Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer — DIY MANPADS includes Wi-Fi guidance, ballistics calculations, optional camera for tracking

https://mander.xyz/post/49104729

Notably absent… the explosives.

But sure, if you are wondering how folks out in Yemen or Gaza managed to retaliate against their oppressors for so long, this is a textbook example of how and why. What’s being proposed is collection of technology we’ve had since at least the 1960s that’s slowly made its way into civilian circulation.

Also…

Khojayev’s just-launched prototype has no effectiveness track record

I mean, we’re seeing what “just-launched prototypes with no effective track record” have accomplished on the Ukraine-Russia front-lines and it’s a decidedly mixed bag.

I think a harder question to answer is “Who would be interested in putting one of these into practical use?” And that gets to the real value-add of a Stinger MANPAD. Namely, the humans willing and practiced enough to use it.

I’d build and use one of these if I could get the explosives to go with it and the address of a CEO.
The United States has a variant of the AGM-114 Hellfire missile that replaces the explosive warhead with six scimitar blades. Because fuck That Guy, the whole That Guy and nothing but the That Guy.

Which would come as a surprise to hundreds of dead Iranian schoolgirls.

Turns out the military under Trump is more a “fuck that town in particular” affair.

You know, I’m still struggling to believe the story I’ve been told about that. “The US bombed an elementary school.”

For my entire life, the US has demonstrated precision munitions. The AGM-114 Ginsu is an air-to-ground laser-guided rocket that can kill an individual passenger in a car. We can fly a Tomahawk cruise missile into a specific window of a building. I’ve seen a bridge in Iraq bombed seconds after the last car crossed. Not saying GI Joe is a paragon of virtue, I’ve seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib, but…That shit sounds a lot more like Israel than us.

Even in the “no kill like overkill” “We don’t target coordinates, we target grid squares” “enemy fire is coming from that way, destroy that way” United States, that shit sounds a lot more like Israel than us.

We’re certainly attacking Iran because Israel wanted us to.

Lol. And that one village in Afghanistan you leveled, looks like who did it?
Oh, don’t even pretend anyone cares about Afghanistan.
One of the stills from one of the videos that the BBC showed identifying it as a Tomahawk showed it at a very un-cruise-missile way up, so it could just have malfunctioned during terminal guidance or been clipped but not destroyed by air defence, and then hit the wrong target. It could also just have been a governmenty-looking building close enough to an intended target that whoever was checking it didn’t notice it wasn’t the target. It’s a lot easier to get everything right when the whole mission is to hit one person with one missile when everyone’s got enough time to do their job perfectly and everything’s been rehearsed than when there are thousands of targets and people are doing things in a rush, especially if orders are coming from people who don’t care about international law.
I will also believe “war is hell, especially when waged by retards.”