A delivery from that angle, with today’s modern on board computers (especially for Non-Nuclear Weapons Delivery Systems) you can pickle a bomb on target (give or take a few feet) from 15K. Alternatively, you could lob toss the bomb from a few miles away. By lob toss I mean the attacking aircraft flies NOE (nape of earth) and at a given point pulls up releasing the bomb along the way. Typically used to lob over a ridge line to keep from getting painted by Bad Guys on the other side.

You can also do it as a high speed pass and those on the ground would never see you or hear you before they became Happy Warriors meeting Allah.

Also, while you CAN drop heavy iron on a crowd, typically for anti-personnel you would drop a CBU (cluster). Not one big explosion but lots of little ones.

Air to ground tactics (in particular SEAD missions) was more bread and butter back in the glory of my youth. Even if I had decided to come in to the target area with my fangs out and hair on fire I doubt I would have below 10,000 feet. The crowd would have never seen or heard them.

Anyone who has been to a Thunderbirds or Blue Angels demonstration ans haas experienced the little flyby where you get pounced via the demo on the “Element of Tactical Surprise” knows that you won’t hear the fighter until she is right on top of you and by then it’s too late.

My guess is this bomb was dropped in a normal dumb bomb dive drop, the guidance package may not have been used, as these types of drops are pretty accurate if you know what you are doing.

Ask the Japanese

We’ve all seen photos taken in controlled conditions of high speed projectiles being fired when the photographer knows in advance and is set up to capture their image. How many photos exist of incoming high speed projectiles fired in anger at photographers during war time? I’m thinking zero.

Tantor, first of all, my point is that if given sufficient warning, a photographer can capture very high speed projectiles. An aircraft flying over dropping a GBU (and my guess from the angle is that it was a dive drop, so the aircraft’s target would’ve been pretty obvious to onlookers on the ground as well, based upon his actions) and then pulling up prior to the bomb impating (therefore theoretically increasing the sound by pointing the exhaust at the ground) gives a photographer a pretty good indication of where to point the lens and start clicking away. The bomb is much larger and slower than any of the projectiles I listed, but with similar warning if you are prepared. That all adds up to this being possible.

I’ve seen a fair amount of footage of bombs leaving the bomb bays of B-17s over Germany, but I haven’t seen any footage taken by Germans of the bombs falling on them. The only footage taken on the ground of bombs striking the ground that I’ve seen have been taken at a safe distance on a bomb range.

Haven’t we all? However, how many Germans on the ground had working cameras to take pics? How many of those had any film left? How many of those were then dumb enough to be outside during a carpet bombing scenario? How many of those do you think survived? Comparing to the B-17 footage is not apples and oranges, but apples and oceans. With LGB bombs and a virtual moritorium against carpet bombing by Western Nations, it’s relatively safe to be near (but not too near) a target to get pictures of the bombings.

Think back to ’92, those camera shots of Baghdad were from relatively close, andthe real danger was falling shrapnel from the AA guns.

I agree that the conditions in the field are tough to get these kind of pics, I imagine that you never quite get used to bombs impacting nearby, but the fact that it is difficult doesn’t thereby prove it’s impossible or that this picture is false.

I am not claiming to know that this is a fake or real. I don’t know my digital photography and photoshop nearly well enough to try to guess. I do know (as a Navy Lt) that the size and shape of the bomb, the speed at which it would be travelling, and the fact that numerous more difficult shots have been taken all lead me to believe that this photo could be real. Nothing I see in the picture strikes me as out of reality.

I disagree. These people are looking in the wrong spot for the delivery jet, which is the direction the bomb came from. Bombs fall behind your jet, not in front of it. By the time the bomb reached the position in this image, the delivery jet would have flown on past the impact point, off the right top side of the photo. The crew would be looking back over their shoulders to see if the bomb hit.

I doubt that the delivery jet is flying low enough for anybody to hear it nor close enough to see it. These people are looking at something else.

First of all, they can see the bomb. What makes you think they can’t? In reality it’s probably travelling no faster than your average commercial airliner, and second it’s a mettalic object streaking through a blue sky without clouds. The motion alone would draw the eye, but these people probably know what a jet dropping a bomb looks like, and who doesn’t recognize that something cylindrical dropped from a warplane is likely a bomb?

Also, if the jet is under 10,000 feet, and especially if it is a fighter bomber (likely) it’ll be plenty loud enough to hear, or haven’t you ever been to an airshow?

Folks, you have to do at least some minimal research before you go crazy with this stuff.

Amen. Or don’t, makes good laughter material!

We’ve all seen photos taken in controlled conditions of high speed projectiles being fired when the photographer knows in advance and is set up to capture their image. How many photos exist of incoming high speed projectiles fired in anger at photographers during war time? I’m thinking zero.

jtkerch79: “The bomb in question is going 600 mph at the high end. Think back to some of the war footage you have seen. You can see bombs on their final descent into their targets as often as not, because they are big and quick but not blindingly fast.”

I’ve seen a fair amount of footage of bombs leaving the bomb bays of B-17s over Germany, but I haven’t seen any footage taken by Germans of the bombs falling on them. The only footage taken on the ground of bombs striking the ground that I’ve seen have been taken at a safe distance on a bomb range.

I disagree. These people are looking in the wrong spot for the delivery jet, which is the direction the bomb came from. Bombs fall behind your jet, not in front of it. By the time the bomb reached the position in this image, the delivery jet would have flown on past the impact point, off the right top side of the photo. The crew would be looking back over their shoulders to see if the bomb hit.

I doubt that the delivery jet is flying low enough for anybody to hear it nor close enough to see it. These people are looking at something else.

Things look farther away in photos than they are.

Thanks to Tantor here and Faith1 for info on bombs.

As for the above, it depends entirely on your focal length. More often than not in news or sports photography, however, the opposite is the case: things in photos actually appear much closer together than they are, as the photographer is using a long lense to ensure his ability to cover relatively distant subjects with maximum detail.

It’s an extreme example, but anybody who’s watched NASCAR or seen a field-goal shot on a televised football game should be familiar with the spatial distortions inherent to long-lense photography.

I was a weapon systems officer (WSO) on F-4Es in the Air Force who has dropped a lot of practice bombs and a few live bombs. This photo shows a bomb, not a missile, a bomb a lot like this one. You can see that the body of the weapon is curved like a bomb. Missiles have straight sides. Blow up the photo and match it to the link above and you can see it looks a lot like a laser-guided bomb. It might be a 500 lb Mk 82 or maybe a 2000 lb Mk 84 with a guidance package strapped on it.

This bomb was close, maybe 100 to 150 yards away. Things look farther away in photos than they are. The frag envelope for such a bomb is about half a mile. It’s not healthy to be so close to such a bomb. It’s remarkable that the photographer was cool enough to keep his image so perfectly composed in the face of such a startling noise and flying shrapnel. He’s obviously standing, not running. I would have expected an off kilter shot hastily made as you see in combat photography.

These bombs are gonna be dropped from medium altitude and quite some distance. You can’t see a fighter bomber from more than five miles away and a laser-guided bomb like this one is going to be dropped further away than that. This bomb is going to be released at maybe 350 to 450 knots, about 400 to 520 mph. Your chances of seeing it in flight are slim. And if you are in the target area with the bomb coming at you nose on, it will be too small for you to see, even if you know where to look, until it is a second or two from impact. It would be about the size of a green dinner plate eleven football fields away when it was two seconds from impact. Good luck spotting that.

So what are these people running from and looking at? They can’t see the bomb coming. They can’t see nor hear the aircraft. Air attacks come all at once, all the bombs impacting simultaneously. Once the bombs hit, people don’t know what to do or where to go. My conclusion is that this crowd is not reacting to an air attack but to something else.

The killer detail is that the fins on the back of this bomb wrapped in a laser guidance kit are not deployed. Those fins, deployed immediately after release from the aircraft, stabilize the bomb in flight while the canards up front move to guide the bomb to target based on the laser light reflected from the target, that light being projected from the delivery jet. Without those fins, the bomb would not be aerodynamically stable. My guess is that the airflow over the canards up front would make the bomb tumble end over end, like a dart without feathers. It certainly would not be approaching the ground in controlled flight as depicted in this photo.

Those fins only deploy after the weapon is dropped. It’s hard to get a photo of those deployed bombs in flight. My guess is that Mohammed the Photoshopper used a photo of a bomb on the ground with the fins retracted, then rotated and lit it.

My speculation is that the photographer knew of a forthcoming explosion and was waiting for it. The crowd was running to clear the area after being warned. The photographer carefully composed his pre- and post-explosion shots, knowing he was safe and clear. Afterwards, he decided to sweeten the pre-explosion shot with a photoshopped bomb. And then he sold it to a gullible press service and made a couple bucks.

Did my bit in Gulf War 1 and in some 600 hours of flying the Viper probably dropped more than my share of dumb iron, paveway’s, CBus (my personal favorite) and GBUs.

That is a bomb not a missile.

It resembles a Paveway very heavily.

Laser guided bombs can come in at all angles, not just 45 degrees. The angle depends on the drop orientation and mission requirements. I prided myself on being able to pickle a Mark-84 straight down a 32 inch verticle drain pipe at 600kts. Lob tosses over a ridge line will also drop the egg at nearly 90 degrees.

At 500 lbs (generally that’s the smallest though there are 250s–not used as much) Danger-Close is 300 meters. By Danger-Close I mean we were not allowed to drop within 300 meters of friendly forces. A 500lb bomb makes a BIG explosion.

People less than 300 meters from that explosion would not be standing. Not necessarily dead or even wounded by the concussion alone will make your ears bleed.

I’m no photo expert, but I am (or was) an expert on dropping ordinance on targets. I find this series of photos hard to swallow. If I were a betting man I’d say a bomb was planted on the ground, the explosion setoff with pics taken and the “missile/bomb” photoshopped in.

Laser guided bombs are most effective from a distance using a ground based laser unit or a different aircraft.

LGB targets can be lased by other aircraft or ground spotters, but aircraft also routinely self-designate, particularly dual-seaters tasked with ground attack, of which Israel has an ample supply (particularly in the form of F-16Ds, F-16I’s, and F-15I’s). LGB’s of this type are also gravity-fall weapons: the fins are there for steering, and do little if anything to extend range. As such they are useful from roughly the same range as any common bomb (i.e., short, not long). And in environments that are low threat from surface-to-air defenses, they’re routinely dropped from 10,000 feet or lower.

I try to watch the right movies.

Folks, you have to do at least some minimal research before you go crazy with this stuff. It’s clearly not a JDAM. It doesn’t even vaguely resemble a JDAM, beyond the fact that it’s longer than it is wide. There’s more than enough detail to illustrate without doubt that it’s a Paveway series LGB (the generation is not so clear–could be anything from a II to a IV).

Here, look for yourselves:

Blacklake on May 29, 2007 at 11:45 PM

I agree… it does look a lot more like a Paveway. But I guess my point was… that whatever it is… it’s cut and paste.. and it’s obviously a bomb and not a missile. But I don’t agree with you on the “depth-of-field of the camera” thing. I think you can get an approximate idea of the trajectory from the picture. And the trajectory you would suppose for this bomb by looking at the first picture is no where near where the second picture shows an explosion. And the size and shape and “make-up” of the explosion doesn’t look right either.

Looks like they detonated some kind of small munition to make an explosion for the camera.

Laser guided bombs come in at like 45 degrees, not 90 degrees like that.

SillyRyno on May 30, 2007 at 12:55 AM

Actually, the inbound angle in the photo is around 70 degrees. Your statement isn’t always true, it depends on a large number of factors which we don’t have knowledge of in this case. The launching aircraft type, speed/altitude of aircraft at launch, release method (low-level horizontal, high-level horizontal, high-level dive, over-the-shoulder, climb-loft), and required guiding corrections all affect impact vector.

I’m not convinced that the weapon is a Paveway munition. It doesn’t appear to have a floating seeker-head nor the sprung tail fins of a U.S.-made GBU. It is definitely a guided bomb, not self-propelled. That would limit it’s impact velocity to around 450 knots.

To indicate that the shot is plausible, I have on four different occasions caught the same shot of two aircraft passing each other at a combined 850 knots. On each occasion, at Navy airshows, two Blue Angels jets are performing the Knife Edge pass, wherein opposing planes each execute a 90 degree aileron roll to starboard just prior to reaching show center, and pass belly-to-belly. Each of the four photos I have were shot just as the cockpits overlapped. When the Blues flew A4 Skyhawks, the result looks like a giant blue and gold bowtie.

All that to say that it’s possible, which neither proves nor disproves anything about these missile strike photos. The shots of the “angry” man carrying the “injured” boy are staged, no doubt. The kid isn’t injured in the slightest, and the outraged expression on the guy’s face is almost laughable. They must teach that in Palestinian victim school.

In fact I am surprised there aren’t more of these pictures. I’ve seen 5 or 6 pictures of howitzers firing with the projectile visible 10 feet from the barrel, and one 5″ 54 caliber round, caught on film. That round, from the navy 5″, is traveling 2650 ft/sec (that’s about 1,807 mph). The M198 howitzer is going faster.

The bomb in question is going 600 mph at the high end. Think back to some of the war footage you have seen. You can see bombs on their final descent into their targets as often as not, because they are big and quick but not blindingly fast.

Combine being near a likely target, hearing the jet that dropped it flying over, and a digital camera clicking away at high speed, and this is a rare, but not unbeleivable shot.

PS if you wanna see the 5″ shot (the only one I could quickly find online and know it was real) go to wikipedia and lookup 5″/54 caliber Mark 45 gun

Flying Zionist Object

Rusty over at The Jawa Report has analyzed the photo of an Israeli “missile” that’s been floating around the internet for a few days now. I was e-mailed a tip about it by astute reader Frank W. over the weekend, and didn’t…

So, you are trying to get the group to believe that the Israelis are going to announce that they will be dropping a bomb so the victims know when and where to look for it? Are you trying to tell us that an aircraft is going to drop a bomb from a few hundred feet above their targets? HELLO!!!! The purpose is to bomb the target before it gets a chance to run away. It makes zero sense to approach a target in a way that allows the bad guys to get out of its way. Laser guided bombs are most effective from a distance using a ground based laser unit or a different aircraft.

May I stay in the thread?

Given your “explanation” you should be asking yourself if you should continue.

For crying out loud. Look at the angle of their heads. The jet would have already passed the bomb and if were even with the bomb, it would have been much higher in the air. And even if every mistake possible was made by the Israeli pilot, one person my have been dumb enough to watch a falling bomb. But several? And, bombs travel on an arching trajectory. Follow the trajectory of that bomb backward to it’s horizontal position on the aircrafts wing. It dropped off the wing a loooooong time before this picture was taken. Do jets fly slower than bombs fall?

C’mon you two, this is supposed to be a real world photo and all you have to do is let common sense do your thinking for you and it becomes quite evident that this is a fake.

As far as expending energy goes, well, how much time have you devoted to this worthless fight?

You mean besides the aircraft that dropped it? Or watching it fly in?
Read my previous post. I’ve seen it in person. Don’t like it? Too bad.
I am not saying the pictures are real. I am only saying that unless you’ve watched bombs flying at you, don’t talk shit.
Bomb Doctor on May 29, 2007 at 10:29 PM

HAHAHA! Yes, we all know how to look for a bomb when the USAF tells us when and where it will be coming from. Jeeze!

So, you are trying to get the group to believe that the Israelis are going to announce that they will be dropping a bomb so the victims know when and where to look for it? Are you trying to tell us that an aircraft is going to drop a bomb from a few hundred feet above their targets? HELLO!!!! The purpose is to bomb the target before it gets a chance to run away. It makes zero sense to approach a target in a way that allows the bad guys to get out of its way. Laser guided bombs are most effective from a distance using a ground based laser unit or a different aircraft.

May I stay in the thread?

I don’t know? May you? Why is it you people come in here with your movie time versions of how a war is fought and expect everyone to go gaa-gaa over it?

For crying out loud. Look at the angle of their heads. The jet would have already passed the bomb and if were even with the bomb, it would have been much higher in the air. And even if every mistake possible was made by the Israeli pilot, one person my have been dumb enough to watch a falling bomb. But several? And, bombs travel on an arching trajectory. Follow the trajectory of that bomb backward to it’s horizontal position on the aircrafts wing. It dropped off the wing a loooooong time before this picture was taken. Do jets fly slower than bombs fall?

C’mon you two, this is supposed to be a real world photo and all you have to do is let common sense do your thinking for you and it becomes quite evident that this is a fake.

As far as expending energy goes, well, how much time have you devoted to this worthless fight?

Can people run that fast so as to get out of the picture by the time the second one was taken?

Anybody see Green-Helmet guy?

91Veteran on May 30, 2007 at 12:37 AM

Those are better questions.

Honestly, in the end it doesn’t matter if this is a real or fake photo. We know they drop bombs and missiles on the “militants”. We know Israel bends over backwards to avoid killing more people than they have to. We know the local media circus, politicians, and religious leaders encourage martyrdom and playing injured/distraught/defiant to the cameras. It’s like Burbank over there with all the independent fil—news reports being created.

That’s a flippin’ awesome display of technological weaponry used to limit collateral damage and proves they we don’t want to kill indiscriminately.

Unlike some people.

yo on May 29, 2007 at 10:32 PM

Exactly. SOP for these punks is to use kids for shields as well as targets. Whoop-de-freakin’-do! They have actual (er, maybe) photos of Israel shooting back at one of their terrorist rocket launches. Frame it and hang it next to Arafat, dorks. It’s not worth a handful of your useless dirt to any honest person.

I managed to enlarge the area around the bomb itself….have a look

The Ugly American on May 29, 2007 at 10:26 PM

Yee Haw Slim!

As for faux…I think it interesting to see in the first photo about 12 people in the picture, and in the one with the explosion, only about 8. Can people run that fast so as to get out of the picture by the time the second one was taken?

Anybody see Green-Helmet guy?

The “missile” is probably a cut & paste of a JDAM,

Folks, you have to do at least some minimal research before you go crazy with this stuff. It’s clearly not a JDAM. It doesn’t even vaguely resemble a JDAM, beyond the fact that it’s longer than it is wide. There’s more than enough detail to illustrate without doubt that it’s a Paveway series LGB (the generation is not so clear–could be anything from a II to a IV).

Here, look for yourselves:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app5/paveway-2.html

But see how big it is in proportion to the people? It would have to be at least a 2,000 pounder to look that big, and see how small the explosion is?

The proportion to the people means nothing, as you don’t know the distance of the bomb or the depth-of-field of the camera. The proportion of the parts of the guidance kit (comprised of attachments to the tail and nose) to the core bomb does. Based on those proportions, it is clearly not a 2,000 bomb. The proportions appear to match those of a 500 lb device (see the above link again for reference).

What would a laser guided bomb, missle, or whatever be doing to draw peoples attention to it AND give them time to start running in the right direction? Anyone who can’t answer that question first should just move to a different thread.

It would be being dropped by a plane. The appearance of the plane would draw people’s attention, and give them time to start running. As the bomb is an LGB, not a JDAM, the plane would be flying overhead to continue lasing its target point, as opposed to leaving the area, so would likely continue to draw attention while the bomb descended. May I stay in the thread?

Here is the disturbing thing about all of this. Conspiracists, whether they’re 9/11 Truthers or Moon Landing Deniers or Roswell Fanatics start with a premise they want to be true, then fixate on the task of making sure any evidence that emerges is parsed only so as to play into their delusions. They look at images they don’t understand, pretend to be experts on everything from photo manipulation to structural engineering to demolitions to aeronautics, and do everything else in their power to make sure that no conceivable evidence can get in the way of their premise, no matter how obvious it happens to be, or how outlandish their efforts to avoid it.

In the age of “fauxtography,” it is genuinely important to be vigilant for fraud. The only sound way to do this, however, is to look at evidence first, then form conclusions. It is vital that we not lapse into the dysfuntional thought patterns of conspiracists.

Many people in this thread are not avoiding that trap. They want it turn out that these images were manipulated, and by God, they’re not going to let anything get in their way.

This not only fails to serve them well, it undermines the goal of legimitely playing watchdog to the media. If we cry “faux” at every photo that emerges from Palestinian sources, including the ones that aren’t fake, or even that we have insufficient reason to conclude are fake, it will eventually become hard to take us seriously when we have a real fraud to decry.

I, too, wish these photos were fakes, as they will no doubt be used as anti-Irael propaganda. There is, unfortunately, no evidence beyond uneducated imagery analysis, partial-at-best knowledge of military procedures and materiel, and other bits of half-baked, ill-informed conjecture to back that notion.

Don’t be so quick to jump at shadows. Save your energy for the real fights.

…the position of the bomb in the sky, which looks like it will impact near the building in the deep foreground right of the picture.

But alas, in the next picture… the explosion looks to be very close and just behind that large tree, which looks to be two or three football fields away from the buildings in the background.

Maxx on May 29, 2007 at 11:07 PM

I agree! See my previous post:

The other thing that really bothers me is the relationship between the direction the projectile appears to be traveling and the point of impact. It seems off to me. From the photo, I would figure the impact point to be much farther back than it was.

IrishEi on May 29, 2007 at 8:46 PM

But alas, in the next picture… the explosion looks to be very close and just behind that large tree, which looks to be two or three football fields away from the buildings in the background.

Wow, that guy was really good with the camera, not only did he catch the falling bomb, but also the explosion a few micro-seconds later at a location perhaps a thousand feet away from where you would expect the bomb to hit. Those Pallywood guys are really good and lucky too.

I managed to enlarge the area around the bomb itself….have a look

The Ugly American on May 29, 2007 at 10:26 PM

Slim Pickens ? Riding down on the bomb ? I thought he was dead ?

I managed to enlarge the area around the bomb itself….have a look

The Ugly American on May 29, 2007 at 10:26 PM

I liked that. I liked that a lot.