adept and successful users of Stinger missiles?, if you thought the country that developed and manufactured them you would be wrong. The US gave the Afgans over 1000 Stingers in the 80's during which time they downed a total of 270 Soviet aircraft (at a 79% combat success rate). Experts note that the Afghans used them with such skill against the Soviets in the 1980s that the Stingers acquired the deadliest record against low-flying aircraft of any weapon since World War II. Since that time the US has been trying to retrieve unused Stingers with little or no success.
A Stinger is fire and forget, this means once you have "acquired" your target in its sights and launched the missile does the rest, homing on the target with its cryogenically cooled IR system. At 1.5 seconds from launch the stinger is going at Mach 2.2, the missile has a six second burn time and a maximum range of 24,000 feet, although the unclassified (effective) range is 4 kilometers (13,120 feet).
Flight 587 was climbing over Jamaica Bay at about 4000 feet, anyone launching a Stinger from the seclusion of the Gateway National Recreation Area would do so knowing the missile would be in the air for a minimum amount of time - perhaps 3 seconds or less. People living in the area would naturally ignore the aircraft, such is the frequency of traffic in the area, only when the missile exploded on impact tearing the engine from its pylon and spewing fuel from the crippled aircraft did anyone start to take notice. Any evidence of a rocket plume would be lost to onlookers as they stared at the last moments of the Airbus and its helpless passengers. Eye witnesses in the area talk of a "sonic boom" , was this the Stinger as it broke the sound barrier 1.5 seconds from launch?
It is clear that the future prospects of the US airline industry and in turn the US economy are far too important to stall by admitting terrorist involvment in this tragic incident.
John H
A prediction made over a year ago
http://www.vantage-security.com/artsting.htm
Serving Freedom
and Liberty
