The reason for the warhead is to improve the odds of the bringing down the airplane.

A AIM-9 crashed into a MIG, didn't go off, got stuck, and reverse engineered after landing.

At the same time, a 747 and a MiG are two completely different vehicles.

An SM-2 has a solid chance of sinking a ship - and was seriously investigated for that application. A direct hit on a 747 is game over. It's going to go clean through, and if it's into the fuselage, cut it in two.

> For example, Dr. Stalcup obtained several FBI records never released to the TWA 800 families or the public. One described an “original [Navy radar] tape” showing an object “heading straight for TWA 800.” Another describes an object on radar “impact[ing]” TWA 800 and “spiral[ling] away,” while also stating that witnesses described seeing a “flair (sic) going up. . . . , orbit/circle another object. Subsequently debris fell from the sky.”

This is what seals it for me. Sadly, so much time has elapsed, and the world has turned to such shit, that we have multiple other incidents to compare to. Not just MH17, but also PS752, and many others that did not receive as much attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...). TWA800 looks nothing like these.

And while normal warheads typically try to narrowly miss to maximize fragmentation, the SM-2 is quite unique in that it is specifically designed with a contact fuze as fragmentation doesn't work very well for many of its intended targets.

(“The IAMAW strongly criticized the FBI's conduct during the investigation, including the undocumented removal by FBI agents of wreckage from the hangar where it was stored”, from the Wikipedia link above.)

> literally zero evidence for it.

There is literally circumstantial evidence for it, as well as eye-witness testimony. This is not "proof" by any stretch, but it's certainly evidence.

'Evidence' doesn't imply 'proof'.

In other words: if nothing has changed about the eyewitness accounts in the last 26 years, then there is no new reason to doubt the (overwhelmingly likely) explanation for them.

This statement is absurd on its face unless all the witnesses were simultaneously staring at the seconds ticking on a nuclear clock as they witnessed the plane explode. The whole thing would've transpired in less than a minute. There's no way they could pinpoint the timing of witnesses observations that accurately.

Loss of structural integrity could easily cause violent breakup by aerodynamic forces. A 747 is not going to stay together if the pointy end isn't into the wind. Then there's all that fuel suddenly released and atomized, and fuel absolutely loves to burn. Remember that fireball when the airliners hit the twin towers?

(The solution was swept wings, exemplified by its successor, the F-86.)

Why not? Inert missile punches through a fuel tank, aerosolizing the fuel, and either the missile engine or a damaged aircraft engine ignites it.

TWA 800 broke apart as a result of a major overpressure event. The particular mode of in-flight failure observed in TWA 800 is very difficult to cause by poking a single missile sized hole anywhere in the aircraft. Not theoretically impossible, but difficult to the point that it's not a reasonable explanation. You have to take the combined probability of 2 very unlikely events rather than just 1.

Seems you know of data about commercial airline fuel tank spark explosions. I didn't find much about this problem online. When else did this seemingly under-reported catastrophic commercial airline event happen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Airways_International_Fli...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_214

All fuel tank explosions. Modern aircraft have equipment specifically to mitigate fuel vapor in the tanks because of these sorts of incidents.

TWA 800 also caused improved maintenance requirements of wiring that might arc/spark, as inspections of other aircraft found widespread metal shavings, non-standard wiring, and eroded insulation in nearly every aircraft they took a look at.

Please explain this assertion. It makes no sense (at least to me).

And conveniently the CIA prevented the NTSB from doing their normal investigation, so I guess we'll never know what obvious traces may or may not have been.

To anyone familiar with the CIA's behaviour over the past half a century or so, that says "the CIA discretely disposed of the 5% of the fuselage that did have obvious traces of missile damage". We don't know that that's actually true, but that's the level of trust the CIA has earned.

> Problems with the aircraft's wiring were found, including evidence of arcing in the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wiring that enters the tank. The FQIS on Flight 800 is known to have been malfunctioning; the captain remarked on "crazy" readings from the system about 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the aircraft exploded.