Hacker News Reader

Comment by CoastalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Would a typical person-launched SAM do enough damage to bring down a multi-engine plane such a as 737?

I'm assuming such missiles home in on precisely one engine. But AFAIK, planes like that are supposed to be operable on only one engine. I imagine the missile would do some damage to nearby parts of the plane as well, and I'm curious how likely that is to be survivable.

View on HN

An Airbus A300 was hit with a portable SAM over Baghdad in 2003. The missile struck the wing instead of the engine and caused the loss of all hydraulics. The crew was able to land by steering with the engines. So while this aircraft did survive, it very easily could have gone the other way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...

Person-launched SAMs are known as MANPADS. A number of these missiles have been fired against civilian aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_syste...

Unlikely to be survivable for an airliner. Most air to air missiles are designed not to hit the target but to blow up close to it and destroy the aircraft using the shockwave. So it may target an engine exhaust but the explosion will damage the wing and main fuselage as well.

It depends on the missile, some designs also have metal rings that are designed to expand and damage or sever the aft fuselage. The sidewinder is an interesting example, as some different versions have used different warheads.

Even if the place survives a hit the costs in both opportunity while the plane is down and repairs out-weigh the cost of equipping it with relatively cheap countermeasures.

Hard to tell, the planes are not designed or certified to survive attack by surface-to-air missiles. The systems just aren't designed with that assumption in mind.

You know the wings double as fuel tanks, right?

Yes, but I also suspect that many airplanes have safety systems (e.g., emergency fuel cutoff valves) which I'm ignorant of. So I'm not really qualified to make guesses on this topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com