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KatSLF
All I am saying this whole thing with the BUK launcher on a truck is a red herring, designed to get everyone excited.
Either I am completely dense or these guys who fired BUK are. See what I mean.
Suppose that US is right that the missile was fired from around Snizhne. This is a good location for it from the rebels perspective. The biggest thing they have to worry about is successful resupply of gov troops (ammo, equipment or paratroopers) advancing near Sverdlovsk.
Suppose you are a rebel, you know you screwed up and you want to cover up.
- Why not dump the whole thing into a river or a lake, or blow it up and dump it? The damn thing is a tracked vehicle so all you have to worry about is not leaving a complete trail if you don't want it found.
- If you really feel you need to take it back (south) to Russia, then Snizne is only some 20 km from the border with Russia. No good road connects advanced gov positions along Russian border near Anvorosiivka, Sverdlovsk and the boonies you need to cross to get to Russia.
- You have a tracked vehicle, you don't even need a road. 20 minutes and you are in Russia.
- If gov troops are on the road you can drive through fields, its night, small chances they will be ready with anti-armor weapons to chase after you through the fields.
- But no - you decide to load the damn thing on a truck, thus depriving it of combat value and combat maneuverability - and without any escort drive it more than 100 km north to Luhansk - and place of very heavy concentration of gov troops. Why?
Conclusion. It is all BS. Some kid saw BUK being moved around and decided he figured it out. Perhaps someone purposely moved them around to add confusion and even maybe ditched one of the missiles to get onlookers (and sat surveillance analyzers) excited. Then you "get caught" and produce the truck and the launcher that was on it and show it to be some old stripped down junk incapable of getting off the truck and firing. You were just trying to prevent those other bad guys from having it for missiles, and other spare parts, blah, blah. Falsely accused, blah blah. Meanwhile, the real thing went the other way.
Critical at this point where was the damn thing really fired from? If I were on the ground I would drive around looking for fresh armored vehicle tracks.
Now - I am not saying these idiots were all that smart. I am saying - don't expect them to be completely stupid.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Snizh...,+Ukraine&z=11