Re: Israeli Faces From Earlier Today :-)

Houthis again shot down a $65 million American drone (MQ-9), last night (their local time) above one of their cities, with an even cheaper than Shahed 136 Iranian designed ground to air missile. Same missile has been shooting down American Navy's MQ-9s for a few years now.
The missile has an interesting story. It doesn't even have a name, and was designed by Iranians some years back to help Houthis prevent the Saudi aircraft and helicopters from indiscriminate bombing of them.
American and British navy that intercepted their disassembled form several times, en route to Yemen, and stole them, called it "358" and the name has stuck. But Houthis are now making their own and have their own name for them.
I don't think the disassembled parts seized were complete though. Iranians wouldn't place all the eggs in the same basket. So Americans I think never got a complete picture of what it exactly could and could not do, hence their losing a few of these MQ-9s to them, including this last night one.
So this little thing has surprised a bunch of people. Hezbollah also used two of them recently to destroy expensive Israeli drones. They uploaded the filming of the destruction of the second one to social media as well :)
Even Russians are reporting this.
So don't get fooled by the size and price of this little jewel. It does the job. It is a novel design because it is something in between a surface to air missile and a loitering missile like Shahed 136. So its operation is quite different from SAM's. All you need is a piece of information anywhere in a 100 km radius that some form of enemy aircraft has been spotted in the sky. That's all it needs. It is then launched, and it goes finds that aircraft by itself almost no matter how long it takes cause it can stay in air and search for a long time. It finds the target and destroys it by visual proximity explosion. Nothing else is needed!
Every enemy's subsonically moving aircraft are easy targets for it. It is launched like a Shahed 136 by a little solid fuel jet which then detaches and its main fuel which is liquid gas powers it for a long time to do its search.
So, cheaper than Shaheds, it is gruesomely lethal to enemy transport planes, helicopters, drones, etc. Many Saudi's attack drones and helicopters were shot down by them in Yemen during the later part of the war between them, thus helping to bring that war to an end.
I don't know what the Navy was thinking to have their $65 million MQ-9 fly over Houthis AGAIN. Perhaps the previous ones met their demise during daytime and Navy thought 358 cannot see in dark :) Hehe :)
Bad surprise! It can.
More information from horse's own mouth:
https://www.twz.com/bizarre-iranian-loitering-sam-shown-to-russian-defense-minister