[Alberta's Child]

I don't think it could have been either missile -- TWA Flight 800 was flying too high to have been brought down by any known shoulder-launched missile.

[Atchafalaya]

How about a "Standard", ship launched SAM from one of the US Naval vessels in the area; those have a range of something like 100mi +. That would work!

[Moose4]

Shoulder-launched, yeah. Ship-launched, that's a different story. I'm no tinfoiler, but I have often wondered about the possibility of a Standard missile from one of the Navy ships on maneuvers in the area near where TWA 800 went down.

The SA-18/SA-16 Igla is a descendant of the old SA-7 Grail, which was the Soviet bloc's first shoulder-launched infrared SAM. I guess the new ones like the Igla are probably on a par with our Stinger, or close to it. Their warheads are relatively small, a few pounds, but a few pounds of military explosive detonating next to a jetliner's turbofan engine would not be pretty.

}:-)4