ugh.

wifer just came out and asked why I was making a face... ****

politically, it will probably matter.

after watching that video...ugh. they're humans.

Confirmed surface to air missile according to the NYT:

I wonder how not possible it is not to detect the origin with the final partial track. Seems like they could extrapolate possible locations from it, but I don't know anything about these kinds of ballistics.

or maybe get actual pilots to fly, and not stuffed animals.

rip pilot parker never forget <3

CNN.com failing to properly clickbaitify the titles related to this tragedy. Their guy must have the week off.

Some reports say that the weapons were probably stolen during the war in Ukraine and not 'supplied'. I doubt it will really make any difference if there's Americans in the last 47 unidentified. Im hoping there is none for the USA as it will be a hell of a national debate.

It is understandable -- even president McCain did this with Syrian rebels.

from news articles, retired military officers seem to think it was done by professional (russian) soldiers from one of these.


requires a crew of 4 trained personnel to operate.

[quote] [quote]

or like (from Failure is your Friend) the space shuttle challenger accident
"Told you so, neener neener neener"

it wasn't flying over crimea, guys.

Perhaps, but extensive technical training necessary to operate these types of weapons is also required. (These aren't hand held.) I'm not completely up on the latest "Janes" military tech, but the early reports in the news were also about Russian nationals targeting cargo planes. If this is true, carriers were flying through a war zone regularly with standard passenger jets.

(I actually don't believe this was "insurgents", I think this is more likely to be a military "mistake" IMO. If various locals in whatever part of the world have the tech to shoot down something at 33,000 feet, we have very serious problems in the future.)

According to Le Monde (which is as serious/reliable as it gets with newspapers in French), they got in touch with a military specialist from Airbus and long story short

1) It was impossible to mistake the MA flight with an UKR cargo, private/military jet or whatever else. (Not gonna get into specifics)

2) Random unexperimented UKR rebels shouldn't be able to operate this kind of hardware. Has to be an "official, organized army" behind it.

Which brings me to the following thoughts

- Why the **** would anyone in this region WANT to take down a neutral, civilian airliner
- Regarding the "official, organized army" thing, well, if somehow this can be linked to farther than just some rebels but all the way to Moscow, **** is gonna seriously hit the fan.

probably was some russian soldiers (w/ the serious hardware shown above) instructed to shoot down any ukrainian cargo plane they could spot, and they mistook this passenger plane for one.

I was trained to operate this system (BUK M1 or S11 Gadfly) in any of the 4 positions. Ask me stuff if you're interested.

BTW what you're seeing in the pic is one of the vehicles that does not have a radar. They can only launch stuff as a "slave" of the radar vehicle. If the rebels had only this one in the pic, they couldn't do anything.

I wouldn't think the bodies could still be in tact after being hit by a missile and falling 30k feet from the sky.

yeah I just googled "buk missle system" and got that pic.

would a buk be able to differentiate between a civilian airliner and military cargo plane for the crew?

It would be just a green dot on the radar, so not really. It depends if we are talking about a full battalion or just a single vehicle. Usually the order would come from somewhere else to shoot, the guys in the launcher vehicle would not be making that call.

There is also a camera and a small monitor where you can watch the target, but from that altitude the plane would not be visible at all.

According to some Airbus military specialist, you can not possibly mistake the MA flight with anything else than a Malaysia Airline flight. Too much high tech hardware involved, you know exactly what you're firing at.

Disturbing, especially since the source seems super solide

If it was russians that did it, what can the USA and the EU do to them? They've already imposed a bunch of sanctions.

It looked like the plane didn't explode when the missile hit. It seems to have broken apart and eventually turned into a fireball, probably slowing down quite a bit. Also a body falling 30,000 feet is the same thing as a body falling 2,000 feet. It reaches terminal velocity.

If you can prove whoever did it knew exactly what they were firing at, it could be qualified an act of war by any country that had passengers in this flight. I can't see how this would not make the current situation a LOT worse.

As for what would happen exactly, I'm not sure but it would have to be pretty bad.

If it was a BUK that shot it down, sounds normal that the plane would not "explode" when hit. The missile detonates before hitting target (don't remember exact distance). It will just be hitting the plane with a LOT of shrapnels, basically shredding it to pieces.

accept Ukraine into NATO

They had to evacuate countless buildings in NY and Wash on 9/11, just a non-stop string of bomb threats.