Latest 观棋有语 has some interesting detail. One of their listerner (the dude in Kabul who previously reported the Taliban sneak attack many days back) reports seeing Taliban having captured MANPAD from ANA and using them to toy with military aircraft at the airport. They would lock onto planes and not fire to coax them into unloading all the flairs and perform evasive manoeuvres.
Sorry, but sounds like BS. No MANPAD uses active homing, since that would give aircraft plenty of prior warning to evade. Stingers had a radio antenna, but that’s again passive only and for IFF purposes.
Furthermore, if the Taliban seized MANPADs from the Afghan army, then they would most likely be Stingers, which have a ridiculously short life BCU that only powers the unit for a pathetic 45 seconds.
So not only would them locking-on to aircraft not cause any warning in the aircraft, they would only be able to do it once before needing to find a fresh BCU to do it again.
If there is any credibility to the story, it would just be the Taliban pointing MANPADs at helicopters and causing them to go nuts when their pilots sees it, and not because they ‘locked on’ to the helicopters trigging the self defence suits.
