Revisionist history.

1)The Airbus was climbing away from the ship, not descending as the US Navy claimed.
2) The Vincennes never tried to contact the Airbus on the civilian ATC frequency, and the broadcast statements were vague, they referred to the aircraft's groundspeed, not Airspeed.
3) The Airbus was on a regular civilian flight route, on a properly filed flight plan.
4) Two other US Navy ships in the area at the time identified the aircraft as a civilian airliner.
5) The US Navy had issued a NOTAM warning aircraft to remain at least 5nm from their vessels, the Airbus was 11nm away at the time.
6) The Captain of another US Navy ship operating in the area at the time had observed the USS Vincennes Captain's behaviour as "aggressive", the captain was known for "picking a fight"
7) The ship was in Iranian territorial waters at the time.
8) The US government paid out money to the iranian victims, while never admitting culpability.

Iran Air Flight 655 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now I'm not say the US Navy and the crew of the Vincennes knew they were targeting a civilian airliner, and made a deliberate decision to bring it down. In the fog of war mistakes happen, but it is clear the crew and especially the captain were negligent in their conduct at the time. It is also possible these rebels/militants/terrorists/freedom fighters (however you choose to describe them) in the eastern Ukraine could have had the same mindset (we're under attack) leading to the same negligent action. It was the Russian (or Ukrainian government, depending on your point of view) who created this war, and continue to finance it, arm the rebels and stoke the fires in the region. Just like the US government has been interfering in the Persian gulf and Iran since 1953.

The difference being now the governments of the world are calling this a terror act, and a crime worthy of severe punishment, and with the Vincennes the crew had medals pinned to their chest and George H W Bush said "he'd never apologise for the United States, no matter what the facts were"

Hypocrisy anyone?

Folks, we're on a hiding to nothing if all we throw around is conjecture and reheated Cold War rhetoric. So let's get a few things straight on the political front - to whit:

1. Russia is no "backwater" or "banana republic". The state may have lost its "superpower" status with the fall of the USSR, but it would be naive in the extreme to assume that there is not enough infrastructure in place to play the situation with complete precision.
2. Vladimir Putin [and I cannot emphasise this enough] is not stupid. From what is known he was no Party apparatchik, he was a senior figure in state security counter-intelligence. The reason he wields the power he does is because he knows exactly where every closeted skeleton lies, where every body is buried, and exactly who put the bodies there. He is *absolutely* not to be underestimated.
3. If the "pro-Kremlin" rebels did indeed shoot MH17 down, they've just cut Putin off at the knees - and if the people responsible are not currently making every possible effort to vanish, they will either end up being handed over to spare the Kremlin's blushes, or face-down in a nondescript field with a shiv in their back.
4. While the area where the aircraft came down is held by the rebels on paper, it is still very much an unstable region. Any person who successfully smuggles out wreckage with proof of an external explosion will effectively get to name their price with the Kiev government. If this occurs, whatever becomes of the flight recorders will essentially be moot.

18th Jul 2014, 19:36 re pjm
 

re the black box moot bit . re dozywannabee

actually a few seconds thought re the black boxe(s) CVR and FDR.

At best the FDR *might* show via acceleration traces what side of the plane was hit by the missile, and algtitude, speed, etc at that instant. So big deal :ugh:

And the CVR **might** have caught a WTF ??? :ugh:

And it doesn't add anything of significance - but makes for good media fodder.

Of course there may be some other conversations IF plane was divereted or if they noticed anything . . . but IMHO such conversations with ground or ATC are already recorded .

Tweetbot Catches Russian Government Editing Flight MH17 Wikipedia Info
 

Tweetbot Catches Russian Government Editing Flight MH17 Wikipedia Info | Gizmodo Australia

yeah, not guilty at all.

My #1 concern is getting the victims bodies and their personal items from the crash scene right now. Flight recorders wont tell us much. Those responsible will deny everything

Agree with Dozywannabe,

The best play for Putin would be to dis-associate himself from the incident. Find the trigger-man/men and deliver them to the investigators. He has nothing to gain from this and surely no spin artists could turn this into something worthwhile.
Best play for Russia: Secure the corridor and area with the Polite People for the investigators. Deliver the perps. Get the investigators out of the area with the bodies and all remaining evidence. Carry on the blame game.

You have to wonder who's video recorder the soldier is using..

http://i.imgur.com/qLPUV20.jpg

Unfortunately, they'd be looted by now

We have seen the stacks of passports already taken without due process. The wallets, cash, credit cards are already surely looted.

From previous posts, it appears that the main tail section was found a distance away from the main crash site. This suggests that the tail section broke apart from the main body.

SAMs of this class typically have a proximity fuse, i.e. it doesn't need to contact the aircraft to explode and damage the aircraft. The 777 is a large aircraft. There is a high chance that the missile exploded near the tail of the aircraft sufficiently to cut through the tail section or at least enough for the tail section to separate. The aircraft would then lose it's ability to sustain flight and fall to earth. The lack of a flaming decent / smoke trail points supports this theory, i.e. the main fuel tanks were intact and not ignited upon missile impact/explosion.

A crew member on Vincennes, who originally identified the plane as civilian, complained it was so dark in the operations area that he could not read the (paper) listing of civilian flights.

Crew on deck with binoculars (or perhaps even without, at only 11nm) would have seen what it was; there would be no way to combine that knowledge with a blip on the screen in a dark control room.

The same would apply to MH17. The locals standing outside would have known it was a civilian craft on a normal route where they regularly see these. The guy at the dark enclosed SAM controls would see only a blip.... heading his way from the west, where all the previous danger has come from.

"I refer to the images from bobik 57 on page 21 above. The scars do rather look like shrapnel has impacted."

Those scars looks rather like something hit or slided on that surface - possibly other plane fragments hit that fragment when it was desintegrating in the air - than holes/marks left by small shrapnels from exploding warhead.

Sir, it is not easy to conduct a visual identification/recognition of a target at 11nm away on a moving platform (heaving ship), even with a gyro stabilized bino. Environmental conditions (heat haze, atmospheric dust, etc) will distort the image, aspect of the target, illum, etc.

Dozywannabe: Good point. In fact, they shouldn't wait for a rebel to think of it. A massive reward of millions (and safe harbour in the West) should be offered without delay!

M1 or M2?
 

Amizaur said:
The video you linked to is the M1, or "Gadfly" in Nato terminology. What I've seen around here and elsewhere refers to the Grizzly. This link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDXScnEKaP0 shows the M2 in operation.

If you pause the video right at 22 seconds you can see some form of IFF, but I'm not sure what it is saying. I'm also not sure if Ukraine and Russia still share the same type of "friend" designation in their IFF systems. Does anyone know?

Passagiata

Isnt it external explosion if air-to-air missile was used ?
another words "bribe by the west"...so desperately needed these days

A month ago the militia complained of Ukrainian fighter jets trying to trick them into downing passenger planes. Explained in video from 18th of June.

http://i.imgur.com/3VQOmaL.jpg

Too see video, turn on captions for English translation, from 1:10;

JUNE 18, 2014: E. Ukraine separatist claims Kiev is baiting militia to shoot down passenger planes

Ukranian BUK systems in Russian hands
 

Are there any reports from other a/c in the area ?

There was a flight 55 miles to the SW at same alt , similar heading.
Would not crew or passengers have seen the plume ?

Rightly so. With +10k edits, I would have done the same if I've seen such a statement on Wiki. Wikipedia is not a platform for opinions or value loaded rethoric, full stop.

At least the last ten flights of MAS17 took a more southerly route - over the Sea of Azov or even over the Black Sea - kind of avoiding the Donezk region.

Malaysia Airlines (MH) #17 ? 15-Jul-2014 ? EHAM / AMS - WMKK / KUL ? FlightAware


What would be the reasons to take a more northerly route this day?

The reason MH17 took this route was a thunderstorm along the way, as far as I know.

the routes can and will change according to the forecast winds as well. you don't want to be flying into a 100kt headwind if you can avoid it.

Ditto
 

A note for the uninformed. The Buk warhead is a bundle of hardened steel rods according a reliable source. The warhead is proximity fused and fires some distance from the target. It produces a shotgun like dispersion of rods which do the damage since the missile is travelling at Mach 3+.

There is thus no burning wreckage or blast effects. The image on page 21 shows perforations which look consistent with that type of warhead. Rods fragments should be found in the wreckage or the bodies. A high speed upset following loss of control might account for the airframe breakup.

That is also consistent with an expanding rod. It expands as a continuous ring to maximum diameter, typically 45-60 feet before separating. Rod may be inches to feet long.

All this talk of 'seeing' the aircraft is nonsense.

Try this yourself a few times:

Spot a high flying aircraft. Watch and time it till you no longer see it.
3 minutes is 24 miles, 6 is 48.

How long after you saw it could you count the engines?

As a rule you will first see it closer than the distance that you lose it. At 6 minutes that means about 12 miles.

Then passengers seeing something 55 miles away - no way. If they were looking out at all cloud would obscure the view.

Its an early US design, but link explains the principle of expanding rod warheads with pictures.

Talos Missile Warhead History

The picture seems pretty clear to me, that Russian rebels shot down the plane with the BUK missiles they already admitted they had, and were negligent in doing so.

In addition, I would put about 20% of the blame on the Kiev government. It was clear from the 29th June, when the rebels admitted having access to BUK missiles that the airspace should have been closed. The rebels were taking pot shots at a sky that almost inevitably would result in a plane going down. So why was airspace not closed? It's ludicrous the 32000 ft safety limit when the missiles known to be available to the rebels had a vertical limit of 25km and a 95% kill efficacy (according to Wiki). The Kiev government was also either negligent or cynically deliberate.

To me it is analogous to having a school run bisecting a military shooting range. Who is at fault? The school for organising the daily school run, the parents for letting it happen, or the soldiers who continue with their practice pot shots, without checking what targets they were shooting at? All three I would say.

Qui bono?
 

I am rather surprised that nobody mentioned the simple reason why would rebels want to shoot down an airliner:

They don't have air force thus anything in the air is either neutral or an enemy. After MH17 the air space is closed and anything that moves is a free game for their air defence.

Another reason would be to escalate the conflict per se. Even if supported by Russia now they can see that Putin is apparently satisfied with holding Krym now in his hands and nobody is talking about annexation anymore and there is enough stuff for international media to talk about. Krym is still the main issue and it is forgotten now.

It seems that Putin is not willing to use the military force to engage directly but is aiming similar status quo like Transnistria. But Moldova and Ukraine is quite a difference and rebels may try to escalate conflict to bait Putin. In the beginning Putin made them believe he would back them up directly but in my opinion he never intended to acquire more than Krym and to destabilise Ukraine.

Not sure if this can be verified. Surely the Russians are closely monitoring the airspace and if this is true, would be able to produce radar evidence of this happening. If true, Ukraine would be guilty of using air liners as 'human shields'. If the video is fabricated and is part of the a plan to eventually down an airliner to discredit Ukraine, then it would be a very serious crime.

Malaysia Air crash: Missile launcher used to down jet likely back in Russia, US official says | Fox News
The fact the same commander has given interviews stating that some of the body's where already dead, insinuating a conspiracy to set them up says lots.

In effect he knows the evidence that they did it is there and the Russians and Americans know it. Hence its a PR exercise to create doubt and justify it.

At the moment there is a plane down, bodies rotting in a field and evidence being tampered with in a country that is friendly to us. This is a damning indictment of the state of our nations that there isn't a force on the ground securing the area.

The Ukrainian forces have been neglected, and have done a great job so far considering. Be under no illusions about the rebels having much luck against a well armed and supported western force.

Putin doesn't want to escalate this much, an Invitation by the Ukraine for outside forces to secure the area would see the rebels melt away from that area.

I don't know me and a lad from REME got given a rapier system to fix.

It took the two of us 30 mins to set up with him directing, an hour to fix the thing, then 30 mins "testing" it pointing it at passing aircraft. It didn't have bang loaded but I reckon both of us would have hit things.

Tanks etc don't even have keys to start them. The weapon systems have interlocks to stop you killing yourself but if all of them are in and you press or pull the tit it will fire.

All you one need is one person that is a No 1(commander) or technician for the weapon system and you can use it.

Hell at 17 years old I was firing light guns and FH70 as the gunners were a man shy of a gun crew to drive the wagon and someone thought it was funny to put me on the sights.

Maintaining them and keeping them working is a bit of a pig but the actual deploying and firing of a working system is easy. Hell if it was difficult they wouldn't give them to the gunners, they would give them to the sappers or REME.

Regarding the tracks on flightaware: Flightaware seems to have a coverage gap in that region, all tracks in that region are just estimates/extrapolations. So tracks from previous days are not precise - they might as well have crossed the same area.

As the last poster suggested there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, especially if the eye looks no further than the mainstream media.. The harm to Russia caused by damaging their energy economy would be signifcant and was tactic used in the Reagan era where Saudi Arabia increased production to the extent it damaged Russian oil exports and crippled their economy.

I personally do not want to be dependent on the USA for energy any more than I do Russia. In many ways they are both as bad as each other, big bully nations with a huge sense of entitlement and have proved many times that they do not care who gets in their way.

One thing that is guaranteed is that the team who shot this plane down are in a world of trouble , if the West finds them its 30 years in jail , but that unlikely because the KGB or whatever they are called this week will find them first and I doubt thier life span will be 30 days after causing Putin a huge amount of grief and to send a clear message out not to embarrass mother Russia.
Russia is culpable to the extent that it knows what psychotic idiots some of the rebels are and failed to stop them getting their hands on anything serious. But then arming unsuitable people is a long established superpower game , Rumsfeld armed the iraqis and the CIA armed the Taliban to name two examples and Russia literally gave the world the AK47.

Greenguard only the second quote was mine ... the first one was Dozy's ...

With the risk of being a left-leaning communist..., a quote from RT article on what the official Russia via Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, addressing Ukraine:

A few valid points here IMHO

the big ones that can go high are the size of a lorry and the ones which are man portable are about the size of an average bloke.

The big ones though need an additional radar feed for targeting which is another unit about the same size of the launcher.

Interestingly, bobik_57 is claiming that those marks provide evidence in support of an air-to-air missile: bobik_57 - ??? ? ?????? ???????? ??. ?????? ?? "???-?1" (Google Translate does a passable job on the text).

On Breitbart (James Delingpole)

Dangerous Escalation in Ukraine: Separatists May Have Captured More than 100 Missiles