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MH17 Report

bbc.co.uk

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Re: MH17 Report

#101

Post by mkup »

tremon wrote: post #40
armabiz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Officially Ukrainian govt call that Civil War happening in the country as "Anti-Terror Operation". To be clear, rebels occupy territory of 15K square kilometers with population 4M people. Closing the air space would look like sign of loosing control over situation in country from the official govt side. So this looks like not "too busy with other things", but more like miserable politics.

Actually, the airspace was closed. Up to 20,000ft, that is. The cruising lanes (10km, 30,000ft) were still open because up to then, the rebels did not have surface-to-air missiles with that range. Which, of course, is why Russia have been spinning this since day 1. Where did the missile system come from, and who operated it? On that day, both the Russian News and the rebels' twitter account reported downing a (what t…

Exactly. To the date of accident with Malaysian MH17, rebels shot a few Ukrainian military airplanes with shoulder-launched man-portable air-defense like SA-18 Grouse and SA-14 Gremlin. Ukrainian government did not expect Russia to provide rebels a "Buk" (SA-11 Gadfly), which is totally different thing: a battery of vehicles including standalone target acquisition radar, rocket laucher, transporter/erector, and command vehicle. Obviously "Buk" has a higher range.

Re: MH17 Report

#103

Post by powertower »

alkonaut wrote: post #61
sschueller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report did not go into finding out who did it. Both sides own BUKs. It is very difficult to find the truth because all sides are pumping out propaganda. Even the United States is manipulating what we hear for their own political and economic gains. Here an subtle but strong example : http://www.sott.net/article/302911-Sott-Exclusive-Full-unedi...

> Both sides own BUKs. Only the Russian side has these BUKs. One of the key findings is which specific warhead version was used. The report doesn't spell out who did it, it does however conclude that a BUK missile from the Russian military shot down the plane. That BUK may have been stolen or on holiday in eastern Ukraine.

> Only the Russian side has these BUKs.

How is that even logical?

These are discontinued older model BUK missiles.

Meaning only a place like Ukraine would have them in any significant numbers.

Re: MH17 Report

#104

Post by tremon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #86
ptaipale wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And: it's not really so easy to define "active warzone". As said, hundreds if not thousands of commercial planes fly over conflict zones every day, successfully. Just to pick a random example: Flight TK7900 IST-SIN is up in the air right now (19:32 GMT on Oct 13, 2015). For a picture of the route, see this. http://tinyurl.com/obzlxxv Over the past few hours, it crossed from Turkmenistan/Iran to Afghanistan a bit nort…

> But I would only blame those who shoot it down. It's not okay to shoot down airplanes. Commercial airplanes are not valid targets. If only reality worked that way. In real war, everything is a potential target - sometimes civilians get hurt by mistake, other times because one side decides to take advantage of the "rules" above and e.g. hide weapons in hospitals. In general, if an area of land is a warzone and it's…

> if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed

But it was not known there was anti-aircraft missile capability until April 14th (a few days before the MH17 crime). You're making the exact logic fallacy that the DSB criticized in its report.

All incidents from before that Antonov downing on the 14th were done using MANPADS (i.e. shoulder-carried missile launchers). These don't reach high altitude. The information about the new capability wasn't relayed quickly enough to commercial aviation authorities (I don't think the DSB identified a reason for the delay).

Instead, the DSB argued that risk assessment for fly/no-fly decisions should not only include known risks, but should also account for unknown risks (say, the speculation that the rebels did have anti-aircraft capability).

(edit: although another source says that the rebels' STA capability was known since June 29th)

Re: MH17 Report

#105

Post by tremon »

trhway wrote: post #100
tremon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the airspace was closed. Up to 20,000ft, that is. The cruising lanes (10km, 30,000ft) were still open because up to then, the rebels did not have surface-to-air missiles with that range. Which, of course, is why Russia have been spinning this since day 1. Where did the missile system come from, and who operated it? On that day, both the Russian News and the rebels' twitter account reported downing a (what t…

>the rebels did not have surface-to-air missiles with that range. they had it since end of June when Donetsk BUK battery was captured. Using those BUKs during the first half of July before the MH-17 the rebels dawned 2 Ukrainian AN-26 transport planes which were flying at about 7km height, much beyond the reach of MANPADs. The MH-17 was flying much north of the civil corridor and the rebels thought that they got anot…

thanks for those links, although I can't read the Russian ones. Have any of those hits been confirmed? I believe I read somewhere that the first Antonovs were downed using ATA missiles (read: fighter planes), and only the latest AN26 (the 14th of July) using STA missiles.

Re: MH17 Report

#106

Post by trhway »

tremon wrote: post #105
trhway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the rebels did not have surface-to-air missiles with that range. they had it since end of June when Donetsk BUK battery was captured. Using those BUKs during the first half of July before the MH-17 the rebels dawned 2 Ukrainian AN-26 transport planes which were flying at about 7km height, much beyond the reach of MANPADs. The MH-17 was flying much north of the civil corridor and the rebels thought that they got anot…

thanks for those links, although I can't read the Russian ones. Have any of those hits been confirmed? I believe I read somewhere that the first Antonovs were downed using ATA missiles (read: fighter planes), and only the latest AN26 (the 14th of July) using STA missiles.

>the first Antonovs were downed using ATA missiles (read: fighter planes),

no, rebels had never had such capability, i.e. planes and Russia didn't ventured the planes in.

>although I can't read them

There are also some tweets in English down on the twitter page i linked. Also you can Google translate it. The capture of the BUK systems was well communicated on both sides - in Russian and Ukrainian news at the time, before the MH-17. There was also another Ukrainian BUK battery captured in Luhansk, though there weren't much traces of it after that.

This is BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28299334 on the second AN-26. I remember how in those days we were amuzed at the stupid propagandist version put forward by Ukraine that it was a SAM from Russian territory - it would have needed at least a C-300/400 missile which would be recorded by all the NATO radars/satellites.

Re: MH17 Report

#107

Post by tremon »

trhway wrote: post #106
tremon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for those links, although I can't read the Russian ones. Have any of those hits been confirmed? I believe I read somewhere that the first Antonovs were downed using ATA missiles (read: fighter planes), and only the latest AN26 (the 14th of July) using STA missiles.

>the first Antonovs were downed using ATA missiles (read: fighter planes), no, rebels had never had such capability, i.e. planes and Russia didn't ventured the planes in. >although I can't read them There are also some tweets in English down on the twitter page i linked. Also you can Google translate it. The capture of the BUK systems was well communicated on both sides - in Russian and Ukrainian news at the time, be…

yes, I noticed. I have updated my comment to match :)

Re: MH17 Report

#108

Post by powertower »

thedevil wrote: post #42
sschueller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report did not go into finding out who did it. Both sides own BUKs. It is very difficult to find the truth because all sides are pumping out propaganda. Even the United States is manipulating what we hear for their own political and economic gains. Here an subtle but strong example : http://www.sott.net/article/302911-Sott-Exclusive-Full-unedi...

We'll never know 100% but Ukraine controlled the air so only the rebels had motive to shoot down planes, and had bragged about it on social media. It's possible that Ukrainian forces or someone else had a conspiracy to frame the rebels (if you have a good conspiracy theory, Russian propaganda would love to hear it). But this is very unlikely as it's a high-risk, low pay-off strategy and even Russian leaders are usual…

> We'll never know 100% but Ukraine controlled the air so only the rebels had motive to shoot down planes, and had bragged about it on social media.

At the time, Kiev was complaining that Russia was sending out spy planes into its territory.

Knowing the state of the Ukrainian military, to me it's much more likely that they mistaken the plane for something it was not and shot it down.

Re: MH17 Report

#109

Post by tptacek »

istvan__ wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, no, they do not have "plenty" of BUK missile launchers, second, the launchers they do have are not parked in the middle of separatist strongholds, and third, it's not the SBU spinning wild stories of fighter jets flying alongside MH17 and sudden course changes by MH17 --- it's the separatists and the Russian Ministry of Defense saying those things, which have been conclusively debunked now by the Dutch report.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Ground_Forces#Army_A... "Surface-to-air missile systems and complexes of division level are characterized by their long range and firepower and are equipped with surface-to-air missile complexes;S-300V,Osa, Buk, Buk-M1 and Tor." 2. No they did not need to do that, it was enough to park it closer to the zone 3. I am not sure what is this gibberish about, I did not mention any…

No.

The report isolates the region the missile could have been launched from, based on the damage pattern from the warhead's projectiles and MH17's flight path, to a very small number of square kilometers, all of which are firmly ensconced in separatist territory.

These missiles have a fairly short range.

The report and the missile's Russian manufacturer agree about the very limited number of missile models that the warhead could have been mounted on.

Re: MH17 Report

#110

Post by kafkaesq »

kushti wrote: post #102

Interestingly, it seems everyone has forgotten CNN top news from mid-July: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/mh17-pro-russian-... . CNN did spread an outrageous lie, but nobody cares.

CNN did spread an outrageous lie,

Which was?

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