Crisis in the Ukraine

[Dannhill]

If Russia close off their airspace to the airlines of these countries couldn't the airlines fly the southern route which is just a little big longer? The extra cost would just be passed to the flying customers as per usual.

I don't think such spitting into each other's eyes would do anyone any good since like it or not, Russia and the west are tied to each other in a global economy. It's one thing to apply sanctions to Iran or Cuba but a totally different fish doing that to Russia, which is both large importer and exporter.

Let's put thiis in the Ukraine thread although its ramifications are much wider, The the blog of The Saker:

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His spelling is atrocious and I don agree with of lot of this but it is certainly interesting.
He is wrong in supposing that only the poor Southern EU states will be hurt. Many Dutch lorries were held up at the Russian border and had to prove, if they could, that they were not carrying fruit, vegetables or milk products. And Air France-KLM the French/Dutch airline, is the largest Western European user of Siberian airspace. Flying round Siberia burning much more fuel, letting the passengers enjoy much longer travel times and spending more on aircraft crews while the Asian competitors are not likewise handicapped will HURT.

Btw look at Ambassador Bhadrakumar's article I copied to the World News Thread for the invitation to join SCO to be extended formally next September to India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia. That will strengthen Russia's hand in dealing with sanctions.

 

[Dannhill]

I'd like to see OSCE deny that article. The problem with western media is that the usually reliable source like BBC has shown their own inherent bias and left out many news on the situation that doesn't paint the picture as US wants it. Hence, I have no choice but to refer to the links in this and other military forums, and even those Russian sites linked from here.
Btw, Malaysian papers also mentioned about those bullet holes. Who did they referenced that from?

I believe the Malaysian papers referenced this interview which was also found in this thread. It should be about 6 min point.

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Global research is not source of any news. I am sorry but they are a Severely politically and Conspiracy theory based site.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

First the Cannon (and it is a Cannon not a Machine gun) on the SU25 series is fixed it's a double barreled GSh-30-2 30mm cannon it's mounted much like the A10 off center under the nose. the opening for the muzzles is on the left side.

Now here is the first issue I have with this theory. The Location. The Cockpit. to fire into the cockpit the Frogfoot has to be pointing into the cockpit. The Pilot is not pointing at a stationary ground target as it's a moving jet the Pilot has to be pointing at the nose of the target and at close range. He has to be very intentional in his actions and range.

This brings the second issue I have with this Theory. There is no Room for error. The Pilot has to want to kill. The Buk missile Theory has the possibility of a accidental miss identification this cuts that all out. why? Because a Gun kill is inside visual range. and not just seeing the silhouette like KLA 007, The Pilot is reading "Malaysia" emblazoned on the hull. It's the Difference between potential Manslaughter and First degree Murder.

Third IF the Pilot was doing this why come from the sides? Traditionally Fighter pilots like to come in with the sun at your back. Killer pilots like to blindside there targets. now a Su25 can't really do that coming in from the side means that if the flight crew of the MH17 can't see him the passengers will. that leave a kill from below but the pennants on the hull say the bullets were entry points from there. A entry wound is all ways smaller then a exit wound especially for these big rounds as they tend to be meant to explode. additionally if he was coming in from below he would probably be in a stall and about to crash himself.
So this means best guess is that the SU25 would have to be coming in to attack a on coming aircraft.
Normally a attack would be from behind It would give the attacker the best chance of laying in on the target for the longest opening.
Now for a missile a attack form the front can make sense. A missile launched from the front exploding to the side would spread fragmentation across the front of the aircraft.
for a gun kill, it's bordering on suicide. and why the cockpit. MH17 was a 777 that means she has two engines the 30mm cannon would have enough punch to make a mess of those in two short bursts. Why gilitieen the Crew? When you could come up from behind and turn both engines into dead weight.

 

[plawolf]

If this was a false flag operation, then the intention would have always been to deliberately shoot the airliner down and murder everyone onboard. Governments have ordered airliners shot down before, so I don't find the cold blooded callousness of such an act to be much deterrence in itself, especially since the government in question came into power via very brutal means and have shown time and again that it has little problems with giving orders that result in civilian casualties among its own people.

Aiming for the cockpit could be either simply the result of the Su25 pilot leading his target (the Su25 is, after all, a ground attack aircraft without a radar so won't have all the modern computer aided targeting you would find as standard on modern air superiority fighters so the pilot would have had to do things the old fashioned way), and/or a deliberate act to prevent the pilots from sending out a mayday that may give the game away.

Shooting at the engines is a bad idea for such a mission for two obvious reasons. Firstly, shooting the engines would give the pilots seconds to minutes before the plane crashes. Plenty of time for someone to say something that might arouse suspicions.

Secondly, the engines are made up of the strongest alloys known to man, and are the toughest part of the plane. Shooting them will almost guarentee that you leave damaging evidence embedded in the engines. Shooting the cockpit or through the main cabine with high powered anti-tank shells will see those shells pass right through the plane, leaving only holes which are harder to positively indentify.

As for why the Su25 didn't make a diving attack from out of the sun, well are you forgetting the service ceiling of the Su25? It would have been pushing beyond the evenlope just to reach the 777, going above it and diving down would have been far more risky if not impossible. That there is the strongest argument against a Su25 gun kill.

The consensus with those who argue for a gun kill is that the cockpit holes line up with groves dug into the left wing tip, which would put the Su25 as behind and to the left of the airliner. That would put it in the blind spot of the pilots and the passengers, and would also fit with a leading shot profile.

The objections you raised are either all easily explainable, or are simply non-issues to start with.

The biggest question marks with the gun kill theory for me surrounds the rational for using a Su25 to do the deed.

Ukraine has Mig29s and Su27s they could have used to shoot down the 777 from BVR ranges, which would have been far harder to pin on the government since the launch aircraft would have been too far away from anyone on the ground to be able to link it to the shoot down. In addition, the damage pattern from an AAM would have been far harder to positively distinguish from a SAM that cannon shell holes.

Any telemetry the Russians might have picked up from such a AAM kill could just as easily be rubbished and/or ignored by the west as the radar data the Russians have produced to show the Su25 have been rubbished or ignored now.

I have yet to see any convincing argument as to why, if the Ukraine wanted to commit such a horrible crime, it would use an ill suited ground attack aircraft that had to get in close while flying beyond its normal service ceiling, when it has plenty of perfectly capable air superiority fighters it could have used instead.

It would be like the mafia ordering a hit by sending a guy to shoot the mark in the face with a handgun from 10 yards, when they had perfectly good snipers who could have done the job from a mile away.

 

[MwRYum]

And, I am a Singaporean and MH17 belongs to the country just next door. My mother was a Malaysian so you can say I feel a lot for the victims of the crash. And the outcome of the investigation is of paramount importance to me, to Malaysians. More so than how Ukraine might feel to having foreigners trampling over the countryside while they are busy shooting some Dad's Army folks which is what I can see from photos of these separatists. I don't think it is unreasonable to ceasefire and let the site be investigated and cleared. Plenty of time for Ukraine and the separatists to go back to killing each other later.

Would you say the same if it was a US passenger jet that was brought down? I doubt UN would happily pack their bags and leave for the time being. "Brutally" honest here.

But when you think this whole incident has escalate beyond the rights and needs of the victims' families and Malaysia Airlines, even above the incompetent regime in Kiev, but a full-on pissing match between Washington and Moscow, I won't be surprised that this case would remain "inconclusive" because there's no powerful neutral 3rd party to investigate with full fairness.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Actually I covered the altitude issue Wolf. frankly the whole thing turns into a huge conspiracy theory. "plurality should not be posited without necessity." If it's a False flag, then The Ukrainian Air traffic control has to order MH17 to divert it into the Ambush, The Ground crew to prepare the aircraft the Pilot to take the mission and who is willing to do the job even being so bold to attack in such a manner. his wingman to escort him the ground intercept controller to direct him into place for the ambush. US and British intelligence to cover the incident. by the end of it you get a ever expanding conspiracy that just keeps getting bigger. I am sorry it's to complicated with to many loose ends and convoluted elements. I mean why not use a more suited platform like a SU27 or Mig 29 or even Su24? platforms meant to actually attack airborne targets? I mean I know for sure Mig 29's Are active in the Ukrainian Air Force Heck one was shot down just yesterday.

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Why not Jam the Radio transmissions during the attack?

 

[solarz]

Actually I covered the altitude issue Wolf. frankly the whole thing turns into a huge conspiracy theory. "plurality should not be posited without necessity." If it's a False flag, then The Ukrainian Air traffic control has to order MH17 to divert it into the Ambush, The Ground crew to prepare the aircraft the Pilot to take the mission and who is willing to do the job even being so bold to attack in such a manner. his wingman to escort him the ground intercept controller to direct him into place for the ambush. US and British intelligence to cover the incident. by the end of it you get a ever expanding conspiracy that just keeps getting bigger. I am sorry it's to complicated with to many loose ends and convoluted elements. I mean why not use a more suited platform like a SU27 or Mig 29 or even Su24? platforms meant to actually attack airborne targets? I mean I know for sure Mig 29's Are active in the Ukrainian Air Force Heck one was shot down just yesterday.

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Why not Jam the Radio transmissions during the attack?

The evidence we have points toward bullet damage on the cockpit in addition to missile damage in the rear end of the plane. We don't have any evidence of whether it's an SU24 or Mig 29. We only have evidence that there was a fighter plane shadowing the airliner.

It's not difficult to divert the plane. A simple instruction to air traffic control, who wouldn't suspect anything. Ground crew etc won't need to know either, since the Kiev regime sends warplanes to the region on a regular basis.

The only ones who would need to be directly complicit would be the pilots Therefore, there is no need to postulate a huge conspiracy.

Obviously very few pilots would have been willing to commit such a heinous act, but let's not kid ourselves: such people certainly do exist. It could also explain the Kiev government's choice of aircraft if their choice of pilots was limited.

The attack on the cockpit, if true, would almost certainly be to ensure that the pilots cannot send any distress calls that would cast suspicions. Jamming the radio would certainly have been picked up by the plane's black box.

 

[MwRYum]

If Russia close off their airspace to the airlines of these countries couldn't the airlines fly the southern route which is just a little big longer? The extra cost would just be passed to the flying customers as per usual.

I don't think such spitting into each other's eyes would do anyone any good since like it or not, Russia and the west are tied to each other in a global economy. It's one thing to apply sanctions to Iran or Cuba but a totally different fish doing that to Russia, which is both large importer and exporter.

No doubt they would do that, but how'd they keep those paying customers when other non-EU airlines now, in comparison, can offer cheaper tickets and shorter flight time? Perhaps there will be more code-share EU-Asia flights in response, I assume, like Air France and KLM will have to rely on their non-EU Sky Team Alliance partners to fly those routes, something like that.

No passenger like the idea of longer routes with higher ticket cost, but still the same tin can as before, and it's more so when you talk about flights that last more than 6 hours as it is now, and more after this sanction comes to effect.

Trade wars is all about attritions, see who cries for mommy first.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

The evidence we have points toward bullet damage on the cockpit in addition to missile damage in the rear end of the plane. We don't have any evidence of whether it's an SU24 or Mig 29. We only have evidence that there was a fighter plane shadowing the airliner.

It's not difficult to divert the plane. A simple instruction to air traffic control, who wouldn't suspect anything. Ground crew etc won't need to know either, since the Kiev regime sends warplanes to the region on a regular basis.

The only ones who would need to be directly complicit would be the pilots Therefore, there is no need to postulate a huge conspiracy.

Obviously very few pilots would have been willing to commit such a heinous act, but let's not kid ourselves: such people certainly do exist. It could also explain the Kiev government's choice of aircraft if their choice of pilots was limited.

The attack on the cockpit, if true, would almost certainly be to ensure that the pilots cannot send any distress calls that would cast suspicions. Jamming the radio would certainly have been picked up by the plane's black box.

No, we have reports from the Russians of SU25, in point of fact the Russians went out of there way to classify the aircrafts make. We have holes of a type distributed across a section of cockpit material and we have a unsubstantiated claim made by a individual with no access to the wreckage using photographs to claim bullet holes.

we have a narrative that says that it was a attack by both missile and or aircraft. And as to the extent of how many are involved. If you want your false flag you have to have both the missile crew and the aircraft. You have to have the flight controller directing the MH17. You have to have the people who maintain the aircraft because they don't just sit it out and polish the canopy. They also arm the bird fuel it and are involved in the avionics like the flight data recorder and gun camera which would record the whole thing. the Americans and NATO who are watching the Air Space over the Ukraine. You have to have all the ground interception direction for the Radar less Su25 directing the interception and attack. You have to have all the other radar operators in the area either silenced or ignoring the operation. Nothing happens in a vacuum. And the more people are in on something the more likely a leak unless you think they are all in a ditch by the road but that would need more then just the pilot to be laying in it. All it would take is to have a flight mechanic show up and say "Hello, on such and such a day I fixed this on a Su25 and I pulled this chunk of Mh17 from the wing. Or I saw Col so and so take off that day but without a single bomb only fuel air to air missiles and bullets. fly to the east then I heard about this airliner crash when he landed he was trailing wires and his gun was empty."

 

[SouthernSky]

You would be bereft of any sort of inteligence if you resorted to cannon fire from a jet fighter to bring down an airliner as part of any false flag operation. The pilot may as well land the fighter and announce to all and sundry that yes, it was me.

A missile shot however provides enough ambiguity to shift responsibilty.