of shooting down the C-130. I have not seen the video, but according to things I've read, the C-130 was flying at about 16,000 feet. That's outside the range of the shoulder launched SAMs that we've heard so much about. There could be other SAMs in the area, perhaps stolen from one of those big arms dumps, but they are a lot bigger and harder to hide. Most of them would probably be radar guided, and the "control box" shown in the video simply didn't appear to be a missile launch system. As for hitting a plane flying at about 300 knots at 16,000 feet with an antitank missile, it ain't gonna happen.

As of now, the crash cause is unknown. It could've been an explosive, it could've been mechanical, it could've been a number of things. I do know that things can go wrong in a hurry in a C-130. Back in the early 1990s, a friend of mine was killed in a C-130 crash when something went catastrophically wrong with one or more of the plane's engines. According to reports that I read at the time, that type of malfunction happens so quickly that the crew only has a few seconds to save the plane.