Cruise missiles or something else?...

Found this story on the net: blog.wired.com...

Are they missiles or something else?

Video here:

www.youtube.com...

Very interesting... There's no way this could be Tomahawk's. They are designed to be "loners", and on top of that, they are very expensive.

Nor do I buy the the goose story, they are flying extremely fast. A loose geuss would be 850-1000 mph.

At that speed, we would be looking at F.16's or similar flights.

However this is not any standard attack or formation flying I'm familiar with. That plus the fact they seem to change position mid flight.

Hmmm....

It's impossible to tell how fast the objects are moving from this video alone, we simply don't have enough information. It's possible that they are birds flying in formation away from the aircraft (toward the upper left of the video) but because the aircraft is gaining on them very fast, they appear to move in the opposite direction against the ground.

I'm not going to hazard a guess at this point because we really don't have enough information to definitively say what they are, but the bird theory seems plausible to me so far.

Seeing as how the image is from a flir system, and the objects in question are not leaving any heat trail(exhaust) the are not cruise missles.
Cruise missles do not fly in formation like that either.

They are a salvo of JDAM bombs.

B-2 in a FLIR systems doesn't leave a heat trail behind it either though.

Birds ? no way. Thats laughable. Just look at the tight formation, the way no veering or changes of direction...

Birds are intelligent thinking creatures and when spooked do not fly fast and straight, they swerve and veer about the skies.

Geese and other formation fliers swap postions as to maximise aerodynamic advantages and to prevent tiredness.

This vids cool still what ever they are. My monies on some type of stealth attack missile system.

I agree with mtmaraca with the theory that they actually flying in the opposite direction than it first looks like, so flying a lot slower than aircraft. So if they flying in that direction it does look very much how birds fly in formation.
Since the aircraft is not actually that close to them they not going be spooked by the aircraft and large birds don't swap position very often so the video is far to short to see that happen.

I personally dont think it can be birds, surely from top down you would see their wings beating one way or another.

Also searched the net for a while there and I cant find any pics of missiles flying in formation

perhaps a salvo of rockets?

or perhaps it just has to be taken at face value as a clutch of cruise missiles of some sort or other

reply to post by deckard83


They are not birds and the 'flying in the opposite direction theory' holds no water. The helicopter that took the video is most likely a blackhawk, which moves very slow. And towards the end of the video, you can see the video is stabilized and stops panning (the earth stops moving) but the "objects" still keep on moving at blazing speed over the terrain.

They are missiles, planes, or aircraft of some sort.

While cruise missiles do not normally fly in formation, that doesn't mean they can't - this could have been a test or something. I see no reason to believe that they are not cruise missiles and that the description of the video is not accurate.

As best I can tell, this is FLIR video from a Litening pod attached to an F-16, it's not from a helicopter. As a side-note, the polarity of the image is black-hot (BHOT), so the objects are either cooler than the background or they are reflecting the coolness of the blue sky above them. I'm not sure if this has any bearing on the identification though.

Again, you can't tell how fast the objects are moving relative to the terrain because the sensor is also moving at an unknown distance from the objects (even if it is ground-stabilized). You don't know the altitude either the observer or objects are at, so it's just not possible to accurately gauge the speeds. This is a simple problem of geometry and without more information there's no way to say for sure which direction the objects are really moving relative to the ground, or how fast.

reply to post by mtmaraca


True that the speed can't be accurately measured, but they are still obviously flying a lot faster than any bird can.

reply to post by Agent_Orange


No, that's my whole point: they could be hovering and we would have no way to determine that for sure just by looking at that video.

If you would look closer... You would see that everything behind them becomes a bit blurry... that indicates that they produce heat.... so it is some kind of missiles....

Originally posted by Agent_Orange
The helicopter that took the video is most likely a blackhawk, which moves very slow.

Originally posted by mtmaraca
As best I can tell, this is FLIR video from a Litening pod attached to an F-16, it's not from a helicopter.

The article states that it is from the optical tracking system on a C-130.

When I put this question to the Tomahawk program manager at the Pentagon, he said that video had been analyzed and that there was no way seven Tomahawk's could fly "formation" in that small a space. Based on where it was taken and how it was taken (C-130 optical tracking system) took it, it was determined to be large birds, most likely geese, and the relative speed of the Hercules make it look like they were traveling fast.

The article might state it, but the article is wrong. Look at the date of the ATO date - it is very early on in the piece when DCA was still being conducted because we thought the Iraqi Air Force may still fly. There were no C-130s flying in Iraq at that time (and even if there were, there is no way they would be flying at that altitude). Not to mention the fact that the labels around the side have a radar select option, as well as the A-G mode indicator (for air to ground) in the top left corner, suggesting there is an air to air option, which further leads to the probability that it was a fighter taking the video. Basically the post quoted below (the external quote that is, not defcon5 who I have nothing but respect for) is full of crap.

Edit: to add that if you check out this link and scroll 1/3 of the way down, you'll see an identical display from an F-16.

[edit on 17-6-2008 by Willard856]

reply to post by Willard856


Yeah, I think your right.
The beginning of the Video list this as from the 120th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. An F-16 unit out of New Mexico.
120th EFS
Three F-16 wings deploy to Korea

Originally posted by (^_^)
If you would look closer... You would see that everything behind them becomes a bit blurry... that indicates that they produce heat.... so it is some kind of missiles....

First of all, which direction is "behind them"? They could be flying toward the top left of the video and not toward the bottom right as it might appear at first glance, as I explained above.

Second, everything is blurry in this video because of compression, so it's really hard for me to make out any "extra" blurriness. Note that there are natural streaks in the background in various directions as the objects appear to move over it, and at least a couple of different times I've fooled myself into thinking that the objects were making the streaks, but I'm not sure if that's the case right now.

Third, even if there are blurry streaks "behind" the objects, that doesn't necessarily mean they are producing heat. The blur could be some kind of artifact similar to how a bright object can leave streaks in normal video. It's somewhat unclear because atmospheric attenuation depends on wavelength, but it stands to reason that if there were a hot contrail coming from the objects it would appear as an opaque black streak, not as a blur like you might expect in the visible spectrum.

In other words it's certainly not clear that they are producing heat, and although they could be some kind of man-made projectile, I really don't think it's fair to say that "if you only looked closer, it's obviously a missile. Duh."

They look like geese flying from the bottom of the screen towards the top. Parallax gives the impression of much greater speed from left to right but I think this is just an illusion.

reply to post by Dan Tanna


well when i was in the military i saw apache gunships fly over small bodies of water and the geese in the water did get spooked and did fly away, but they did it in an organized fashion as usual. and didnt really change position all that much or even at all.
i personally beleive after seeing that video that they were birds.
thats is the very first thing that came to my mind. they are moving i dont know 25-35 MPH, whats the plane doing? 350MPH? they only appear to be moving fast due to parallax motion. in that short time period the birds only moved the length of maybe 300 feet but the plane coverd five times that distance in the same amount of time, while first focusing on an object in extreme depth then following in line with the birds to the planes true physical location. that made the birds appear as though they were close to the original target the plane was aiming at but in reality were actually closer to the plane. plus they have an oscillation when they move...like a bird flapping its wings.....which is infact how i came to my conclusion first.

Ok, here's something else to chew on. We've decided it was an F-16, and at the time fighters were still doing Defensive Counter Air work. Therefore they were primarily using air to air radar modes. They were also operating above a certain altitude to reduce the threat from AAA and MANPADs. This altitude wouldn't give you an opportunity to spot geese or any other sort of bird. So this leads to two conclusions - either the pilot got a radar lock then slewed his targeting pod to take a look (a low, fast flying Iraqi aircraft would be a major threat to ground forces), or he got given a position from AWACs, which again it would be pretty unlikely that birds would provide a radar return of that magnitude to register a possible threat (yes, I know someone will claim geese have caused issues before, but that was large flocks, not six birds, was for radars that operated at different wavelengths to a fighter radar, and earlier technology that couldn't filter out such things).

Next clue - the WSV (weapon system video) would have to have been processed prior to release. Imagery analysts would have been able to determine pretty quickly, based on aircraft altitude, airspeed and knowledge of the ATO missions for the day, whether they were birds, Iraqi's, or friendly assets. Given that the WSV doesn't end with a roll in by the fighter followed by a number of AMRAAM shots suggests they weren't Iraqi's. The fact they didn't title the WSV "Bird formation" is also bit of a give away.

They're not birds.