Posted on 06/03/2009 5:03:59 AM PDT by jimbo123
Federal and local authorities are trying to find the source of a "strange object" the pilot of a Continental Express plane reported flying about 150 feet beneath his plane in southeast Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...
And I understand from another article that the pilot reporting it was ex-military and presumably would know the signature of a missile.
Flashback 2008:
FAA investigating unexplained object that came near Continental jet
KHOU TV, Houston, TX ^ | May 26, 2008 | Jeremy Desel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2021609/posts
cue the scary music
Sounds like a UFO.
“It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman.”
Supposedly the pilot also got the coordinates.
That’s not a missile near miss, that’s a center wing tank explosion near miss.
Sounds like some muslims youths failed to shoot down a Continental Airlines plane at the end of May 2008 and just failed again same time this year.
At 11,000 feet altitude, this was not a bottle rocket or an RPG. Likely, it was some sort of shoulder fired SAM.
I remember reading pilot reports of similar situations (takeoff, climbing altitude) near Baltimore and Reagan National)
Concidental rocket clubs? Or ROP field practice with antiaircraft weapons?
Posted on Monday, November 28, 2005 6:49:25 AM by texianyankee
I heard on the radio this morning, that a pilot of a passenger jet departing LAX claimed to have narrowly avoided being hit by a missile. It was reported that the jet was about 6,000 feet in altitude & over the ocean when the event occurred. The news report further stated that authorities believe it was possibly a flare or a "bottle rocket."
Example
The SA-18 GROUSE (Igla 9K38) is an improved variant in the the SA-7 & SA-14 series of manportable SAMs. As with the earlier SA-14, the SA-18 uses of a similar thermal battery/gas bottle, and the SA-18 has the same 2 kilogram high-explosive warhead fitted with a contact and grazing fuse. But the missile of entirely new design with substantially improved range and speed,. The new seeker and aerodynamic improvements extend its effective range, and its higher speed enables it to be used against faster targets. The SA-18 has a maximum range of 5200 meters and a maximum altitude of 3500 meters. The 9M39 missile SA-18 employs an IR guidance system using proportional convergence logic.
Not that your average redneck has access to current generation SA-18s.
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