Here is my estimation of the shrapnel traces:

http://sf.uploads.ru/kZMBx.png

And with greater resolution
http://sf.uploads.ru/faFXy.png

The left engine ingested broken fan blades....some of which were found at the scene (first village) where the forward ring was also found, as well as further back sections of cowling. Cockpit was at second village. This indeed did cause a turn of about 90 degrees and clearly some sort of flat spin so that bodies would start falling out.

Buk's length 9300 mm. B777's width 6200 mm.

For comparison:
http://sf.uploads.ru/VlqaQ.png

A good set of MH17 images:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/128537380@N08/
Also contains images to help tracing shrapnel route through co-pilot seat.

The Pics show the Pilots Seat.
The Source of the Pics
https://www.flickr.com/photos/podpolkovnikvvs/sets/

My estimation of holes sizes (20Mb):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/or6azagwe1..._size.png?dl=0

1. I took the picture of MH17 and measured the red stripe size and the fuselage size in pixels. So i got the factor to infer the red stripe size in mm (by multiplying on the fuselage size 6200mm). That is 342 mm.
2. I found a 400mm ruler image and scaled it to match the size of the red stripe
on the famous debris image (in a particular layer).
3. I copied the ruler's layer to apply it throughout the debris image close to holes.

Role of Intelligence and Security Services
 

The Dutch Pariamentary Review Committee on the Intelligence and Security Services is looking into the role these services (both general and military) have in the decision making process regarding the safety of air routes.

The enquiry must provide answers to the following questions:
a) What is the formal relationship between the intelligence services and air safety related parties such as airlines, atc, and the respective ministries with regard to providing information on security threats;
b) Which are the concrete activities of the Intelligence and Security Services in exchanging information with relevant air navigation parties;
c) What information did the Intelligence and Security Services have prior to the crash of MH17 about the security situation in East-Ukraine and in how far have they shared this information with parties relevant to air navigation? Which considerations played a role to do this yes or no?

The parliamentary review commission will report their findings directly to the Safety Board in charge of the MH17 enquiry.

The questions were raised in November but were published Janary 6th, 2015.

Dutch original: Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid | Onderzoeken & Publicaties | Onderzoek crash MH17, 17 juli 2014

AD / Spiegel and Correctiv publish reconstruction
 

Dutch newspaper AD, the Der Spiegel and Correctiv have published their results on their own investigation on the downing of MH17. The AD story, in dutch can be downloaded here:

http://static3.ad.nl/static/asset/20...uctie_7788.pdf

Or press Download on the center on this page:
Raket afkomstig van Russische brigade uit Koersk - AD.nl

In short:
They point to the Russian 53th air defense brigade from Kursk, and tried to contact the individual soldiers without much success. The only guy they ware able to contact said that he couldn't tell anything because of state secrecy. They also discover that 1 sergeant and 13 soldiers were releaved of duty just 2 weeks before the convoy of BUK M1 crossed the border. The name of the sergeant is Ivan Kranoprosjin. Some of the information comes from his VKontakte page, now deleted.


They interviewed witnesses that saw the actual missile launch (on a different location than the RTL document)

More to follow.

On https://mh17.correctiv.org/english/
this is wrong:Watch TELAR and launches from it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQLh-HKaz8
(0:15-0:45)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l115fJpCIfc
(3:59-5:04)

What's the truth?
 

The sad thing is that there is so much obfuscation that the families and friends of those who were murdered, most probably by Russian affiliates and almost certainly by mistake, will never be 100% sure who it was who "pulled the trigger" and those who were murdered will never get the justice they deserve.
It is a shameful state of affairs and I hope that one day those who were responsible, including the leadership, rue the day they tried to hide the truth

Bellincat latest about BUK launch location:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-a...n-flight-mh17/
(good study IMHO)

The Dutch Daily 'Algemeen Dagblad' reported 3rd Feb about a meeting of vice-ambassadors that took place some days before the MH17 disaster. A meeting report was sent to six different Dutch ministries but not to aviation related parties, neither to the Ministry of Infrastructure or KLM. The shooting down of the Antonov was discussed at this meeting. The Dutch Government will not publish the meeting report The meeting was mainly about the European attitude towards Russia.

The Dutch cabinet maintains that Ukraine is responsible for its own airspace and an airline company is resposible for its route to fly. There was no information on 'concrete threats' for upper airspace flights; The shooting of the Antonov aircraft had not changed the situation. The cabinet does not comment on the question whether they had knowledge about the presence of rocket launch systems before the 17th.

Opposition Members of Parliament are not satisfied with the answers. They think it is still unclear whether flying over conflict areas at this moment is 'structurally well organised'. They want to know who consented to MH17's route. They also want an intermediate report of the investigation. Next Thursday (6th Feb) there will be a paliamentary debate.

Kiev should have closed airspace in may?
 

In january the Dutch news agency brought this arctile. It stated that Kiev should have closed its airspace in May, based on 'new information' and the opninion of Nico Voorbach, former chairman of the ECA.

Nico claims that if airlines had known that air-to-air engagements were carried out over Eastern Ukraine, many airlines would have diverted outside Eastern Ukraine.

Some members of Dutch parlaiment thrive on this, and ask the dutch cabinet why the Dutch state didn't inform the airlines even after being briefed by Ukraine like previous post.

So, after Rutte stated that he wouldn't allow anybody to politically misuse the MH-17 tragedy these dutch parliament members are just doing that, over the heads of the victims.

Why?

Dutch parliament members pretend that the dutch government had both extra information on the air safety situation and obligation to share this to its national airlines. This is both not the case. There is no extra information, Ukraine invited the diplomats of 8 countries to express concern about Russian involvement. The task of evaluating of safety of airspaces for national airlines is not a task of the dutch intelligence services, who are focussed on IS. And in fact, the so-called new information was already known immediately after the downing of the different airplanes.

On the May incident, which happened in June according to ASN, there is only the mention of ground fire.

The 14th july downing of the An-26, Kiev IMMEDIATELY stated that this was either due a Russian Pantsir missile or an AIR-TO-AIR missile, and it seems that they now stick to the latter. Proof that a missile was involved was already visible on the same day (see Aviation Safety Network entry).

The downing of a SU-25 on July 16th was according to Kiev by a Russian jet.

Rebels, however, claimed that both were downed by Manpads.

That Ukraine didn't close the airspace themselves, is surely a liability, but they didn't withhold information about what was happening. We, in the West, rather wanted to believe that rebels did this by manpads than accept the deep involvement of Russian Military in this conflict, ignoring facts that showed the opposite.

So this leads to the question which I hope that the DSB will answer: why did airlines stay flying above Eastern Ukraine while they knew (or could know) that air-to-air engagements were taking place. Or do they simply follow the national NOTAMs? Because the DSB cannot interview the national intelligence agencies, it lets the intelligence commity do this for her, to get answers here.

But the worst is the way Ukraine handled the decision of closing the Eastern Ukraine airspace. Please see link below and watch the movie on the right side of the page. Military decided on the raising of the minimum altitude. But Military look different to safety than civil airlines.

link below: dutch story + piece of dutch journal, including the reaction of the Ukraine minister.

'Oekraïne had luchtruim al in mei moeten sluiten' | NOS

You can also ask Russia/Rostov why the also only closed the Airspace below FL320 and not complete.
V6158/14 NOTAMN
If Rostov had complete closed so no Flight could have made over the Area.
The next Question: why wanted ATC RND that MH17 change the Route direct to RND? The ATC Reason was: we have three of them. Where?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh06SqVx_1Q

Everyone knew the Radar Vid. At 13.20.39UTC a Military Object apear on screen at Russian Border. The new flight Route would be go nearby the Object.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=766ftKQGqls

It has been discussed many times. There was no any "military object" on the screen. It was a large piece of the disintegrating Boeing.

Please look at 13.20.39 in the middle, left of TAMAK over Ru Area.
About 40KM away from MH17.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=766ftKQGqls

Ok, what am I looking for? What does blinking yellow cyrillic text mean under these circumstances?

Had those measurementts by ATC represented by the yellow lines been made real time or are those inserted afterwards? If it is a realtime video, what was the reason for such close continuous monitoring with this flight?

At 13:20:39 a nonsquawker shows east of Tamac close to the border.

I'm sure that the monitoring was during replay of the record, not during the flight.

I suppose that yellow blinking and red are automatic warning about collision course. The blinking yellow АФЛ means Aeroflot - a Russian airline, like MH in MH17.

The Objekt apear left of TAMAK, directly to the UA Border.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5I...ew?usp=sharing

The new Route would be go nearly the Object
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5I...ew?usp=sharing

"The Objekt apear left of TAMAK, directly to the UA Border."

Interesting find.
We know from google earth pictures that there most likely was a BUK launcher, radar and command unit in that rough area. But I doubt (e.g.) BUK missile would show in radar like that.

Could military radar cause that kind of erroneous echo on civilian radar screen?

But anyway, there perhaps was something without a transponder, flying briefly from Russia towards Ukraine border. Was it a helicopter/jet attacking some border quards? Uragan salvo?

The possible Point of the BUK Launcher is 47°58'29.44"N 38°45'36.38"E

about 15km in south

The Point of the "Military" Objekt is in this region 47°50'51.93"N 38°51'14.56"E

Here you can find a Heli Landing Place 47°48'46.24"N 38°51'23.74"E
zoom in and wondering how much Miltary you can see. Best view with GE.

I did not mean the BUK that destroyed MH17. But another setup on Russian soil. (IIRC, ukraineatwar geolocated it)

(I think we might see a helicopter attacking towards the Ukrainian border crossing / checkpoint 5980m north from the helipad.)

The Russians said, that the PSR could only detect objects above 5000m. That would be way too high for an attacking heli!

The Russian telling a lot of :ugh: Think about the Su Theory..

I don´t think that this possible Heli was attacking. The MH17 was shot down by a BUK.
(But it is possible that the shot was planned? ATC Rostov changed the Route directly over the Buk(s) in Snizhe; if the Missile don´t hit, the Heli is on Stand By and MH17 gets down on RU Area. )

Edit: I get an Info via PM that Russia is able to see Targets about 1000m at UA/Russian Border. At the Crash site it is about 1500m.

>...Russia is able to see Targets about 1000m at UA/Russian Border. At the Crash site it is about 1500m.

Sounds reasonable. The ground there does not have huge elevations, so I was thinking that closer to the primary radar, they should see items also below 5000m altitude.

Further debunks other than the BUK theories.

btw. What are the coordinates to the nearest (Rostov?) primary radar?

The crash zone was covered by two radars in Russia:
near Baturinskaja
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=ru&lat=45...39.460187&z=18
and near Ust-Donetskij
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=ru&lat=47...40.682395&z=18
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/36980319

wreckage display
 

Families have been allowed in to a Dutch air base to see most of the wreckage. Important parts like cockpit are not on display.

BBC News - MH17 families view plane wreckage at Dutch base
MH17 next of kin finally view wreckage of downed flight | Daily Mail Online

http://nos.nl/artikel/2022540-aivd-h...team-mh17.html
Translation to English:
https://twitter.com/Erkie999/status/...016897/photo/1

According to Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the DSB, the story about AIVD (dutch intelligence) not cooperating with the DSB is a hoax. See his reply here:
'AIVD werkt onderzoek naar MH17 tegen' - AD.nl

He also said that the DSB has a wish list of components still needed to be recovered. On a TV interview he stated that the collection of debris of last november was a 'grab what you can' effort, and that the top of the forward fuselage is still in Ukraine, in the northern debris area that has not yet been searched. A wish-list has been sent to Ukraine and now fighting has been calmed in that area, it is likely that some new shipments of MH-17 parts will go to the Netherlands.

It will take until the end of the year before reconstruction is complete, so I guess that the final report of the DSB will not be ready before 2016.

I just got a PM with a link to a youtube video; garbage from front to end. Conspiracy theorists that pick and choose their information, distort it to unrecognisable format and present it as Truth.

MH17 is a tragic tragic accident with missile involvement most likely by Russian troops and even more likely by mistake. This makes it almost unbearable to comprehend.

So please spare me your Truth. It sure must feel nice to cover up the hard reality in a blanket of fairy tales but leave me out of that. I will report you.

Some national regulators did issue a ban on flights e.g. FAA banned all US flights over Ukraine. Some airlines decided to avoid without waiting for regulator e.g. BA. Did Kiev keep commercial flights running to provide a human shield to their military operations as they already lost some a/c to SAMs? The notion that a commercial a/c would be safe above a certain FL but a target 1000' feet lower hardly instills confidence that it is a good short cut.

Thank you for a valuable input and all the new information you provided to this thread. Alleged information warfare is a real core issue in aviation accident investigation.

> Did Kiev keep commercial flights running to provide a human shield to their military operations as they already lost some a/c to SAMs?

I think the "human shield" theory is nonsense. Every day UA planes were shot down even when tens of passenger planes flew over the area.
To my understanding all a/c losses (except one) were cause of light SAMs/manpads that can reach only 5km of altitude. And the only one higher than that was close to border and suspected to be shot from russian side of the border.
So, to me it seems Ukraine wanted to get the money from companies using their airspace. And to keep their "pride" by hinting that they control their country airspace. Perhaps they also trusted Russia to not to shoot at passenger planes.
But in the morning of 17.Jul they had the intelligence info that BUK system came over the border. At that point they should have closed the airspace immediately, even if the intelligence info was not 100% concrete.

IMHO, it's also interesting that almost 100 Russian civilian aircrafts flew over donbass area, within one week after MH17 was downed.

Quote:
Some national regulators did issue a ban on flights e.g. FAA banned all US flights over Ukraine. Some airlines decided to avoid without waiting for regulator e.g. BA.

True, but the Dutch and Malaysian regulators didn't see this as their task. And there is no system in place in the Netherlands that governmental intelligence information would flow to the airlines or regulators. Airlines could do the risk analysis themselves, but in current cost-cutting environment there is probably not that much capacity available.

Lets wait for the DSB report concerning this.

@sotilaspassi
I agree that the human shield theory is nonsense, because:

1. you still needed to go down for ground attack, so point defence missiles would still do their job.
2. the main ground attack aircraft (SU-25) would not benefit from this because its ceiling is much too low for this.

But the indicents on july 14th and 16th Kiev always stated these were not shot down by manpads, but Pantsir or Air to Air missile. That should have been a warning for everybody flying in that area, even if Kiev didn't close the airspace.

The rebels could also have given warning that civilian air traffic wasn't safe above their territory. They actually claimed that they only used manpads. Probably to lure some Ukraine transport in unsuspecting danger.

And don't forget this: the BUK missile was driven on a truck, and on that truck you can't fire missiles. It was deliberately rolled off that truck, and driven to a field for a specific mission.

After shooting down MH-17 the mission was either forfilled or abandonned and the BUK went back on the truck for voyage home.

That mission was unlikely to protect some armour. If that was the case, it would probably be deployed in the field and driving around without a truck.

The mission was most likely to shoot down the transport plane that dropped supplies for the Ukraine soldiers near the Russian border south of the launch site. This way they could deny supplies to the soldiers there and as a bonus the plane would be shot down over rebel territory before dropping supplies, yielding some goodies for the rebel force.

How they could mix up MH17 with an Ukraine transport is still unclear, and
was already discussed in this thread. Even more so if these were Russian regular soldiers.

The Russian soldiers (Buk TELAR crew) were told (in Russian) via cellphone: "bird flew to you". The phone tap (0:22) was published by an Ukrainian law enforcement agency on July 25. On October 27 an interview with Westerbeke (JIT) was published mentioning phone taps:Google translation:On March 4 Westerbeke said:The fact that Westerbeke still talks about phone taps after 4 months evidences that the taps weren't dismissed as fake despite widespread distrust of them when they were published.

RU SU-25 chief engineer: no way SU25 could have downed MH17 (in german)
Russischer Chefentwickler der Su-25: "MH17 nicht von Kampfjet abgeschossen" | tagesschau.de
Krieg in der Ukraine - Abschussort der Rakete könnte gefunden sein - Politik - Süddeutsche.de

An accident investigation simply doesn't work along these lines. No one is at this point interested in who-said-what. The investigation will focus solely on undisputable facts and in any lesson learned in avoiding a similar tragedy. It might become a fact that a missile downed the airliner, but the report will certainly not start guess who shot it and how. Same goes with any XXXX fighter doing this or that.

@Caygill
You're right, but Westerbeke is the leader of the criminal investigation, not of the DSB investigation. So he is very interested in who shot down MH17. He will not publish a report, but will try to put the responsibles on trial.

@Lena.kiev
Is the SA-11 TELAR not able to do some IFF on itself? And it doesn't answer the question why they got the message 'bird flew to you'. So who decided and why that MH17 suddenly was a valid target?

This apart from the fact that I would only have needed a smartphone with flightradar 24 (and internet connection) on it to see that it was a civilian airline that was coming towards me.

Neither Ukrainian military transport Il-76 nor MH17 have Russian military IFF transponder. They both look as a foe for Buk-M1 (or Buk-M1-2) TELAR. Without IFF, the TELAR can distinguish only between three classes of targets: airplane (fast target with rotating parts - in engines), cruise missile (fast target without rotating parts) or helicopter (slow target).

Two versions who decided and why that a plane was a valid target:

1. The Russian troops with the rebels (trained on Russian military base near Ukrainian border) had intel about Ukrainian military transport Il-76 scheduled for that day (indeed scheduled, but canceled) to drop (from altitude to avoid MANPADS, with varying success) ammunition and food for Ukrainian troops surrounded then near Russian border. A spotter in a quiet rural area heard a plane invisible over clouds. This seems incredibly unprofessional, but nothing unheard of for Soviet/Russian army.

2. http://www.sbu.gov.ua/sbu/control/en...0&cat_id=35317

In both versions the Russian TELAR crew assumed Il-76.

On July 21 Russian Ministry of Defense gave a briefing (presented by Chief of Staff of the Main Operations Directorate). On it a picture was shown with alleged MH17 path - with a diversion from Donetsk towards North-East. This contrived path proves that Russian military didn't know about FlightRadar24.