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.