Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine 752
An anonymous reader writes The Russian newswire service Interfax is reporting that a Malaysian passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down with a Buk ground-to-air missile over Ukraine near the Russian border. The Associated Press cites an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister as the source. First reports are that it was mistaken for a Ukrainian AN-26.
Malaysia airlines confirms they lost contact with the plane (last known position), but there's no confirmation it was shot down (yet). The Ukrainian government accused Russia of shooting down a fighter jet in Ukrainian airspace last night. Reports indicate there are no survivors.
Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a horrible tragedy, and one that changes the political climate considerably. Obama will face much less resistance from Europe if Russia turns out to be responsible. It also gives the Ukraine a reason to call in US "specialists" for help with the investigation.
Re:Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Interesting)
Pro-russian separatist claimed it, wonder if they are still cheering:
http://vk.com/strelkov_info?w=wall-57424472_7256 [vk.com]
Re:Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that one of those separatists who wears a Russian uniform, was delivered by Russian transports, and uses Russian military equipment?
Re:Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Funny)
No no no. That's one of the oppressed freedom fighters struggling against the Ukrainian fascist junta.
Get your narrative right.
Re:Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Informative)
US manufactured aircraft. So American crash investigators being involved is SOP by all the international conventions that apply.
As noted by sib posts. A Russian is claiming credit, for the wrong airplane. Must have gotten their Vodka ration.
Re:Wow. Terrble Turn. (Score:5, Insightful)
more people than that are dieing daily under where that plane was flying.
For some reason, people almost universally completely freak out about airplane crashes. From a political standpoint, it will matter a lot more than the deaths on the ground.
Re: (Score:3)
but keep in mind, more people than that are dieing daily under where that plane was flying.
Yeah. Of old age, disease, accidents, pretty much like everywhere else on the planet. The amount of dead due to the conflict probably doesn't rise up to 300 since it started.
Re: (Score:3)
but keep in mind, more people than that are dieing daily under where that plane was flying.
Yeah. Of old age, disease, accidents, pretty much like everywhere else on the planet. The amount of dead due to the conflict probably doesn't rise up to 300 since it started.
Just the initial protests at the end of last year resulted in well over 100 deaths, plus a large number of unidentified bodies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
and we have no idea what's going on there now. I suppose I shouldn't have said "Daily" I should have phrased that different... people die in the hundreds when conflict arises which is sporadic. The Russians over ran several military bases and that lead to large numbers of deaths, as well as when they pushed out the Ukrainian military and police from
Seems like old times (Score:4, Informative)
For those of us old enough to remember The USS Vincennes [wikipedia.org].
Re:Seems like old times (Score:5, Informative)
Or KAL 007:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Seems like old times (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Seems like old times (Score:5, Informative)
Both KAL 007 and KAL 902 were off course. At the moment this looks more like Iran Air 655 with a civil aircraft on course exactly where they had every reason to be.
Re:Seems like old times (Score:5, Interesting)
And those even older may remember Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and Korean Air Lines Flight 902 (both shot down by the Soviet Union). It seems they have done it again.
There was also Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001. Rumors have existed in certain circles that incompetent Russian soldiers shot it down by accident and Ukrainian President Kuchma agreed for Ukraine to take the blame in exchange for some sort of favor from Putin. Ukraine officially denied responsibility but they did offer compensation to the victim's families which is the usual legal dodge of not officially admitting guilt in case you get sued. My money in this case today is that Russia shot the Malaysian Airlines plane down. I expect US aviation experts to come to that conclusion and for Russia to deny it and insist that it's all part of the standard "Blame Russia" theme the West is currently playing.
Re: (Score:3)
"Ukraine admits it shot down Russian airliner"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
Now your turn, eager to hear your "rumors in certain circles".
Re: (Score:3)
Or in 2001 when the Ukraine military accidentally shot down a Russian airliner [telegraph.co.uk].
Updates as it unfolds (Score:5, Informative)
Some more info: (Score:3)
Recorded flight path: http://flightaware.com/live/fl... [flightaware.com]
Bubble and froth: http://www.airliners.net/aviat... [airliners.net]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If you look at the other flights for that route, they travel further south by about 40-60 miles than the one that got shot down.
This plane was off course at least compared to the other flights. Whether that has anything to do with it, hard to tell....
Those bloody sepratists! (Score:3)
That rag tag militia got lucky it seems, with a direct hit no less. Those light ammunitions gathered from round the house, what the odd Klashnikov and what have you.
Speculation at this point is this is what those rag-taggers managed to bring it down with: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
Russian GRU officer Strelkov boasted about it (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
He claims to be a retired FSB colonel, not GRU.
Re:Russian GRU officer Strelkov boasted about it (Score:4, Informative)
It's not him, he does not have social network accounts as he has repeatedly stated since the beginning of the war. This group sometimes re-translates Strelkov's reports but that was not one of them.
Possible factor (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
At that height, they'd have had to use a telescope. More likely the separatists were trigger happy and they had a handy missile.
Re:Possible factor (Score:4, Insightful)
Paint? The civilian airliner had an operational transponder ... if anyone at the SAM site cared to listen.
These are folks who can't be bothered to be careful, and probably don't care much they made a mistake.
Separatists claim to have captured a Buk missile (Score:5, Informative)
.
19:00:
A tweet (in Russian) from a key Twitter account used by pro-Russian separatists, in which they claim to have captured a Buk surface-to-air missile system, has now been deleted, BBC Monitoring observes. Ukrainians say the Malaysian plane could have been downed with a Buk, but pro-Russian rebels have now denied they have it.
Here is part of it: (Score:5, Informative)
So Ukraine intelligence is recording separatist traffic and giving it to the media. Among these are two calls between some "Major" johnny-on-the-spot reporting to someone called "Greek":
One call:
Greek: "Yes Major!"
Major: "Kazaks from the Chernukhino checkpoint shot down the plane."
The above is abridged; the audio has a lot more speech and this is an alternate translation:
Major: "Well, these were <guys from> Chernukhino who shot the plane. From Chernukhino checkpoint. The Cossacks that are standing at Chernukhino."
Next call:
Greek: "What's the news?"
Major: "I mean, it's definitely a civilian aircraft."
Greek: "Were there many people?"
Major: "A fuck ton. The debris rained right into the yards"
Greek: "What's the aircraft?"
Major: "I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't reached the main section. I only looked at where the bodies began to fall."
Major: "There are remains of chair mounts, the chairs, the bodies."
So we've got separatist commanders taking credit for the shoot down before they knew it was civilian, Twitter posts celebrating captured Buk missiles deleted by separatists and captured traffic naming the shooters; the Russian equivalent of rednecks standing a post and firing missiles at unidentified aircraft.
Patton wanted to keep marching East and settle Uncle Joe after Germany fell. He might have saved us all about 70 years of this bullshit.
What was the plane even doing there? (Score:3)
I am confused: here is the route of that flight: http://de.flightaware.com/live... [flightaware.com]
But if you look for older dates, you'll see that the route is much more to the south, almost above Crimea (about 300-350 km deviation depending on the date you choose), e.g. http://de.flightaware.com/live... [flightaware.com]
Are such deviations normal or could the flight be directed that far to the north by ground control? (Not an expert, just curious).
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, an issue on board caused by a freaking antiaircraft missile, right?
Actually as I heard it Russia actually shot down a Su-25 [telegraph.co.uk] the other day as well, so this may have been a result of an overzealous commander telling his subordinates to shoot down "everything that flies."
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Informative)
That was the same party telling it that was advertising other pearls of wisdom, like the fact that there were no mass artillery shelling in Sloviansk. Vice news did a nice video of it where they drove through the city showing the massive destruction from indiscriminate shelling, all while playing the audio of the denials of the Kiev representative.
Brought the whole "Goebbels saying that everything is fine on Eastern Front as the Red Army is shelling the very radio station he's holding the speech from" feeling.
Re: (Score:3)
Now way man, the NSA has clearly indicated it was Snowden with all the force of his computer juju.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Article states of the bat that it was a vacant UN sponsored school building. To spin this as the UN being complicit in hiding Hamas missiles displays some remarkably reading comprehension problems.
Maybe the UN should start sponsoring schools in the
US. Obviously the education system failed you.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I share your hope but not your optimism. Disappearing over the Ukrainian/Russian border would be a remarkable coincidence. Then again, a remarkable coincidence started WWI, so...
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
I share your hope but not your optimism.
Your optimism is misplaced. Photos of the crash [reuters.com] are on Reuters website, and reports of debris and body parts are coming in. The big question now is who shot it down. Most fingers are pointing at the pro-Russian rebels.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the geographic area is predominantly occupied by separatists ("eyewitnesses"), and the speed with which the report got to Russia, that report may be a "smoking gun," almost literally.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
I highly doubt that this would be a deliberate act by pro-Russian separatists. If it does turn out that this was done by them, this is a HUGE PR disaster for them. They have nothing to gain by it. I see three possibilities:
1 - separatists shot it down accidentally (unlikely as a crew trained to use a highly sophisticated SA-11 system would also know how to tell a civilian airliner from a military transport turboprop)
2 - false flag operation by Ukrainians in order to blame pro-Russians (unlikely as they are too incompetent to pull this off without the word leaking out)
3 - Ukrainians "tricked" the separatists into shooting down the plane. Only couple of days ago separatists shot down an An-26 military transport plane and warned Ukraine not to fly over the region anymore. Two days later a civilian airliner is sent (by the Ukraine flight-control?), 100km away from it's usual flight-path and straight over the separatist area. (Most likely in my opinion)
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
unlikely as a crew trained to use a highly sophisticated SA-11 system would also know how to tell a civilian airliner from a military transport turboprop
What makes you believe that they have a properly trained crew? It's much more likely that, after acquiring those AA launchers, they cobbled together a team of "best and brightest" who did their best to figure it out - and maybe had a hazy recollection from 40 years ago when they were conscripts. In fact, that's precisely why I think it's the most likely scenario - people operating complicated machinery without proper training is exactly the kind of thing that'd be likely to lead to this disaster.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I share your hope but not your optimism.
Your optimism is misplaced.
He implied he did not have optimism. Not sure how one misplaces what one does not have.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
So, they apparently did have "that kind of hardware." Of course, today they're claiming they don't.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
A Google translation gives this:
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure. It was at 32000 feet when they last had contact, which means it wasn't quite at cruising altitude, but it was still several miles up. The 777's cruising speed is mach .84, about 630 MPH. I'm not going to do the math (i'd love it if one of you aerospace guys would, especially since we know where it landed and the last known altitude and the great circle between Schipol and Kuala Lumpur), but I think it would be safe to say that on the ascent it would be going about 350-450 MPH. I can't see terrorists getting their hands on that kind of hardware. Both Ukraine and Russia on the other hand...
FWIW the last flighttrack data showed a speed of 490 kts (564mph), altitude of 33,000 feet (a common cruising alt if there is turbulence at 35k+) Lat 48.088 Lon 38.6359.
Re: (Score:3)
Then again, a remarkable coincidence started WWI, so...
I don't know what is coincidental in the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by Serbian nationalists armed and trained by Serbian military intelligence. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria [wikipedia.org]
Given the political and military alliances forged in Europe before WWI, this was not going to end well.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not correct but the coincidence is even better than that. After their first failed assassination attempt of the day, the assassin moved to a restaurant that he believed would be along the Archduke's return path (it wasn't). The duke's driver went the wrong way and when the Governor saw that it was the wrong path ordered the driver to reverse and go another direction. The driver stopped the car in front of the restaurant the assassin had chosen, literally right in front of him. The assassin had to merely take two steps forward and shoot the Archduke from about 5 feet away.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Funny)
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
To get to the other side?
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Because the time & fuel savings were weighed to be more significant than any risks to commercial air traffic? Until today.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
If civilian commercial aviation is becoming fair game for armies seeking to gain advantage, then the world has just gone to a very bad place.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Not as many as you might think. World population only hit 1 billion around 1804 and didn't get to 2 billion until around 1927. It was still under 3 billion when I was born in 1952.
Re: (Score:3)
There were German civilian ships in the Atlantic between 1941 and 1945?
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
The location tracking clearly indicated it is a normal flight path and at an altitude where only radar guided type missiles could hit. In other words, the weapons that could reach the altitude for it to hit should have known it was a passenger airplane. Unless they were rebels given equipment with very little training and no infrastructure to compare the flight paths with known flights.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Check the FlightAware tracking data.
Don't know if that is significant or not but it's easy to verify for yourself. All the other flights on the page of MAL17 flights go over the Sea of Azov or even south of it. This one was well off to the north of it.
Again, don't know why or if that even matters, but at least compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region. Not that that is a reason to shoot it down.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region
According to CNN, it was due to weather on the regular flight path.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Which is precisely the reason commercial flight corridors and hundreds of miles wide.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US pilots can and will alter their course to get around bad weather systems or take advantage of more helpful prevailing winds that day. For a trans-continental flight, 100 miles is a pittance.
Fortunately, for us, our pilots don't have to also take in consideration whether Nebraska is currently having a dispute with Kansas.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll enlist for Kansas.
I'd be tempted to make a joke here, but Kansas already has a similar political proxy war [wikipedia.org] in its history. Makes it much less funny.
160 years later, and evil looks pretty much the same.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
The "rebels" are in a good part active-duty Russian army and special forces personnel with no distinctions, so I wouldn't claim "very little training".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Each airline (and/or its regulatory overlords) will make its own decision as to where to (not) fly. The FAA told US based airlines to not fly over the region as a precaution. Apparently the Malaysian authorities came to a different risk evaluation. Or, they are still trying to figure out how to make a decision. Or they were ignored by the state flagged carrier.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.
"Issue on board" (Score:5, Funny)
>> issue on board
Like a missile poking up through the floorboards and then exploding?
Re: "Issue on board" (Score:5, Funny)
Canadian design, obviously.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Missle: In the beginning, there was darkness. And the darkness was without form, and void.
Pilot: What the hell is he talking about?
Missle: And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone. Let there be light.
Re: (Score:3)
There were people from a number of countries on the airplane. According to NPR the State Department reported there were 23 US citizens on board.
Re:"Issue on board" (Score:5, Insightful)
So Putin, who is responsible for arming these terrorists with missiles capable of bringing down airliners at cruising altitude has just killed 23 US citizens. Let's hope that US & EU sanctions get truly serious in response.
Re:"Issue on board" (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't. The problem is that Russia supplies much of Europe's fossile fuels, specifically oil and gas. That's yet another reason to stop using them.
With any luck, this crisis might serve to start a long-term program to achieve energy independence for Europe, after which Russia can be isolated like the rogue nation hated by all its neighbours it is. But right now that's impossible.
Re:"Issue on board" (Score:5, Insightful)
You say it like it's a good thing.. a big country isolated, hated and full of unhappy people. What could go wrong? I live right next door to them, and I'd much rather see them happy and enjoying life, because that way they'd probably be lot less likely to start new conflicts.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
The AN-26 is a turboprop, vaguely similar to a DHC-8. The SU-25 is a twin engined fighter. The most obviously id
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Strelkov is former GRU and a present day Russian operative stirring up shit in Ukraine on behalf of Putin and fellow travelers. He has been personally sanctioned by the EU for corrodinating the separatist insurgency. Read his Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page if you want more.
what is your source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation required (seriously, you couldn't be bothered?)
I can't find anything to back your claim.
Re:what is your source? (Score:5, Funny)
I did a search and I found it, http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org], is that good enoug for you?
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ditto for Gannett, who operates a number of newspapers and their associated websites. Their Facebook-driven comment system has plenty of similar comments from posters who have their location as being in Russia, with those comments being highly up-voted.
Re: (Score:3)
We're now getting reports from the airline that there was an issue on board, so everything, including being shot down, is speculation at the moment.
Reports on sceen are finding multiple wreckage sites. Suggesting it, in some way, blew up. So it's not looking good.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
Yep, just like the neo-Nazi's who refuse to recognize Obama as President of the U.S. Same retards, different language.
... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force.
You mean when he fled the country with his looted money in the face of mass civilian protests. No military force was necessary, just a fear of justice after years of robbing his country and people.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
>> I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
>Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
That would be a bit complicated since these territories are controlled by terrorists these days. As far as I know from refugees (and we have LOTS of those coming from Donetsk and Luhansk regions), local support for terrorists is minimal. It is mostly limited to local criminals, ex- political leaders (Communist and "Party of Regions" parties).
>>We elected new president just 6 weeks ago,
>... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force. This new election was held in full knowledge that the eastern (pro-Russian) regions were in turmoil and could not meaningfully participate.
Yanukovich was not overthrown by military force. There were clashes in the center if Kiev, but police and military was on his side at the time, and they had guns, grenades, armed vehicles; rebels had one catapult and molotov's. Yanukovich didn't care about anything besides money, and he fled the country as soon as he realized that there's not much more to make. Basically, he bled Ukraine's economy in a major way - to the extent where we had a revolution with majority support from UA's population. Odessa has been one of "his" regions. Majority of locals supported President Poroshenko (new elect), same goes for all other ex-Yanukovich's regions - Nikolaev, Kherson, Zaporizhya, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk where there was no turmoil at the time.
One last bit on "democratically elected" - I participated in 2004 elections as an observer - there's no such thing as democratic vote in regions controlled by Yanukovich representatives.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a bit complicated since these territories are controlled by terrorists these days.
Please let's not make the term "terrorist" so broad that it means nothing. There is a civil war going on in Ukraine. The aim of the two sides is to control territory, not to terrorize people, though of course the war doesn't exactly make people feel safe. Not all bad things in the world are terrorism.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Some of what I've been reading indicates that the "AN-26" the rebels thought they shot down was actually this 777.
If you splode something at 25-30k feet with an "illicitly acquired" SAM battery that you're probably not properly trained to use, unless you're an aircraft engineer you might have issues properly identifying the wreckage.
Re:Ah. (Score:5, Informative)
Manpad cant reach this high.
This was a deliberate radar guided attack.
Re: (Score:3)
From the reports, the plane was flying at a cruising altitude of ~30,000ft., way too high for a MANPAD. It would have to be a radar guided missile system like SA-11 (which both sides have) but still there is a question how they would identify the plane.
Re: (Score:3)
I highly doubt that a shoulder-carried ground-air-missile is able to reach up to 10 km.
Re:Ah. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think MANPADS can hit a plane at that altitude. Early reports said this plane was at nearly 30-50k altitude on it's way to Moscow and most MANPAD systems have fairly limited altitude ranges in the 2 mile range. This is the reason Ukraine accused Russia of shooting that other plane transport plane down, it was at an altitude that very very few MANPAD systems are capable of reaching.
Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300. You need pretty advanced (and relatively large) missiles to reach the altitude that commercial airlines fly at.
Re:Ah. (Score:5, Insightful)
The separatists have control over a Ukrainian anti-air installation (A-1402). That installation contains BUKs, which are quite able to reach a plane at that height. Also, given the separatist's demonstrated willingness to shoot down airplanes and that they also lied about their capabilities, I dare say that it's not looking good for them at the moment.
Well, they certainly DID in the past (Score:4, Informative)
KAL-007 (and no, James Bond was NOT aboard)
The Russians approached that Korean civilian airliner from behind, positively identified it, then shot it down with loss of all souls on board.
At the time, left-wing apologists all over the world went full-on "9-11 truther" foil-hat conspiracy mode and tried to blame others, including the US govt, for the shootdown (one former Carter administration officiel even made money from a book he wrote trying to blame it on Reagan). Unfortunately for their misguided cause, the radio communications between the Russian fighter pilots and their ground controllers (which contained both the explicit ID and the shootdown orders) had been heard and recorded by multiple stations - none of the conspiracy theories were valid - the Russians, in full-Communist-era-paranoid mode had intentionally shot down a civilian plane full of people for straying into their airspace (which the blackboxes later showed was the result of a simple pilot error in configuring his navigation system before he tookoff)
Re:Ah. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:another government crime against humanity (Score:4, Insightful)
you don't know what 'government' means, do you?
Re: (Score:3)
Karma to burn so at the risk of being offtopic to the article, but ontopic to you: We're antiquated relics from a time when the slogan still applied. The beginning of the end can be traced back to the fall of the WTC buildings, but the /. editors still tried their hardest to keep stories to the theme of the slogan for years after. However, ever since that event, Slashdot has slowly moved away from focusing solely on stories that fit the slogan and bringing in stories that have a possible historic and/or "
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because nerds don't give a rats ass about civilian casualties in war zones from commercial jets getting shot down.
Nosirree, none of us ever fly because we're always safely ensconced in our mom's basement. Doesn't affect us at all. And we certainly might not know people from the region.
Don't like these stories? Don't read 'em.
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not my primary source, but it's hardly surprising when something like this actually gets posted.
Because it is stuff that matters.
As opposed to all of the whining and bitching about Apple v Microsoft and other pointless stuff that goes on around here.
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Informative)
Two other airplanes (non-commercial with much lower loss of life and thus less interesting to news outlets I presume) were shot down within the week in similar airspace. Why aren't we discussing those?
Because non-commercial airplanes being shot down in a war zone is not an out-of-the-ordinary technical news... not unless there were interesting technical attributes to the story .ie. new anti-missile system technology, radar, anti-missile technology failure, etc.
A commercial jet, and a big one at that, being shot down in a war zone, then brings a whole bunch of technical topics to discuss? What lead to the airplane being mis-identified? What technical prevention mechanisms could have been used to prevent this? Would it be worth while to explore temporary expansion of flight routes to avert war zones? Etc, etc.
Go ahead and try to put a techie spin on it, but the point remains that we're only oogling over this because a bunch of people died, which not only seem distasteful, but again, has nothing to with the type of news this site represents.
No, that is only you putting that spin on it so that you can accuse others of distasteful oogling. Stop projecting... or not, whatever rocks your boat and gives you a moment to build faux moral outrage and pass it as your moral accomplishment of the day.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. the BBC coverage [bbc.com] states that "There is no official closure of Ukraine airspace but Germany's Lufthansa has decided to divert four flights currently in the air which would overfly east Ukraine".
Re:Why fly over a war zone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Planes have already been shot down as part of the hostilities. To assume that because your commercial flight is flying higher than those it can't possibly be targeted is the height of stupidity. Likewise falling back on the 'well, Ukraine never closed their airpsace'. Just because a road is open does not make it wise to take it.
I'm sure flying over Ukraine is a cheaper route for the airlines. Until something bad happens and your bird drops. This is all about a failure of risk management. It is one thing if your final destination is in/near the hostilities. Then you make a decision if you are going to fly that route, well thats the only way to go and everyone knows whats what before you start. But to do a fly over when you can easily route around it (even within Urkraine) is stupid.
Re:Why fly over a war zone? (Score:4, Informative)
Since we're trying for technical accuracy here, the SU-25 is not a fighter. Even a glance at the pictures makes that transparently obvious. It's a purpose-built ground attack aircraft, much like the well-known A-10 Warthog. Its only aim in life is to kill people, and destroy equipment and installations, on the ground. And it's pretty much defenceless against fighters, unless it can keep low enough to evade them by jinking.
So why do all the media call the SU-25 a fighter? Maybe it's just standard incompetence and ignorance, but you should always ask "cui bono?" ("who stands to gain?") Perhaps the current Ukrainian "government", and those who support it - because if the SU-25 is an armoured ground attack aircraft, the question arises: whom has it been sent to kill? And the only possible answer is "Ukrainian citizens". So, just like Saddam, Assad, and Qadafi, Poroshenko is "killing his own people". Given how often the US government uses that as a pretext for a savage, unrestrained attack (and how unwilling it would be to launch such an attack against Poroshenko) it's pretty obvious that it has a powerful interest in labelling the SU-25 as a "fighter".
Re: (Score:3)
This is something that happens routinely due to weather.
Re: (Score:3)
Seems likely. The debris scatter is 9 miles, so that indicate a large explosion. Something larger then what would typically be use by an on board terrorist.
Maybe the fuel exploded but that is EXTREMELY unlikely for many reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
The size of the debris field seems to indicate a mid flight explosion. So something radar guided from the ground, or fired from another aircraft seems likely.
Could be on board terrorism. I would think being shot down has a higher likely hood.