OR maybe don't fly over ukraine

The plane was flying into Russia. Putin is going to look bad.

This plane would have been flying at 500 mpg, >40,000'. Where did they get a weapon that could do that, Russia?

Looks like CNN has its coverage for the near future...

Shot down by Russian separatists it looks like, and mostly a Dutch passenger manifest. This could draw in NATO.

Facts are obviously not known. But the Russians have been suspected of things like blowing up an apartment block and blaming it on Chechen terrorists, so if they try to pin this on Ukraine and mount a bigger invasion, I'll know that Russian provocation is the likeliest explanation.

People are still mad about Pan Am flight 103 being destroyed over Lockerbie in 1988. If Russia shot down this flight it could be a major flashpoint.

@8 leaders of the Ukraine separatists claimed responsibility online for downing a plain in that EXACT region at about that EXACT time in defense of "their sky" and then immediately retracted after it broke that it was a Malaysian flight with mostly Dutch nationals. We know this was the Ukrainian/Russian separatists using a Russian BUK missile system.

mph, not mpg. fuck.

And now the Ukrainian/Russian state forces are scrubbing all references to the attack, claiming it, or the BUK missile systems they're so proud of from all online media.

For those wanting to track this, all the major and relevant news is aggregated here: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/commen…

Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the insurgent group in eastern Ukraine, denied in a telephone interview that the rebels had anything to do with the loss..He said that...their antiaircraft weapons could reach only to around 4,000 meters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/world/…

As Joe says all known facts point to the pro-Russian separatists, or to Russian forces directly. As far as I've read Ukraine hasn't shot down even one plane during all the conflict, while the other side has been responsbile for several incidents of shooting down aircraft. The last one was just a couple of days ago when a Ukrainian An-26 flying at ~20,000' was brought down, which means something more capable than a shoulder fired missile was used. Also the Malaysian Airlines plane was flying west to east, which would appear as an Ukranian plane to forces located by the Russian border. Wouldn't make sense at all for the Ukrainians to shoot down a plane coming from that direction, unless they were trying to frame the other side, but in today's world that would pretty stupid.

Just announced that there are 23 US citizens among the passengers...

Another thing worth pointing out is that we can be 99% sure that this is not an accident; the plane was brought down by either a missile or a bomb onboard.

#15

"It had been flying at an altitude of 6,500 metres"

http://www.janes.com/article/40790/shoot…

#16

Or the same defect, maintenance flaw, modification or operational error that brought down the other Malaysia 777.

This is the third time this has happened in 31 years. The Russians intentionally shot down KAL007 in 1983 and the USS Vincennes idiotically, accidentally shot down IR655 in 1988.

#19

KAL007 was part of a series of commercial jetliners that intentionally wandered into USSR airspace back then in order to trip their radar systems and give the US a chance to triangulate their location.

#19

In theory anti-aircraft missile technology has profiles built in so they cannot hit commercial aircraft. At least that's what I've read about those that are launched from jet fighters (this is an argument against the intentional destruction of flight UA93 during 9/11).

Don't know about these smaller wrist rockets and such.

Can a small wrist rocket bring down a commercial airliner? I don't fancy that recoil on my wrist.

@20 setting aside any conspiracy theories you can watch a recent interview with the Russian fighter pilot that shot down KAL007. He still believed he shot down a spy plane.

@17, 6,500 meters is 21,325.5 feet. There's nothing wrong with Porcupine's statement. There is, however, something wrong with you.

A Stinger missile has a range of about five miles, but good luck hitting anything over 12,000 feet with one.

Do not listen to Bailo. There are no "anti-passenger plane" settings on surface to air missiles, and I do not even know what the hell a "wrist rocket launcher" is.

Russians crawling over the wreckage like "damn dirty apes"

The screen shot Joe refers to @10 can be seen here, a little ways down. It's the military leader of the Russian separatists, "Strelkov" saying "We had warned them not to fly in our sky" and has the same video clips that media reports are using for the Malaysian 777.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ju…

The question becomes, when out-of-control Russian separatists using Russian Army weaponry to shoot down passenger airliners, what is the response? Putin is clearly responsible, indirectly at least, since he's the one who gave these weapons to these monsters. Note that your average concrete-skulled rebel with a Kalashnikov wouldn't have the slightest clue how to fire one of these rockets so that it could take down a jet; there are Russian soldiers operating them.

I read somewhere that the rebels may have captured the missile system from the Ukrainians rather than getting it directly from Russia, which would be a risky move for the Russian government. As far as operating the missile system it's certainly not straightforward, but it's very possible the pro-Russian fighters include people with previous knowledge on how to use it.

Another interesting fact that has come out is that the crash site is controlled by the rebels, and that they have the flight recorders and will send them to Moscow. Expect the Russian-led and Ukrainian/West investigations to reach radically different conclusions...

@17,18, etc. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why the fuck would you want to carry water for Putin after his forces just killed nearly 300 civilians?
Are you one of the trolls being paid by Russia? or are you spreading this bullshit for free?

@30: Bailo is just really, really stupid. He is like a small child that just has no idea about anything in the world.

@28: It is possible, that it could have been a shoulder fired missile. Stinger missiles have been known to take down targets up to 26,000 feet, if upgraded with the 2001 software package that was introduced (and I just learned about). Stinger missiles are relatively easy to get, and are basically just point and shoot. They would be very easy for Russia to acquire.

Whoops, nevermind me, I seem to have misread the article regarding missile systems and software. However, if it was one of the newer models that use a focal plane array sensor to find targets rather than the older infrared systems, it could have been shoulder fired rocket.

@31, They don't need to be Stingers and wouldn't be anyway as they're not using US weapons over there. The Russians have already given the rebels the BUK missile system which they've already used to shoot down other Ukrainian military planes flying at similar altitudes. The rebels thought they were just killing more Ukrainians and not a plane full of Malaysians, Chinese, Brits and 23 Americans. They were bragging about it earlier today when they thought it was another military transport.

And further to SROTU, there were 23 Americans on that flight. How do you feel about defending Putin now?

@20: Um...if there are any experts on radar systems or aerospace technology in here, please correct me if I'm wrong, but:
Don't radar kind of have to be on constantly (or at least pulsing periodically if they're worried about Wild Weasels with radar-tracking AGMs) to even detect anything? It's not like the radar is left switched off but it switches on when an airplane comes across the border. No, it's constantly (or at least periodically) transmitting! If not, they have no real way of knowing when an aircraft is there besides observers on the ground!
Radar doesn't work that way, Bailo. You transmit whether or not anything is there. When your transmission is reflected back, you can interpret the strength, spectrum, and delay of the reflection to estimate the size, location, and nature of some object reflecting the radio waves.
JBITSMFOTP.

@31: I am using the Stinger as a basis of comparison because the issue of trained Russian soldiers vs. Ukraine separatists came up, and I know more about that system. The point is it is possible for a MANPAD that anyone can fire to shoot down aircraft at that altitude. It is not necessarily that they actually are using Stingers specifically.

Although, I should point out that it is very unlikely that it was a shoulder fired rocket, since they are not really designed for that kind of application and hitting a fast target at that altitude is extremely unlikely, as I said above. But not impossible.

Funny thing is, a trained operator using the SA-17 BUK 2 or the SA-11 "Gadfly" system would be able to tell very easily if it was a commercial airliner by the transponder code the airliner was putting out. So either it was a skilled operator who knew he was shooting down an airliner, or an unskilled operator who did not have a clue.