[toomanybeersies]

How dangerous is one of these things without the surrounding targeting system? And how useful would this be to a foreign government that somehow doesn't have access to other air-to-air missiles?

It seems to me like a bit of a sensationalist headline, and the more dangerous weapons are actually the small arms.

[kitteh]

The 530 is a SARH missile. It requires a radar system (found in the French Mirage aircraft for example) to lock and paint it's target the entire time for the missile to track and eventually detonate. It would be pretty difficult to do and the acqusition/targeting radar would need to be cooled and energized for the duration of the flight. Launching A2A missiles from the ground is pretty rare but it is possible as evidenced recently by Yemen ground launching a Russian R27T infrared missile successfully at a Saudi F15.

[EForEndeavour]

For anyone else not familiar with military hardware: SARH = semi-active radar homing. The missile itself passively detects a radar signal reflected off a target by an external source, such as the launching aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-active_radar_homing

[mithrn]

It's become somewhat common to see AAMs fitted/designed to be surfaced launched. See Iris-T SL or Rafael Spyder system. Most Python missiles being produced/retrofitted are for ground launch.

[yborg]

Not very, since it lacks a warhead. And it's a late-70s era missile, so not even valuable for reverse engineering.

[trasz]

I’d love to watch a teardown on YouTube.

[rurounijones]

A guy did a teardown of the seeker head from a russian Knock-off of the AIM-9. Rather interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxcS1AwquA

[baybal2]

> How dangerous is one of these things without the surrounding targeting system?

30kg fragmentation warhead is enough to kill a lot of people.

Few kg IEDs kill and maim up to a hundred people, now imagine how a factory made 30kg warhead will perform.