An absence of evidence does not mean an absence.
You don’t know any more than most others, therefore your outright claims are decidedly iffy.
What are the numbers on aircraft versus manpad encounters?
If there are actual substantive factual numbers out there and not projections or theories lets see them.

Well you certainly can’t use an absence of proof as proof.

I cannot see why you are pursuing the subject of this arena test. Are you seriously suggesting that the photograph posted on this forum proves the existence of a secondary fragmentation-based kill mechanism that is not generally known in the industry, or described in any of the textbooks or technical papers that have been published on the subject of continuous-rod warhead technology? Hardly a convincing hypothesis, is it? Misinterpretation of the photograph seems more likely.

The fact that you incorrectly use the word ‘shrapnel’ – as do many journalists – is an indication that you are a layman in this field. Yet without expert knowledge, you claim to be able to judge what effects a fragmentation warhead or a continuous-rod warhead would or would not have on aircraft structure. Personally, if I want to know about warhead effects, I talk to someone who understands the subject, and preferably a fellow with experience of firing real warheads against test structure. There are no signs that anyone on this forum (myself included) has that expertise.

The Netherlands accident investigators should the theory publish their preliminary report within the next week, but I understand that it will be delayed due to the problems in getting access to the crash site. I for one will be happy to await their findings, rather than speculate about R-27 missiles or mystery fighters that may or may not have been in the area of the MH17 shootdown.

I cannot see why you bothered with your post. I’m making an observation based on the test image. So it doesn’t really get anymore convincing than an actual test. Some of the damage is also elongated and some isn’t. As I mentioned above, it doesn’t cleanly fit rod or fragmentation.

Just because I couldn’t be bothered to distinguish between say the shrapnel from a fragmenting shell and the shrapnel from a pre-fragmented warhead?

Well some people have been happy to speculate about pretty much everything over the past few weeks. Some people even seemed to know who was to blame from day 1. The R-27 is at least an interesting alternative.

You should may be first understand the difference between a shrapnel, burst fragmentation and a rod fragmentation. 😉
A rod caused elongated holes when the ring disintegrates.
Typically laypeople mix up shrapnel and burst fragmentation.
The MH17 shown the typical burst fragmentaion damages.

Except in the places where it doesn’t:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?131080-Malaysian-Airlineus-777-shot-down-over-Ukraine&p=2159176#post2159176

There are others too. The strange thing is that damage I’ve seen doesn’t seem to correspond purely to fragmentation or rod.

A rod warhead send not shrapnels out.
Continuous-rod warhead

That’s not what the flashes in the demonstration indicate. Whilst that may be the theory, the demo indicates that shrapnel lands within the circle.

To me the damage looks too unevenly distributed to be fragmentation.

In 1983 the concept of stealth in people’s minds were…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film)

A joint Anglo-American plot is devised to steal a highly advanced Soviet fighter aircraft (MiG-31, NATO code name “Firefox”) which is capable of Mach 6, is invisible to radar, and carries weapons controlled by thought.

Stealth, Mach 6, VTAS. Pretty forward thinking.

*video*

LOL. He says, “these tapes were not requested.”

Yer, you don’t think they might have been useful following a major air crash?

Landing on the ground outside the test arena? My eyesight is somewhat poor, but I cannot see any. If they exist, such fragments could be accounted for by spalling from the witness plates.

No, I’m saying they land inside the circular target area, which would explain why the shrapnel damage on MH17 doesn’t cover the whole aircraft as a pure fragmentation warhead likely would.

As regards the R-27, Wikipedia is at best of questionable reliability, so hardly constitutes an authoritative source.
Nor is an enthusiast site an authoritative source.

I was hoping you would be able to cite an official Russian document such as the Vympel material that I have, which says ‘continuous rod’ for all current variants. To have fitted an older legacy version with frag warhead would be hard to understand, given the performance limitations of frag warheads of the time. Those limitations spurred the development of the continuous-rod warhead, which saw service in to missiles whose sizes ranged from Sidewinder to Talos.

Vympel will only advertise what they’re currently selling I guess. I don’t know the answer on that.

When its limitations became known, continuous-rod techology gave way to the improved fragmentation-based warheads made possible by new technology. So if some R-27 series missiles did use blast-frag, I would have expected these to be the most recent variants. But Vympel stayed with continuous-rod techology for the later R-27 versions.

Possibly but I don’t think the damage necessarily eliminated a rod warhead anyway.

Not so fast. Still the greatest movie fighter of all time, since 1982 (and best on a genuine cold war fear of what the MiG-31 was going to be like):