New Malaysian airlines crash

icerat said:
Commercial flights are now avoiding the area. Given 3 planes shot down in the area the week before, this should have already happened :(
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This really needs to be emphasized. Given the recent military activity, it is insane that commercial jets were flying over this region. Bad weather routinely prompts a change in flight path, but a civil war where planes are being shot down doesn't?
 
LTC8K6 said:
Well, we can take photos from the ground, of planes at 10KM, with civilian cameras, and they are clearly identifiable. So, I'm not sure why the military couldn't identify a 777.

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/0/8/3/2443380.jpg

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/0/4/4/2446440.jpg

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/4/6/1/2452164.jpg
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I was in an air defence missile battery. We spent a long time studying silhouettes but under time pressure it's not always easy to be sure. You're often reliant on things like direction, altitude, intel about attacks on forces and the friendlies letting you know about aircraft operations. And that was only on exercise. In a real situation some nationalist with a grudge and a weapon system is going to find it easy to make a mistake.
 
Polaris said:
Flying along and suddenly the airplane you're in is torn apart. The lucky ones die instantly while the rest plummet 33,000 feet into the ground.

What a horrible way to die.
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I imagine at 33,000 feet you become anoxic and lose consciousness fairly quickly.
 
Checkmite said:
I imagine at 33,000 feet you become anoxic and lose consciousness fairly quickly.
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Not quickly enough. Time of useful consciousness is over 1 minute at 33K feet. That can be diminished by 50% for a rapid decompression (as this certainly was), but you'll get more oxygen as you fall. So I suspect that those who weren't knocked unconscious by the blast and subsequent buffeting were conscious all the way down. That being said, even those who were conscious were probably completely disoriented and had little understanding of their peril.
 
So the fact that this was a Malaysian Airlines jet is (horribly) coincidental?

This feels like AA 587 (plane went down in Queens just two months after 9/11, but unrelated to terrorism).
 
icerat said:
He also says it was an AN-26 they'd shot down.

It wasn't :(
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Maybe his gunners told him that. A terrible mistake?

Well regardless, the rebels now know that essentially anything flying overhead is going to be their enemy with the commercial and civilian flights now going around them instead of over them.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I would think that a decent pair of binocs or a decent spotting scope should allow easy ID of a 777.
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These guys...the Surface-to-Air-Battery Guys typically fire from well beyond visual range. Typically, an SA-17 (and this sounds like an SA-17) has a max missile range of 45 Km and a radar range of about 85 Km.
 
icerat said:
From Reuter, separatists claim Ukrainian forces shot it down.
As they would. US satellite monitoring should be able see any missile that can go to 10000m

BBC talking head expert says the rebels have the equipment to shoot one down - but probably not the equipment to identify what the plane was before shooting. :(
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Man, all I can say at this point is that.... this is depressing. Almost 300 people dead just in one shot, due to human stupidity :( . I wonder if humanity will ever grow up to adulthood.
 
Here's an image of the basic system from Wiki:

picture.php


Left-to-right: Command vehicle, TEL (transporter, erector, launcher), support vehicle with missile spares.

A typical regular military unit will have multiple TELs and support vehicles per site. The missile pod on the TEL is erected before firing.
 
William Parcher said:
Maybe his gunners told him that. A terrible mistake?

Well regardless, the rebels now know that essentially anything flying overhead is going to be their enemy with the commercial and civilian flights now going around them instead of over them.
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"Unrestricted Surface-to-Air Warfare".
 
Jules Galen said:
These guys...the Surface-to-Air-Battery Guys typically fire from well beyond visual range. Typically, an SA-17 (and this sounds like an SA-17) has a max missile range of 45 Km and a radar range of about 85 Km.
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So why haven't they shot down a civilian airliner before if they are not making visual ID's? What has been preventing it? The air corridor above them has remained busy.

What made them decide that 9M-MRD was a military plane?

From what I can gather, the launcher was in the same area, not far away.
 
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