Are there any BUK missiles in Syria or Iraq? Assets that ISIS can conveniently seize to repeat this horror?

Google is your friend (or Wiki is)

Buk missile system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Depending on the model, these missiles can travel at Mach 2.5 to Mach 4. One video report says that it could hit the target in 40 seconds.

I don't think chasing is much of an issue.

A trip to Wikipedia will remind people of Siberia Airlines 1812 which Ukraine never took formal responsibility for - according to wikipedia legal proceedings are still ongoing.

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maybe at this point Ukrainian airspace should be permanently closed.

Well established and valuable diplomatic protocols, I would think.

Where would it hit
 

Where would the point of impact of this Buk missile be, would it hit an engine given the heat signature or impact the main body? Guessing MH17 was pretty full of fuel in the tanks so if it impacted the body it would surely have been a massive explosion/ disintegrated and hence no call made to ATC.

it is a radar guided missile so it wouldn't even see the heat given off by the engines, it would detonate when in proximity of the aircraft, so it wouldn't even have directly hit the plane., only the shrapnel from the missle

I submit the issue of training is a red herring also.

Yes, a military operator will require extensive training, but that is required so the they can operate and maintain, assess performance, undertake proper c2 functions etc.

Given a reasonable competence (how many read computer manuals today?) and trial and error I suspect that they could switch on, get a lock and fire. Niceties such as roe, eccm, identification, speed of reaction and reload are all unnecessary.

Fully agree!

The main challenge of modern (responsible/ethical) military is threat identification and recognition. Most modern weapon systems are designed to be able to fire quickly, it is the SOPs, protocols that slow things down. Not that the rebels are that concerned about. I bet they use the good old, "anything from that direction is BAD".

The PlanePlotter server has data to the last contact.....to the second

As always , the information has been locked down and sent to the AAIB in raw format. They will forward it to the relevant authorities who are overseeing the incident.
This confirms the transponder was operational.

highflier40: flightradar24 is based on ADS-B information, it has nothing to do with the transponder, don't take it as a radar, because it is not...

Whos going to claim reponsiblity for tis 1, no doubt its an accident, the world takes a very dim few of killing 295 civilians, if you want to have aq war, fill your boots, but dont drag everyone else into it.

Russian media has reported each of these incidents separately, each time kind of celebrating them as DNR achievements:

• 14 July, 12:00, Aviation Safety Network Criminal Occurrence description
• 14 July, 18:24, LifeNews, Ополченцы взяли в плен экипаж сбитого Ан-26 украинских ВВС (Self-defense took POV the crew of downed Ukrainian An-26)
• 17 July, 18:34, LifeNews, Ополченцы сообщили о сбитом Ан-26 на востоке Украины (Self-defense shoot down an An-26 in eastern Ukraine)
• 17 July, 20:01, ITAR-TASS Donetsk People’s Republic militia downs another Ukraine’s An-26 plane — eyewitnesses

The problem with the last two from 17 July is that there was no An-26 shoot down at that day. And these news reports were published just a moment before it became evident that he alleged An-26 came out to be Boeing-777.

The missile will determine the range rate closure and initiate detonation before it reaches its target. This distance is determined to allow the expanding rod warhead to reach its maximum diameter and act, as previously said, like a circular saw. It will chop through whatever it hits. If the rod breaks then each component will act like a flail

The size of the rod depends on war head length and diameter and rod size. 45 feet is typical.

jagohu - ADS-B uses mode S transponder, so if the transponder is not working, then so to is ads-b not working

The Tail section ( APU area, Fin etc ) were located quite a way from the main fuselage Engines indicating they separated in flight. Therefore you could deduce the missile basically blew the tail off. This would immediately cause violent deadly G forces on the crew.

THEY WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN WHAT HIT THEM.

Forget a damn Mayday call:D

If SQ, EK and numerous others were also operating through there, does that still make MH so negligent?

Pontus
The unplanned results in an unauthorised descent if you are dealing with ATC in places like China or these regions due in part to English Lang issues or simply the Chinese mindset who often refuse any sort of manoeuvre to avoid weather for example. Not a lot of time in either situation to negotiate a clearance I would suggest?

This is a very sad and tragic story for the families of the lost and also Malaysian Airlines who might be badly run at the top but from my modest experience of them have some very dedicated staff. Bad enough to lose two 777s close together but overlay Asian superstitions and it could look very bleak for the company (I am not criticising or stereotyping here but bad luck /ill fortune is looked on a bit differently than in the west.

It seems highly likely that the plane was downed by a Ukraine Gov or UK rebel missile fired recklessly , criminal recklessness but not deliberate intent to shoot down a third country airliner.

Will the truth come out cleanly, not at all sure , neither Russia not US have clean hands in this department do they , Korean 007 and Iran Air Airbus respectively deny them both the moral high ground and both those incidents happened with organised and sophisticated integrated air defence systems with complex ROE.

The saddest thing though is that for the most part the airlines have played fast and loose with PAX lives for a good few years by taking chances with overflying or skirting dangerous areas. In this case it seems someone was very happy with a tiny margin for error , airspace closed up to FL320 so FL330 must be Ok then . Turned around a little it could be said that if either Ukraine side shot at a military jet at 320 missed it and brought down this 777 then that would have been perfectly acceptable accident -I don't think so.

NoD
Yes, just unlucky again. Anyway, who says the others were? My airline has avoided the area since this started and I can't believe first world airlines wouldn't have done likewise. ICAO clearly has some questions to answer as well. These missiles have an envelope which exceeds any likely civilian aircraft cruising altitude.

"Not overfly warzones?

Emirates, Flydubai and other airlines fly to Afghanistan and Iraq. Mogadishu is under consideration.
If you apply to Flydubai, it is clearly stated that you may be rostered to fly into warzones.

Money talks."

Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia rebels don't possess high-altitude SAMs, and it was well-known fact that prorussians have them and don't really have experience to operate them properly

even syrian rebels don't have them and still only syrian and jordanian airlines fly through syrian FIR

Was there ever a Captain who would refuse a flight plan through or near a notam'd "avoid" area ? I knew one who was then pressurised to do so by his CP. Operating Captain again refused which made the mission impossible leading to a three sector day, more fuel more expense etc. Captain was replaced by a more willing adventurer. The original Capt was red-flagged and later left, enjoying a much healthier climate of professional support for a couple of decades.

- grossly unjustified criticism of Malaysian. If there is any 'incompetence' it was in the failure of the intelligence world to adequately anticipate a 'rogue' shoot down and follow who had access to what and to communicate this to the aviation authorities. Elsewhere it is stated that the 'top' of the prohibited civil flight area was FL320 and this was based on the 'airspace closure' up to FL240 (ie a 33% 'safety barrier' - obviously now seen to be quite inadequate). If you look at FR24 there were several other major international carriers in the same predicament at the time and just - lucky.

You should edit your post title.

'Unverified Nationalities'
 

Some interesting responses to my post re above.

As a healthily cynical old git, I suppose it should have occurred to me that there may be 'reasons' for not disclosing the nationalities of all those on board at this time.

A sobering "Oversimplification of a "continuous-rod"
warhead expansion in progress".

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

More Info:

TWA Flight 800 Shootdown

Jetsam the area is approximately 50 miles in diameter, in any emergency situation they would be clear of the area in a matter of minutes.

Last time I checked civilian jets don't go 'vertical' on descent!

There's a NY Times link somewhere showing tracks over last week or so. Also the airlines yesterday PM who all suddenly said they'd avoid the area...

If you go to Flight Aware, you can type a Flight # in and get tracks back ~2 weeks. BKK routes to LHR area seem a good starter. You can see BA "looping" around the area, but SQ right through.

Not sure who "your" airline is, but the CAA put out a "UK Operators" NOTAM about avoiding certain FIRs.. so it would take a bit of research to decide which operators were avoiding the area due to their regulators, and which due to their own caution?

p2re referenced a youtube video yesterday at 23:26,which was from a conference 10 days ago where seperatists were saying they were expecting specialists to fix the Buk system they had.
Some kind work by some Russian speaking friends have delved up this:
http://euromaidanonline.com/priznani...hinke-buka-iz/

Hit translate and it appears to confirm this.

Next is a news item from a Russian news agency (similar was on several), dated 29 June, stating that the rebels have at least one Buk system
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1741703
Read it before they take this down too.

Looks like the Rebels had Russian help getting the SAM launcher up and running...

See also https://news.vice.com/video/russian-...te-dispatch-58

Interesting: yesterday afternoon saw the end of the "Donetsk Republic"... at least in the Russian media. Now it's Eastern Ukraine again... (tweet by the Estonian President earlier this morning)

Not familiar with the Buk / SA-17 but how likely is it (if at all) that they actually tried to engage another target, missed and acquired MH17 ?

I really can't get around that anyone would deliberately take out an airliner cruising at FL30 / M0.85.

AN 26/ B777
 

According to one of the "Experts" on Sky News the AN 26 and B777 are very similar:ugh:

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...5FclKWzMnMhV4Ahttp://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Z
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Z
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...ACAAAAVEAAV//Zhttps://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...OkwtTe-rVJzMuw

Let's see now. Two wings, fuselage, horizontal tailplane, vertical tailfin, two engines.

Pretty much identical.

Sometimes I despair of these so-called experts they drag from under their stones when this type of thing happens.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...RS0JVwt-Mqvrkc

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...6Ske0IqVd1Odog
http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...shMrgq5CEE0f/Z

Sorry, even ignoring size, I don't buy that, although perhaps at 33,000 feet and with naked eye or poor quality optics ......

(Thanks to a fellow Ppruner for pointing out that these photos are too big to validate my comparison.)

Need to be mindful that these missiles will be a locally restricted and expensive asset and will not be blazed away for fun. An act of gung-ho criminal irresponsibility but not a deliberate targeting of a non-combatant. Hopefully their masters will take their toy away, sadly too late.

I recall seeing some signature evidence of SAM detonation on A/C Parts from a previous conflict, which made it pretty easy to determine the system in use. Although I'm not familiar with the alleged system in this case, as F3WMB pointed out, you wont really need a black box for this one, if indeed a SAM was used.
Also, responding to the potential for cockpit evidence, IIRC the KAL shootdown was by an air launched missile, which required multiple launches to bring down the A/C due to the size of the target. Ground based systems don't normally have the same warhead/size constraints of their air launched compatriots.

Howard Hughes, best worst case is a penetration on the normal and immediate turn back - 4 minutes. Worst case is 50 mile penetration and exit - 7 minutes. You have no more than one minute before losing your height buffer.

Overflight no doubt legal but imprudent.

Nitpicker: Perhaps if you were a semi-amateur rebel who had just stolen a BUK system?

I lurk a great deal and don't often post, but in this case it seems that there has been a serious failure by the intelligence agencies. It seems there has been evidence on social media for several days that the separatists had got hold of BUK missile units. Yes, social media has failings (though it is regarded as important enough to slurp by alphabet agencies), but this needed investigating and the information passing to relevant bodies, such as decision-makers in civilian air transport agencies.

This could have been avoided, but, hey, the real risk is uncharged mobile phones ...

Capetonian, I am with Fox3. Most air defence targets are either radar blips or a small dot declared as a legitimate target. Visual ID is impossible for a medium r a range SAM.

Sorry for two posts close together - re: misidentification. I showed my wife, with no real interest in aviation, the pictures posted above. She said that, to her, they are "just planes". Only after some scrutiny could she see what appear to me to be obvious gross differences (different engines, wing shape and location, etc). Even if there was visual, which is unlikely due to the height, it is therefore possible that the same could have occurred at the time of this incident, bizarre as it may seem.

I agree with most that a big error of judgement has been made somewhere. Where as other war zones such as AFG or IRQ have had little in the form of High Alt air defenses, this is not the case with UKR. Arguably, in previous situations this type of risk was next to nothing. However, this situation is entirely different.

The second that the first AN-24 was shot down, alarm bells should have been ringing.

However, as is the case of most things in life, it seems that Corps of the world think "One fits all" - Because there were no such incidents over recent conflict zones, it was fine to continue flying.

The issue with this industry is - why does it always take loss of life for changes to come into affect? Pre-emptive seems to be missing from the Aviation dictionary - it's true meaning at least.

Pre-emptive action - Too much cost to ones pocket.

I think it's a tragedy of two halves too. on top of the massive loss of life, their will be a final victim in all of this - MAS will not survive. this.

Whatever the truth of the nationality, politics etc. of the missile team that was responsible for shooting down this civilian plane, I believe it was an unintended shootdown, a mistake.

It's become all political and it's all down to assigning blame, scoring political points and even looking for some economic advantage, whatever that might be.

This :mad: happens in war, it's happened before and it'll happen again.

Outrage is gonna sell a lot of newpapers and keep folks writing thinkpieces for weeks.

Colour me pessimistic.