Extraordinarily unlikely, at least from top officialdom. They may not give a rat’s ass about world opinion but why antagonize those who have nothing to do with the conflict.
That does not exclude someone down the chain loudly wondering what if something made it clear that outsiders should avoid Ukrainian airspace altogether would it not facilitate decreeing a NFZ against the Kiev forces.
Why? How could Russia possibly benefit?
Oh, I don’t believe it, or even want to believe such a thing, but when it comes to matters of war and motives of such, who knows what those fuckheads are doing.
Also, I’m not implying that Russia knew that specific plane was civilian. It could’ve been a mistake from the top down.
Here’s part of the transcript from the intercepted phone call between the militia and Kozitsyn:
The comment about carrying spies seems suspiciously disingenuous. :dubious:
Shooting down a passenger plane, or even a specific passenger plane. None.
Creating conditions where The Ukraine is a no fly zone, yes that has validity and its what the Ukraine should have done, if they cant control their airspace.
The only possible reason that makes sense, is that the Russians believed that airliner, was in fact a foreign elint jet, mimicing the flight path and broadcasting an MA transponder. That or said Elint plane was in the shadow of the MA 777 , which may have explained why Russia wanted the Blackbox so fast, but not why they ordered the SA-11 turned over to Russian control for destruction.
Declan
From the beginning of this there have been reports of Russian Special Forces posing as rebels. There are reports of military hardware including tanks being sent across the border. The recordings coming out (if real) show the rebels in direct contact with handlers in Russian intelligence. In my mind it’s pretty clear the entire rebellion is being orchestrated by Putin. I don’t think for a moment that they deliberately shot down a neutral airliner on purpose. But in the last week they ramped up their anti-aircraft campaign which reportedly included a direct air to air attack from the Russian air force. Now you can chose to believe Putin over the U.S. or the Ukrainian government. But I wouldn’t trust Putin to tell me water is wet.
(Emphasis added.) Curiouser and curiouser. Tends to suggest that the separatists would have retained the ability to discriminate between civilian airliners and other craft – that is, not operated with the launcher only without the target acquisition radar (see JoseB post) – if for no other reason than to avoid shooting down airliners of their [del]sponsor[/del] good neighbor Russia.
Or they just “lucked out” that it wasn’t Aeroflot. I think that’s more likely…they basically failed to consider the likelihood that the plane was anything BUT a Ukrainian military jet of some sort.
Dumb move, but still what probably happened (pending unexpected future discoveries). “When you’re a hammer” and all that.
Oh okay, I see. Yeah, it’s possible that orders were given to attack what was believed to be a legitimate military target.
As much as I dislike Russia, I just can’t think of a situation where Russia would want to intentionally shoot down a known civilian airliner. There’d be everything to lose and nothing to gain from such an action.
OK, it seems that the Russian government has been caught doing a bit of “PR Warfare” by means of edits to the Wikipedia article on the MH17 flight.
Obviously Russia is neither the first nor the last country to do this, but being caught doing it … Well, it definitely looks crass.
Relevant links:
Its always about the money. :smack:
Oy vey, Russia… :smack:
Oh, come on. If you’re going to go the Evil Mastermind route, at least try to be intelligent about it.
I just found out that I have an indirect link to someone on the plane.
My wife is an elementary school teacher. The father of one of her pupils works for a Dutch company. This person’s boss was on the plane with his family, on the way to a vacation.
How smart is the antiair missile? Would it be possible to lock on one plane, then lose its target and lock on this one instead?
What appeasement? What do you hope Europe does?
Wow, these people are beyond contemptible and pathetic. Refusing to release the dead bodies? Trying to haul off pieces of the plane back to Russia? I guess it’s not surprising.
They’re fucking with the evidence, how stupid do they think the world is?
That depends
The way that sam system works, or should work, is that a regional radar will pick up the inbound contacts and cue the relevant area. They get told, usually by data link or voice , X amount of plane(s) approaching. Give them the altitude of the plane, the attitude and speed. That gets handed off to battlespace management, who would be in the big radar van, and prioritizes the contacts. They in turn notify the relevant SAM shooter, in this case the BUK.
The SA-11 uses a Sahr radar, which stands for semi active homing radar. Imagine your in a dark room with a flashlight, you light up the ceiling. Once the missile is launched, it will follow the beam of light up, till it gets close enough to the target basket, and its terminal radar takes over. Thats a tiny unit, thats used for final course correction, and once it gets close enough, it detonates the warhead and sprays shrapnel in a conical pattern.
So to answer your question, I guess it would depend on how close the unfortunate a/c would be to the original target, how much fuel the missile would have left, and how it was programed. Does it self destruct if it passes the target basket.
The area in question has both American, and Russian AWAC’s plus the normal radars that would keep track of civillian traffic. If there was more than one plane in the area, it would at least have been in Russia, and the rebels best interests, to hold that up to muddy the waters, and put the blame back on kiev and the international airlines.
Declan
Its all possible. Likely the missile was shot in a dumb mode, not the smartest mode that the missile is capable of…
Whatever mode it was in, with only the launching truck, they could only simply see a plane… they probably didn’t ID the plane by any system at all… they would have shot it down the same way.