3 ms·

It's true that there were a ton of civilian planes there, but it's not necessarily true that it means the SA-11 set was continuously turned on and tracking civi

by mpyne 12y ago

It's true that there were a ton of civilian planes there, but it's not necessarily true that it means the SA-11 set was continuously turned on and tracking civilian flights (as that's a great way to get a HARM missile up your ass), which means that its operators might not have known about the traffic pattern. Furthermore, double-checking civilian traffic corridors is something you'd expect a professional military to do, but the rebels/separatists are not necessarily professional military. This is admittedly a harder sell, since the SA-11 definitely needs a trained operator and Russia's GRU is known to be leading much of the action on the rebels' side in Donetsk. But it's at least possible to train a rebel operator to do nothing else but operate an SA-11 without also training them extensively in the doctrine of when and why you'd actually use one. This leaves the question of why they decided to turn on the SAM set at the time they did and shoot down the plane they did... but that can be explained by the rebels thinking that there would be a military resupply flight coming in over the area at a certain time, they turn on the set and "oh look at that, an airplane just where we expected it to be". This "proof" would be horrific to any professional anti-air unit, but again you can see how the theory that a bunch of barely-trained "rebels" that happened to acquire an advanced Russian SAM can't be completely disproven either. I'm certainly no Russia apologist, and even if the "rebels legitimately screwed up and didn't mean to shoot down a civilian airliner" theory is true, that doesn't really reduce the blame for Russia. After all, if we're assuming the rebels in Donetsk are really rebels and not simply disguised Russian military or GRU units with token Ukrainian participants, then Russia providing these "rebels" a SA-11 set could only have led to something like this happening eventually, the only surprise is that it happened so quickly after Russia provided the SA-11 set. But I find it hard to believe that even Russia would deliberately target a civilian airliner, or knowingly allow whoever these separatists are to do the same. An inadvertent shoot down of a perceived military flight seems the most likely scenario, it just doesn't turn off the blame for Russia like people might think.

acqq 12y ago
The construct "military resupply targeted" still doesn't add up, the plane was flying on 33000 ft(1) (which is the cruising altitude, obviously not even intending to land) and no plane cruising at the high altitude is delivering anything to the region the rebels would be interested to protect. And it's one of the many civilian planes also cruising at that time and using that common route (2). Compare that with the Afghanistan war where the Russian delivery planes were shot while taking off or landing, which is many orders of magnitude simpler to do and only cheap and simple hand-held rockets are enough. (3) And another construct "rebels intentionally shooting the cruising civilian plane" is also unreasonable as it can clearly only harm the rebels. The only ones having a clear motive to shoot that plane that way are actually Ukrainians. ------------------- 1) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/19/mh17-changing-course-storms-pilot http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/19/mh17-changing-c... "MH17 had initially filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft above Ukrainian territory. On entering Ukrainian airspace, however, the plane's pilots were instructed to fly at 33,000ft by the local air traffic control" 2) same link "MH17's flight path was a busy major airway, like a highway in the sky." 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger#Soviet_War_in_Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger#Soviet_War_in_Af... (There are pictures too)
- jqm 12y ago
  It's worth noting the Ukrainians and the Russians are not the only parties with vested interest in the conflict.
- mpyne 12y ago
  > The construct "military resupply targeted" still doesn't add up, the plane was flying on 33000 ft(1) (which is the cruising altitude, obviously not even intending to land) and no plane cruising at the high altitude is delivering anything to the region the rebels would be interested to protect. You're assuming that the operators of the SA-11 set were a) using the altimeter calculation tool as a standard practice, instead of simply acquiring targets, and b) that they were aware that an AN-24 could not cruise at the altitude of a Boeing 777 (which is the actual reason why 33,000 should throw a flag, as AN-24 isn't supposed to be able to operate there). After all, if I was Ukraine and my military cargo planes were being shot down, I'd fly them at maximum altitude during the transit across the most dangerous area, so the rebels/separatists might honestly have felt that a target at FL330 could be a Ukrainian cargo plane pre-emptively taking evasive action to the extreme limit of that cargo planes capacity. But the objection that a cargo plane wouldn't fly at high altitude even to land at a nearby Ukrainian base doesn't add up, as the plane could certainly overfly its eventual destination (at high altitude) to get to safer airspace and only then turn around and start its descent over safe territory. > The only ones having a clear motive to shoot that plane that way are actually Ukrainians. Given the number of cargo planes already shot down, there's evidently a perfectly clear motive for shooting down more, especially when you're already assuming that you know the operating schedule for the next cargo flight (and the separatists might very well known this, if they are under operational control of Russia' GRU). And either way, there were tons of celebratory Twitter and Facebook posts by the rebels/separatists claiming that they shot down... a Ukrainian military cargo flight, posts which were subsequently deleted when the truth became clear. The "rebels shot the airliner down... perhaps by mistake" theory isn't just some vague NATO supposition, it's the thing that actually makes sense given the evidence available. There's tons of evidence that the rebels shot MH17 down, even ignoring Ukraine and NATO's intelligence contributions, as the rebels themselves admitted it by mistake. The question is how the rebels came to the decision to do this, not whether they did it or not. > MH17 had initially filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft above Ukrainian territory. On entering Ukrainian airspace, however, the plane's pilots were instructed to fly at 33,000ft by the local air traffic control" The SA-11 can target aircraft far in excess of 35,000 feet. Remember, it was designed to fight the best American aircraft Cold War money could buy. Changing the altitude for MH17 by such a small amount wouldn't have mattered one bit to the SA-11 set. > OMG STINGERS As the nice Wikipedia article you linked makes clear, Stinger missiles can't make it to 33,000 feet. AFAIK, no MANPAD in the world can do this. 33,000 feet is a perfectly safe altitude for civilian air traffic with regard to military shenanigans going on below, as long as having advanced SAM batteries pointed in your direction by amateur militaries is not in the possible threat model... After all, civilian air traffic has overflown Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 and 2001 respectively, even with long-running insurgencies in both nations. Where's the outrage about that? The reason Ukraine is different is because a certain large actor on the geopolitical scene has gone out of their way to make it different.

by mpyne 12y ago

acqq 12y ago

The construct "military resupply targeted" still doesn't add up, the plane was flying on 33000 ft(1) (which is the cruising altitude, obviously not even intending to land) and no plane cruising at the high altitude is delivering anything to the region the rebels would be interested to protect. And it's one of the many civilian planes also cruising at that time and using that common route (2). Compare that with the Afghanistan war where the Russian delivery planes were shot while taking off or landing, which is many orders of magnitude simpler to do and only cheap and simple hand-held rockets are enough. (3) And another construct "rebels intentionally shooting the cruising civilian plane" is also unreasonable as it can clearly only harm the rebels. The only ones having a clear motive to shoot that plane that way are actually Ukrainians. ------------------- 1) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/19/mh17-changing-course-storms-pilot http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/19/mh17-changing-c... "MH17 had initially filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft above Ukrainian territory. On entering Ukrainian airspace, however, the plane's pilots were instructed to fly at 33,000ft by the local air traffic control" 2) same link "MH17's flight path was a busy major airway, like a highway in the sky." 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger#Soviet_War_in_Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger#Soviet_War_in_Af... (There are pictures too)

jqm 12y ago
It's worth noting the Ukrainians and the Russians are not the only parties with vested interest in the conflict.
mpyne 12y ago
> The construct "military resupply targeted" still doesn't add up, the plane was flying on 33000 ft(1) (which is the cruising altitude, obviously not even intending to land) and no plane cruising at the high altitude is delivering anything to the region the rebels would be interested to protect. You're assuming that the operators of the SA-11 set were a) using the altimeter calculation tool as a standard practice, instead of simply acquiring targets, and b) that they were aware that an AN-24 could not cruise at the altitude of a Boeing 777 (which is the actual reason why 33,000 should throw a flag, as AN-24 isn't supposed to be able to operate there). After all, if I was Ukraine and my military cargo planes were being shot down, I'd fly them at maximum altitude during the transit across the most dangerous area, so the rebels/separatists might honestly have felt that a target at FL330 could be a Ukrainian cargo plane pre-emptively taking evasive action to the extreme limit of that cargo planes capacity. But the objection that a cargo plane wouldn't fly at high altitude even to land at a nearby Ukrainian base doesn't add up, as the plane could certainly overfly its eventual destination (at high altitude) to get to safer airspace and only then turn around and start its descent over safe territory. > The only ones having a clear motive to shoot that plane that way are actually Ukrainians. Given the number of cargo planes already shot down, there's evidently a perfectly clear motive for shooting down more, especially when you're already assuming that you know the operating schedule for the next cargo flight (and the separatists might very well known this, if they are under operational control of Russia' GRU). And either way, there were tons of celebratory Twitter and Facebook posts by the rebels/separatists claiming that they shot down... a Ukrainian military cargo flight, posts which were subsequently deleted when the truth became clear. The "rebels shot the airliner down... perhaps by mistake" theory isn't just some vague NATO supposition, it's the thing that actually makes sense given the evidence available. There's tons of evidence that the rebels shot MH17 down, even ignoring Ukraine and NATO's intelligence contributions, as the rebels themselves admitted it by mistake. The question is how the rebels came to the decision to do this, not whether they did it or not. > MH17 had initially filed a flight plan requesting to fly at 35,000ft above Ukrainian territory. On entering Ukrainian airspace, however, the plane's pilots were instructed to fly at 33,000ft by the local air traffic control" The SA-11 can target aircraft far in excess of 35,000 feet. Remember, it was designed to fight the best American aircraft Cold War money could buy. Changing the altitude for MH17 by such a small amount wouldn't have mattered one bit to the SA-11 set. > OMG STINGERS As the nice Wikipedia article you linked makes clear, Stinger missiles can't make it to 33,000 feet. AFAIK, no MANPAD in the world can do this. 33,000 feet is a perfectly safe altitude for civilian air traffic with regard to military shenanigans going on below, as long as having advanced SAM batteries pointed in your direction by amateur militaries is not in the possible threat model... After all, civilian air traffic has overflown Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 and 2001 respectively, even with long-running insurgencies in both nations. Where's the outrage about that? The reason Ukraine is different is because a certain large actor on the geopolitical scene has gone out of their way to make it different.