6 ms·

What I don’t understand is why Russian SAM operators did not appear to expect the airliner via its flight plan. Commercial flights file flight plans with Air Na

What I don’t understand is why Russian SAM operators did not appear to expect the airliner via its flight plan. Commercial flights file flight plans with Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). Flights into Russia would almost certainly be filed with FATA, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency. I see two possibilities: 1) the flight plan was known to the officer in charge of the SAM site and he was under orders to shoot the plane down and now they’re trying to cover it up or 2) it was a genuine mistake and so there was some kind of miscommunication or perhaps the air defence forces weren’t even looking at flight plans and just shooting at anything that looked suspicious on radar. Gross incompetence and lack of training and coordination in the Russian military are all issues we’ve come to expect so it’s easy to see how this could happen without knowing for sure. And since Russia seems to be in full denial/obstruction mode we might never know exactly what went wrong.

bamboozled 2y ago
I’m going to put my money on gross incompetence and lack or training based on videos I’ve seen of assaults made by soldiers using electric scooters and golf carts…
duxup 2y ago
>incompetence and lack of training Seems the most likely, for all the usual reasons, and it seems pretty clear from recent conflicts that Russia still subscribes to the game plan of mass numbers of expendable troops, equipment, etc less so well trained. Probably little choice when you're running a Kleptocracy. It appears there's no part of the Russian system immune to corruption / etc.
- chongli 2y ago
  Right, but doesn't that offer the perfect cover if Putin actually wanted someone on that flight killed?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Does he need cover? The windows people keep falling out of don't seem very covered.
    - chongli 2y ago
      A lot of the denials / diversions made by Putin’s regime can seem absurd to us but we’re not necessarily the intended audience for them. The regime as a whole has a post-truth propaganda MO designed to subvert reality by offering competing and contradictory narratives in order to sow confusion and distrust.
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      Last I checked, Embraers don't have operable windows Boeings on the other hand...
  - duxup 2y ago
    Shooting down an commercial airliner seems far riskier / just more complicated / hassle compared to "typical" assassination efforts. It's not as if Russian leadership is afraid to do that.
    - gpderetta 2y ago
      Prigozhin. Well it was general aviation (another Embraer Jet, coincidentally) as opposed to commercial, but close enough. Still the most likely explanation is human error. There have been so many shoot downs of airlines across the world in the recent past that it is not surprising any more.
      - philistine 2y ago
        Prigozhin was about sending a message, and using a method of assassination that ultimately Prigozhin himself could not use. Only Putin can kill you with a missile strike.
  - victorbjorklund 2y ago
red-iron-pine 2y ago
This is Russia, so assuming malice or incompetence is redundant. But in all likelihood it was a mistake; if they were serious about killing it they'd have shot more missiles, and they're not in a position to be wasting AAMs on non-military targets.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > they're not in a position to be wasting AAMs on non-military targets. And yet they keep doing it. Accident does seen most likely though.
avaika 2y ago
> he was under orders to shoot the plane down and now they’re trying to cover it up I highly doubt that's the case. Even though Russia went full evil mode a while ago, it's not that reckless (yet). I don't foresee any sane explanation for this kind of order. I believe a mistake and/or miscommunication is more likely to be the root cause. Sadly it'd be quite naive to expect a thorough publicly available investigation summary from Russian side. You are right here.
- tucnak 2y ago
  > I don't foresee any sane explanation for this kind of order. The "malice/incompetence" heuristic is really a statement about prior probability more than anything. Even though it may seem as "cautious," or avoiding uncertainty, not updating your priors is doing exactly the opposite! You _should_ assume malice as long as russia is concerned, and it's otherwise up to them to prove incompetence. However, like you would probably guess, it's in their best interest to introduce as much uncertainty as possible. On a different note, there's interesting discourse in iterated prisoner's dilemma regarding _noise_, or communication error. It recognises that any "real" systems is imperfect, and therefore will introduce error. I wonder if they ever recognised that there's advantage to deliberately introducing noise, and falsely attributing it to the system itself!
1oooqooq 2y ago
you're assuming this really was Russian, but mossad captured several Russian bases/arms depos last weeks.
- rfrey 2y ago
  Why would they bother with that, when they have a perfectly usable constellation of space lasers?
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    to get the usa to bomb iran for them. you know, the usual.
mjg59 2y ago
It sounds like they'd made multiple attempts to land at Grozny and failed due to poor weather, were asking to divert back to Baku, and due to GPS interference were asking for vectors rather than being able to navigate to waypoints on their own. They may well not have been anywhere their flight plan would have indicated.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tomohawk 2y ago
  After they were shot at, they were not allowed by Russian authorities to land in Grozny or any of the other nearby Russian airports, but were told to divert across the Caspian Sea to another country. During the crossing, they were subjected to GPS jamming by Russia, and damage from the missile caused them to lose most controls. The heroic efforts of the pilots got them almost to the airport, but at least some people survived.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    > they were not allowed by Russian authorities to land in Grozny or any of the other nearby Russian airports They were not denied landing. It was not possible to land. The weather excluded visual approach, there was no ILS and landing with GPS wasn’t possible due to jamming, which started because of the drone attack. There’s fair share of responsibility on Russian air defense which has not ensured safety of civilian aircraft, but that flight should not have happened in the first place, so that’s on Russian government which did not close the airspace in advance and on the airline which decided to continue flights despite that it has already been known that air defense us working in the area.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Total speculation but spurious reports of "Ukrainian drone attack" sounds suspicious. Would it possible that the "attack" was just the involved airliner wandering out of a designated safe area and flying into SAM coverage, by chance?
victorbjorklund 2y ago
for sure a mistake just due to the fact that most of russia is incompetent and corrupt. Makes no sense why russia would shoot down a plane filled with russian citizens flying to a russian airport. Just a fuck up due to russians being incompetent.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  loud assasination with collateral damage to send a message
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    It would be interesting to know who was in the plane. Russia has assassinated this way before with Yevgeny Prigozhin. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    The most salient example of that actually happening was with Prigozhin. Still not a full civilian airliner. Collateral damage was limited. If you really want to hate Russia for this, just remember that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
    - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
      I would say the most salient example is MH370. The more you read about it, the more you become in disbelief. If it was an operation, it is one of the most advanced ones that I've ever read about. They knew exactly how to deactivate beacons, avoid military radar, there was a power and communications outage (computer interference?), the airplane kept flying for another 7 hours (without detection!), there was no distress call, ... and so on, which cumulatively is extremely unlikely to occur by chance, and would speak to extremely knowledgeable and capable agents. The bodies were never found, so it is possible that the passengers were offloaded. Imagine going to those lengths just to capture one person, or a group? The only other time I've seen that level of coordination was with Edward Snowden.
ibejoeb 2y ago
According to the latest reporting, the actual flight deviated from the advance flight plan by hundreds of miles. I don't know the regs in that region, but I suspect that IFR flight plans must declare an alternate, and it's unclear if it was Makhachkala and, if so, why they crossed the sea instead. That seems to have been the real problem. Russia was not anticipating airline traffic there. Sounds like there has been fairly active drone activity in that area. update: Another comment suggested a plausible different order of events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521882
- sfilmeyer 2y ago
  >That seems to have been the real problem The real problem here is starting a war. In a more peaceful context, even being hundreds of miles off from your flight plan wouldn't have resulted in this plane getting shot down. I get what you're saying, though. It sounds unlikely that shooting this plane down was done because anyone specifically wanted to shoot down this particular civilian plane.
- michaelcampbell 2y ago
  > Russia was not anticipating airline traffic there So there was no flight plan, or the Russians didn't read it?
dilyevsky 2y ago
Suspecting it's because of active EW jamming of GPS bc the airport was under drone attack. They probably don't have flight plans live feed at individual SAM crew level and confirm via ADSB feed instead which was way off here. So once it descended bellow certain FL it was misidentified as drone by the local Pantsir crew
- perlpimp 2y ago
  most sensible explanation
timka 2y ago
Well, it's the WSJ. In fact, we do not yet have the final official conclusion of the commission with the participation of Russia and Azerbaijan, which is working on this case. Let's wait and refrain from empty speculation in an already tense international situation.

bamboozled 2y ago

I’m going to put my money on gross incompetence and lack or training based on videos I’ve seen of assaults made by soldiers using electric scooters and golf carts…

duxup 2y ago

>incompetence and lack of training Seems the most likely, for all the usual reasons, and it seems pretty clear from recent conflicts that Russia still subscribes to the game plan of mass numbers of expendable troops, equipment, etc less so well trained. Probably little choice when you're running a Kleptocracy. It appears there's no part of the Russian system immune to corruption / etc.

chongli 2y ago
Right, but doesn't that offer the perfect cover if Putin actually wanted someone on that flight killed?
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Does he need cover? The windows people keep falling out of don't seem very covered.
  - chongli 2y ago
    A lot of the denials / diversions made by Putin’s regime can seem absurd to us but we’re not necessarily the intended audience for them. The regime as a whole has a post-truth propaganda MO designed to subvert reality by offering competing and contradictory narratives in order to sow confusion and distrust.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    Last I checked, Embraers don't have operable windows Boeings on the other hand...
- duxup 2y ago
  Shooting down an commercial airliner seems far riskier / just more complicated / hassle compared to "typical" assassination efforts. It's not as if Russian leadership is afraid to do that.
  - gpderetta 2y ago
    Prigozhin. Well it was general aviation (another Embraer Jet, coincidentally) as opposed to commercial, but close enough. Still the most likely explanation is human error. There have been so many shoot downs of airlines across the world in the recent past that it is not surprising any more.
    - philistine 2y ago
      Prigozhin was about sending a message, and using a method of assassination that ultimately Prigozhin himself could not use. Only Putin can kill you with a missile strike.
- victorbjorklund 2y ago

red-iron-pine 2y ago

This is Russia, so assuming malice or incompetence is redundant. But in all likelihood it was a mistake; if they were serious about killing it they'd have shot more missiles, and they're not in a position to be wasting AAMs on non-military targets.

lostlogin 2y ago
> they're not in a position to be wasting AAMs on non-military targets. And yet they keep doing it. Accident does seen most likely though.

avaika 2y ago

> he was under orders to shoot the plane down and now they’re trying to cover it up I highly doubt that's the case. Even though Russia went full evil mode a while ago, it's not that reckless (yet). I don't foresee any sane explanation for this kind of order. I believe a mistake and/or miscommunication is more likely to be the root cause. Sadly it'd be quite naive to expect a thorough publicly available investigation summary from Russian side. You are right here.

tucnak 2y ago
> I don't foresee any sane explanation for this kind of order. The "malice/incompetence" heuristic is really a statement about prior probability more than anything. Even though it may seem as "cautious," or avoiding uncertainty, not updating your priors is doing exactly the opposite! You _should_ assume malice as long as russia is concerned, and it's otherwise up to them to prove incompetence. However, like you would probably guess, it's in their best interest to introduce as much uncertainty as possible. On a different note, there's interesting discourse in iterated prisoner's dilemma regarding _noise_, or communication error. It recognises that any "real" systems is imperfect, and therefore will introduce error. I wonder if they ever recognised that there's advantage to deliberately introducing noise, and falsely attributing it to the system itself!

1oooqooq 2y ago

you're assuming this really was Russian, but mossad captured several Russian bases/arms depos last weeks.

rfrey 2y ago
Why would they bother with that, when they have a perfectly usable constellation of space lasers?
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  to get the usa to bomb iran for them. you know, the usual.

mjg59 2y ago

It sounds like they'd made multiple attempts to land at Grozny and failed due to poor weather, were asking to divert back to Baku, and due to GPS interference were asking for vectors rather than being able to navigate to waypoints on their own. They may well not have been anywhere their flight plan would have indicated.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tomohawk 2y ago
After they were shot at, they were not allowed by Russian authorities to land in Grozny or any of the other nearby Russian airports, but were told to divert across the Caspian Sea to another country. During the crossing, they were subjected to GPS jamming by Russia, and damage from the missile caused them to lose most controls. The heroic efforts of the pilots got them almost to the airport, but at least some people survived.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  > they were not allowed by Russian authorities to land in Grozny or any of the other nearby Russian airports They were not denied landing. It was not possible to land. The weather excluded visual approach, there was no ILS and landing with GPS wasn’t possible due to jamming, which started because of the drone attack. There’s fair share of responsibility on Russian air defense which has not ensured safety of civilian aircraft, but that flight should not have happened in the first place, so that’s on Russian government which did not close the airspace in advance and on the airline which decided to continue flights despite that it has already been known that air defense us working in the area.
numpad0 2y ago
Total speculation but spurious reports of "Ukrainian drone attack" sounds suspicious. Would it possible that the "attack" was just the involved airliner wandering out of a designated safe area and flying into SAM coverage, by chance?

victorbjorklund 2y ago

for sure a mistake just due to the fact that most of russia is incompetent and corrupt. Makes no sense why russia would shoot down a plane filled with russian citizens flying to a russian airport. Just a fuck up due to russians being incompetent.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
loud assasination with collateral damage to send a message
- lostlogin 2y ago
  It would be interesting to know who was in the plane. Russia has assassinated this way before with Yevgeny Prigozhin. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  The most salient example of that actually happening was with Prigozhin. Still not a full civilian airliner. Collateral damage was limited. If you really want to hate Russia for this, just remember that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
  - concerndc1tizen 2y ago
    I would say the most salient example is MH370. The more you read about it, the more you become in disbelief. If it was an operation, it is one of the most advanced ones that I've ever read about. They knew exactly how to deactivate beacons, avoid military radar, there was a power and communications outage (computer interference?), the airplane kept flying for another 7 hours (without detection!), there was no distress call, ... and so on, which cumulatively is extremely unlikely to occur by chance, and would speak to extremely knowledgeable and capable agents. The bodies were never found, so it is possible that the passengers were offloaded. Imagine going to those lengths just to capture one person, or a group? The only other time I've seen that level of coordination was with Edward Snowden.

ibejoeb 2y ago

According to the latest reporting, the actual flight deviated from the advance flight plan by hundreds of miles. I don't know the regs in that region, but I suspect that IFR flight plans must declare an alternate, and it's unclear if it was Makhachkala and, if so, why they crossed the sea instead. That seems to have been the real problem. Russia was not anticipating airline traffic there. Sounds like there has been fairly active drone activity in that area. update: Another comment suggested a plausible different order of events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521882

sfilmeyer 2y ago
>That seems to have been the real problem The real problem here is starting a war. In a more peaceful context, even being hundreds of miles off from your flight plan wouldn't have resulted in this plane getting shot down. I get what you're saying, though. It sounds unlikely that shooting this plane down was done because anyone specifically wanted to shoot down this particular civilian plane.
michaelcampbell 2y ago
> Russia was not anticipating airline traffic there So there was no flight plan, or the Russians didn't read it?

dilyevsky 2y ago

Suspecting it's because of active EW jamming of GPS bc the airport was under drone attack. They probably don't have flight plans live feed at individual SAM crew level and confirm via ADSB feed instead which was way off here. So once it descended bellow certain FL it was misidentified as drone by the local Pantsir crew

perlpimp 2y ago
most sensible explanation

timka 2y ago

Well, it's the WSJ. In fact, we do not yet have the final official conclusion of the commission with the participation of Russia and Azerbaijan, which is working on this case. Let's wait and refrain from empty speculation in an already tense international situation.