121–130 of 146 posts
Can anyone break down how they knew that the missile exploded within a one square metre volume of air, just above and to the front of the plane please? Do they do it just from the pattern of debris, or do they use other methods as well. I think I got that they can use the microphones in the cockpit to work out the direction the missile fragments came from, but not quite sure on the details. Thanks in advance!
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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.
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>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…
If you don't mind me picking your brain about this, here is what I've been able to find from the DSB report (page 183): "On 6 June 2014, [..] an Antonov An-30B had been downed using a MANPADS at an altitude of less than 4,500 metres near Slavyansk. On 14 June 2014, [..] a Ukrainian Air Force Ilyushin 76MD had been downed during landing at Luhansk [using a MANPADS]. During the weeks that followed, other incidents occu…
it was the issue of propaganda and responsibility (imagine yourself an officer in the chain of command related to the captured BUKs). 2/3 of their Navy switched allegiance to Russia. Other regular forces also didn't have much enthusiasm for fighting. Ukraine claimed that the captured BUK systems were made un-operational before being captured. Which as far as i know - my general understanding of the situation and various sources i've read - is just not true.
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I'm not following. Everything in that CNN story seems to line up with the Dutch report, down to the type of missile system used.
Please point to the village name in the report then.
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I guess I'm having trouble following the logic that says recent pictures of the Russian military displaying these missiles is evidence that the Russian military no longer has them.
The logic is that 3 pictures, with 1 likely being a prop (for use in parades or as a display unit) and 1 likely held by a foreign joint military in Armenia - are not proof of the Russian-side lying. For every 1 of these decommissioned missiles that Russia still posses, Ukraine probably has 100 (considering it's always been a weapons depot for this type of older Russian and Soviet-era gear).
Nobody forced in anyone in Russia to make the easily falsified claim that they didn't have any 9M38M1 missiles. The only reason it's interesting to establish that they did is that it harms an alibi they weren't forced to offer.
The Dutch report, and a lot of other open-source evidence, makes it pretty unlikely that the Ukranians launched the missile. This is a missile system that consists of several vehicles, one of which is a giant lumbering missile launcher. The missile was launched within an 100km^2 firmly controlled by the separatists. The Ukranian military didn't spirit a missile launcher convoy to a wheat field just a few km south of Snizhne --- a town that Ukraine was bombing --- spectacularly down a jetliner, and then somehow spirit that convoy back to Ukranian-held territory. That is not a reasonable narrative.
I don't see any serious arguments that this was anything other than a tragic accident. No matter who launched the missile, we're all pretty sure they didn't mean to shoot down MH17. The subtext behind Russia's involvement is that they set up a barely-organized irregular separatist militia with a weapons system that was easily capable of shooting down airliners.
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I'm not following. Everything in that CNN story seems to line up with the Dutch report, down to the type of missile system used.
Please point to the village name in the report then.
Whether the missile happened to have been fired from one of the 3 villages within that area, or from unincorporated territory is basically irrelevant to the report's main conclusions. And whether some CNN reporter, or his editor, may have fudged a bit on this basically irrelevant detail (shortening "fired from an area near village X" to "fired from village X"), even more so.
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The logic is that 3 pictures, with 1 likely being a prop (for use in parades or as a display unit) and 1 likely held by a foreign joint military in Armenia - are not proof of the Russian-side lying. For every 1 of these decommissioned missiles that Russia still posses, Ukraine probably has 100 (considering it's always been a weapons depot for this type of older Russian and Soviet-era gear).
I think we're moving the goalposts here. Is there any controversy over whether Ukraine has BUK launchers, or use 9M38M1 missiles? Both Ukraine and Russia clearly do. Nobody forced in anyone in Russia to make the easily falsified claim that they didn't have any 9M38M1 missiles. The only reason it's interesting to establish that they did is that it harms an alibi they weren't forced to offer. The Dutch report, and a lo…
The only thing I've seen conclusively is the size of the anti-Russian rederick. Which has been of such giant proportions that less than 2 hours after the crash happened, it was made out to be all Putin's fault, and every event after was spinned that way (example - Keiv was preventing the OSCE access to the area, yet media coverage claimed it was the Rebels).
It's incredible that 61 airlines flew over that area during those days. That day alone, 160 airplanes flew over East Ukraine before MH17 was hit. Even if it's safe to fly at 10k height, what happens if you have problems with your plane, like a failing engine? Next time I fly I'm going to check over which countries we fly.
Three other commercial aircraft were flying in the area at the time MH17 was shot down. Presumably, any one of they could have been downed rather than MH17. EVA Air Flight 88 (Paris to Taipei) Singapore Airlines Flight 351 (Copenhagen to Singapore) Air India Flight 113 (New Delhi to Birmingham)
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> 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…
The report is quite clear : the Ukrainian authorities were aware of the threat, and had good reason to close the airspace BEFORE this happened. This is in fact one of the few pieces of blame being laid out here.
That means the only real remaining question is whether the Ukrainian authorities were using commercial flights, and the lives of thousands of passengers as human shields to safeguard their military aviation in the area, were they trying to provoke Russia into shooting down commercial planes or was it merely a monumental fuckup ?
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I see you're interested in the history of the 9/11 attacks! Here's a 600 page report with over 100 pages of footnotes. The first chapter deals with the hijackings. You can start your research there! http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf In later chapters, there's a lot of discussion about the terrorist group that planned the hijackings, and not much discussion on missile ballistics. That's because the fo…
Thanks, I've read much of the report of course. What you notice about the report is that there's a tremendous focus on the build up to the attacks, the context and the aftermath, but it's very light on the technical analysis of the actual event that you would normally see in an air crash investigation - such as what we're now seeing with MH17. Admittedly the two events are hardly comparable, but I stand by my observa…
So what would you like to see? A detailed analysis of all of the ways the plane did exactly what you'd expect? Do you think the onus is on the investigators to disprove conspiracy theories? It's like you want a report called "Why it wasn't a missile: a detailed report on how Flight 93 looks like what you'd expect if terrorists hijacked a plane and crashed it into the ground."
You're asking others to disprove your hypothesis, for which there's no evidence in the positive, while ignoring competing evidence. This is the hallmark of bad conspiracy theories.