Crisis in the Ukraine

[texx1]

While that's possible, CNN reported sources in US intelligence service that tracked the firing of the missiles and said they came from close to the Russian border. It's not likely a Ukrainian air defense unit would have been out there by themselves, not with a Buk anyway.

I would take any reports coming out of US intelligence services with a bucket load of salt. Similar to Russia, US is hardly a neutral and reliable party in this. There is simply too much at stake for US right now on Ukraine. Obama has already used this incident to pressure EU on more sanctions.

 

[texx1]

Even if the eastern rebels were responsible and that's a big if, Kiev shares some of the contributory responsibility in this shoot down. Why was the jet diverted to a conflict zone where rebels had shot down high flying planes before? This wasn't the first time a plane was shot down in the area. I don't think the pilots of MH17 had death wishes. Instead of diverting south over Black Sea coast, they chose to go over a war zone. Even if the pilots themselves chose this route, why didn't Ukrainian ATC warn them about the potential danger?

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

And yet you used a Russian Times article to try for the claim of no radar in the Donesk region Texx.
lets boil this down.
all we have is at this point is the claim and the counter claim.
We have the facts on the ground. A Civilian aircraft was redirected and ordered to a lower altitude and then shot down with a military air denial system that requires a Tel and a Radar due to the altitude of its interception. We also have a second earlier episode of a smaller military aircraft that was shot down also beyond MANPADS range. We have the Russians claiming that they did not supply such systems to factions on the ground that they support, but we also have units of the Ukrainian military having been stripped of there arms equipment and vehicles. We also may have defectors who turned such over.
We have the Self appointed Mayor of Donesk peoples republic claims that they have no Radar, but nothing more then his word on it (and between his word and magic beans.. At least I can make three bean salad.)
We have a audio recording purported to be of Russian and Ukrainian separatists discussing the shoot down but the origin of which is of question as.it comes from the Ukraine Secret Service. (Is it me or does it seem like every cell phone phone and two tin cans with string in the Ukraine are tapped ?)

now I have to say that the claim that... "Oh but if the Pro Russians have Bur or what ever SAM then they would have experienced professionals who know better..." is a pile of malarkey.
the Russian Pilot who took down KLA007 was a professional, his ground intercept controller was a professional to. The crew of the American ship that downed the Iranian Airways flight was a professionals too. All the Patriot batteries that ever took down a friendly aircraft by mistake were Professionals. The US Navy crewmen who shot up fighters from the Enterprise that came into Pearl harbor after the attack were professionals. The US Navy aircraft handler how just finished telling the trainee not to stand in front of the engine and then went and did it only to be sucked in said engine... He was a professional. Deal with it. Professionals make mistakes to.

fact there is nothing that can dismiss the claim that it was separatist nor the counter claim that it was the government. However between the two we have seen the separatist conducting shoot downs. This is likely as they have no air force and want to keep The Ukrainian Government from using it's.

 

[delft]

OT

Except IFF works on a demand system. your Quarry has to be received and then responded to. If your not Quarried properly then no return signal is sent. In the Case of the Iranian Air lines the US Navy sent the ping for a IFF but did not receive a return because the Iranian Airliner couldn't send one.

They saw an aircraft take off in Iran and they sent a IFF ping? Were they drunk?

 

[Blackstone]

I would take any reports coming out of US intelligence services with a bucket load of salt. Similar to Russia, US is hardly a neutral and reliable party in this. There is simply too much at stake for US right now on Ukraine. Obama has already used this incident to pressure EU on more sanctions.

I take your point on current credibility of US intelligence services plus the Fog of War lead to caveat emptor, but downing of a civilian airliner is one of those "too big to fail" things for US and NATO to misrepresent. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Western sources have this one more right than wrong.

 

[Verum]

I believe it is pretty clear that the Separatists shot this Malaysian 777 down.

I also believe it was almost certainly a Russian made missile system (probably an SA-11) that did it.

Now, was this a system the separatists had captured from the Ukraine military? Was it one the Russians had provided?

We simply do not know.

I do not think it was an event where they intended to shoot down a civilian airliner. I believe they thought it was probably either a cargo aircraft or a surveillance mission.

It is doubtful, with it being in the middle of the war zone, that a thorough investigation will be done...or be able to be done.

Most airlines, even on the over the pole routes, are flying around Eastern Ukraine for the very reason that the war is ongoing and the Ukrainians certainly have the weaponry, and the separatists may certainly obtain the weaponry, to down such aircraft at such altitudes. Malaysian Airlines was simply crazy to fly a civilian aircraft through there.

Tragic event. IMHO, the separatists should allow the investigators to the site.

They should simply stand on the fact that it is a known war zone....that they mourn and are sorry for the loss of innocent life by mistake. But that in the war they cannot take the chance that it was Ukrainian military and warn all other civilian aircraft to stay clear. They and Russia should be that open and direct about it...and then allow investigators access. That's the best they could do from a PR standpoint.

It is a valid point, but the problem is how would the rebels know how to operate the equipment? Most Russian/Soviet gears are dated and hard to operate, they require special training. Those are probably produced near the end or just after the Soviet era, definitely no fancy easy to use GUI like those in NATO equipment. The national level chaos didn't start until March/April and real large scale military conflict didn't start until two months ago.

It's impossible for a bunch of random people to just capture bunch of sophisticated SAM units and be able to operate them without professional assistance, especially downing a high flying jet cruising at Mach 0.9 at 10,000m altitude.

It's true the Eastern blocs have extremely high ratio of university educated population, but those are not toys from Walmart or Toys-R-Us, they are sophisticated weapons. Even just learning the acronyms and the logics would take weeks, not to mention fully using them.

That's why I believe it's an active SAM unit of Russian or Ukrainian military that did it. This conclusion is not politically based, but simple deductive reasoning.

 

[Blackstone]

And yet you used a Russian Times article to try for the claim of no radar in the Donesk region Texx.
lets boil this down.
all we have is at this point is the claim and the counter claim.
We have the facts on the ground. A Civilian aircraft was redirected and ordered to a lower altitude and then shot down with a military air denial system that requires a Tel and a Radar due to the altitude of its interception. We also have a second earlier episode of a smaller military aircraft that was shot down also beyond MANPADS range. We have the Russians claiming that they did not supply such systems to factions on the ground that they support, but we also have units of the Ukrainian military having been stripped of there arms equipment and vehicles. We also may have defectors who turned such over.
We have the Self appointed Mayor of Donesk peoples republic claims that they have no Radar, but nothing more then his word on it (and between his word and magic beans.. At least I can make three bean salad.)
We have a audio recording purported to be of Russian and Ukrainian separatists discussing the shoot down but the origin of which is of question as.it comes from the Ukraine Secret Service. (Is it me or does it seem like every cell phone phone and two tin cans with string in the Ukraine are tapped ?)

now I have to say that the claim that... "Oh but if the Pro Russians have Bur or what ever SAM then they would have experienced professionals who know better..." is a pile of malarkey.
the Russian Pilot who took down KLA007 was a professional, his ground intercept controller was a professional to. The crew of the American ship that downed the Iranian Airways flight was a professionals too. All the Patriot batteries that ever took down a friendly aircraft by mistake were Professionals. The US Navy crewmen who shot up fighters from the Enterprise that came into Pearl harbor after the attack were professionals. The US Navy aircraft handler how just finished telling the trainee not to stand in front of the engine and then went and did it only to be sucked in said engine... He was a professional. Deal with it. Professionals make mistakes to.

fact there is nothing that can dismiss the claim that it was separatist nor the counter claim that it was the government. However between the two we have seen the separatist conducting shoot downs. This is likely as they have no air force and want to keep The Ukrainian Government from using it's.

On top of all else, the idea current Ukrainian black ops could smuggle an SA-11 close to the Russian border and do murder, without being discovered, stretches the imagination. Also, if the separatist were innocent, they'd asking the Russians to help them cast a huge dragnet to locate and capture government black op teams.

 

[SouthernSky]

Some of the tin foil hat nonsense being espoused in this discussion is beyond belief and quite frankly offensive.

 

[Blackstone]

It is a valid point, but the problem is how would the rebels know how to operate the equipment? Most Russian/Soviet gears are dated and hard to operate, they require special training. Those are probably produced near the end or just after the Soviet era, definitely no fancy easy to use GUI like those in NATO equipment. The national level chaos didn't start until March/April and real large scale military conflict didn't start until two months ago.

It's impossible for a bunch of random people to just capture bunch of sophisticated SAM units and be able to operate them without professional assistance, especially downing a high flying jet cruising at Mach 0.9 at 10,000m altitude.

It's true the Eastern blocs have extremely high ratio of university educated population, but those are not toys from Walmart or Toys-R-Us, they are sophisticated weapons. Even just learning the acronyms and the logics would take weeks, not to mention fully using them.

That's why I believe it's an active SAM unit of Russian or Ukrainian military that did it. This conclusion is not politically based, but simple deductive reasoning.

To be fair, it's possible some of the rebels were in the Ukrainian military and had training with Buk missile systems. In fact, if you were the rebel commander and someone dropped a Buk in your lap, wouldn't you scour your entire organization to locate former military technicians that know how to operate it?

 

[texx1]

And yet you used a Russian Times article to try for the claim of no radar in the Donesk region Texx.
lets boil this down.
all we have is at this point is the claim and the counter claim.
We have the facts on the ground. A Civilian aircraft was redirected and ordered to a lower altitude and then shot down with a military air denial system that requires a Tel and a Radar due to the altitude of its interception. We also have a second earlier episode of a smaller military aircraft that was shot down also beyond MANPADS range. We have the Russians claiming that they did not supply such systems to factions on the ground that they support, but we also have units of the Ukrainian military having been stripped of there arms equipment and vehicles. We also may have defectors who turned such over.
We have the Self appointed Mayor of Donesk peoples republic claims that they have no Radar, but nothing more then his word on it (and between his word and magic beans.. At least I can make three bean salad.)
We have a audio recording purported to be of Russian and Ukrainian separatists discussing the shoot down but the origin of which is of question as.it comes from the Ukraine Secret Service. (Is it me or does it seem like every cell phone phone and two tin cans with string in the Ukraine are tapped ?)

now I have to say that the claim that... "Oh but if the Pro Russians have Bur or what ever SAM then they would have experienced professionals who know better..." is a pile of malarkey.
the Russian Pilot who took down KLA007 was a professional, his ground intercept controller was a professional to. The crew of the American ship that downed the Iranian Airways flight was a professionals too. All the Patriot batteries that ever took down a friendly aircraft by mistake were Professionals. The US Navy crewmen who shot up fighters from the Enterprise that came into Pearl harbor after the attack were professionals. The US Navy aircraft handler how just finished telling the trainee not to stand in front of the engine and then went and did it only to be sucked in said engine... He was a professional. Deal with it. Professionals make mistakes to.

fact there is nothing that can dismiss the claim that it was separatist nor the counter claim that it was the government. However between the two we have seen the separatist conducting shoot downs. This is likely as they have no air force and want to keep The Ukrainian Government from using it's.

I used a RT source to illustrate the narrative that is being perpetuated by the Russian side. Before suggesting that I am being hypocritical, please check my post #96 in this thread which is before I posted the RT article. In it, I stated that both sides are creating narratives that are most beneficial to their own.

I agree there is no way to prove any claims or counter claims in this incident. It all comes down to perceptions and our own individual biases. However, rebels shooting down planes before doesn't make them automatically responsible for this shoot down.

As for dealing with professionals making mistakes, we simply can't chalk this one up to another unfortunate incident in war because the parties involved are not great powers that can essentially do whatever one pleases. Both Kiev and eastern rebels rely on outside support. Any fallout from this incident would impact the amount of outside support which in turn would affect the outcome in the current great game between Russia and US.