MH17 Malaysia airlines plane shot down over Ukraine

kaitie

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Not to make a joke, but because I'm completely serious, has CNN tried to link this to the other missing plane yet?
 

clintl

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It sounds like the most likely explanation is that it was shot down by accident (either mistaken for another target, or the missile locked in on it instead of the intended target).

But there are other possibilities.
 

Torgo

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Russia Today - which I think is fair to say is very Kremlin-friendly, if not actually a propaganda network - suggests the intended target was Vladimir Putin's jet. My Russian pals tell me there's nothing the Russian public loves so much as a conspiracy theory, so it sounds like a great spin for them.
 

amergina

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BBC News, in their live feed, is reporting that Ukrainian Security Service SBU intercepted conversations between pro-Russian militants in which they say they admit shooting down a civilian plane.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-28354787

BBC Monitoring reports more from the conversation between militants allegedly intercepted by the Ukrainian Security Service.
The conversation starts with Igor Bezler, a key militant, apparently telling a Russian security official by phone that the pro-Russian militants have shot down a plane.
In the YouTube footage a militant nicknamed "Major" is seen saying it was shot down by "Cossacks from the Chernukhino roadblock".
Major goes on to say: "It is definitely a civilian plane... there was a lot of people on board," BBC Monitoring reports.
 

BenPanced

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Uh-huh. A missle just happened to launch itself right at a commercial airliner.
No. You're correct. I misinterpreted an initial report and really should have posted:
Everybody's blaming everybody else.
It definitely crashed; the cause of it is still unknown. "May have been shot down" is about as far as the subdeck will take it.
The Guardian's live feed reports eyewitnesses saying the plane exploded in midair.
 
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Noah Body

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Which is also indicative of a missile shot.

ETA: And at 30,000+ feet, there's not a shoulder-fired system in the world that could reach it. It would have been a ground-based military system, which means it was either the Ukrainians or the Russians that hit it.
 
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kaitie

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I just read that a Ukrainian official is saying it was shot down and that it wasn't them.

I hate the fact that the news is so untrustworthy now, though, that I have no idea if this is still going to be the case in an hour.
 

Torgo

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I just read that a Ukrainian official is saying it was shot down and that it wasn't them.

I hate the fact that the news is so untrustworthy now, though, that I have no idea if this is still going to be the case in an hour.

Both sides are blaming each other, and they'll probably get away with blaming each other for the foreseeable future, I fear.
 

kaitie

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This is weird because the article I just read had a video of the supposed crash, which I thought would show a mid-air explosion, but looked like it showed a ground explosion. If a plane exploded midair, could it still explode again when it hit the ground?
 

Noah Body

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This is weird because the article I just read had a video of the supposed crash, which I thought would show a mid-air explosion, but looked like it showed a ground explosion. If a plane exploded midair, could it still explode again when it hit the ground?
Yes. An airliner, even one that's heavily fireblocked, is full of combustibles.
 

waylander

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Plenty of experts been on TV saying that military satellites would detect the launch of such a missile. Have there been any reports of such data yet?
 

clintl

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I would guess that data probably wouldn't get released at least until it's analyzed extensively.
 

Noah Body

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A lot of these experts are, essentially, full of crap and say stuff to make some buzz.

That being said, I'm not an air defense artilleryman or intelligence analyst. There are systems out there that can detect a heat bloom, but they're mostly designed for the detection of ICBMs. An SA-11 launch could be detected, presuming there were assets in the area, but they're not as noticeable as a bigger weapon firing off. I suspect people are reviewing the data now, but these things always take time.
 

raburrell

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It's lost in my tweet stream at this point, but I saw a comment earlier that in a crisis, twitter is usually pretty accurate for the first five minutes. After that, especially in the subsequent 24 hrs, a lot of skepticism is required. Good journalists realize they're in that second window now.
 

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Which is also indicative of a missile shot.

ETA: And at 30,000+ feet, there's not a shoulder-fired system in the world that could reach it. It would have been a ground-based military system, which means it was either the Ukrainians or the Russians that hit it.

It seems to be widely believed the Russians gave such a system to the insurgents because they have been hitting planes and helicopters above 10,000 feet on a number of occasions over the last week or so. This taking down of air traffic has been seen and publicly admitted by them.
 

veinglory

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This is weird because the article I just read had a video of the supposed crash, which I thought would show a mid-air explosion, but looked like it showed a ground explosion. If a plane exploded midair, could it still explode again when it hit the ground?

If there is still at least one full fuel tank, yes.
 

Xelebes

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Which is also indicative of a missile shot.

ETA: And at 30,000+ feet, there's not a shoulder-fired system in the world that could reach it. It would have been a ground-based military system, which means it was either the Ukrainians or the Russians that hit it.

No, a Separatist-operated BUK-M1 was being operated in the town of Snizhnoe near the border.

Here is an photo taken of the unit.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bswy4VtCUAAJCDS.jpg

Brag-tweet by separatists, taken shortly down after it was revealed that it was a passenger jet and not an AN-26:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bsws7LBCQAEhoUb.png

Source: https://twitter.com/RobPulseNews/status/489815856135036928
 
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Noah Body

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So in other words, the Russians did...by proxy. Good thinking. I guess they wanted to be 3 for 3 in civilian airliner shootdowns, since the Navy cut their previous record in half.
 

Xelebes

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This is weird because the article I just read had a video of the supposed crash, which I thought would show a mid-air explosion, but looked like it showed a ground explosion. If a plane exploded midair, could it still explode again when it hit the ground?

SAMs do not necessarily need to make direct hits. They often act like flak cannon, exploding near the target to deliver flak. Exploding in front of the jet can kill the pilots and take out the nose to leave the rest of the plane to explode on the ground.
 

Torgo

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The BBC is reporting the dead are mainly Dutch:

There were 154 Dutch passengers on board the plane, says an airport official, and 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 from Indonesia, six from the UK, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines and one Canadian. More nationalities have yet to be counted.
21:55: There were 280 passengers on board and 15 Malaysian crew, says an airport official.
 

NinjaFingers

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There's going to be more confusion for a few hours. But it does look like it was shot down by accident.

It's starting to look like the separatists did it thinking it was a military target. Which happened in part because the civilian plane was not where it was supposed to be due to weather deviations.

In other words, the guys on the ground thought they were operating in an area free of civilian traffic, saw a large plane, assumed it was a transport, and took it out.
 

Noah Body

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SAMs do not necessarily need to make direct hits. They often act like flak cannon, exploding near the target to deliver flak. Exploding in front of the jet can kill the pilots and take out the nose to leave the rest of the plane to explode on the ground.
Radar guided missiles usually hit the RCS of the aircraft, which is usually where the wings meet the fuselage. Contact almost always occurs, if not by the warhead then by the rocket booster itself, which is designed to serve as a kinetic kill weapon. An ADA guy could give more info.

That aside, still ample opportunity for secondary explosions upon main body impact with the deck.
 
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