OT: Another 295...

[KenchiSulla]

Was it a SAM

295, Including several from my country, died because people will never learn. Fuck every single man or woman who attacks the innocent. Idiots...

[CowboyRonin]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

Was it a SAM

295, Including several from my country, died because people will never learn. Fuck every single man or woman who attacks the innocent. Idiots...

SAM is the current story.

I think your last comment may be the most cogent. This certainly feels to me more like an act of stupidity than terrorism. Neither side has anything to gain by shooting down an airliner. However, there are likely a lot if SAM batteries in the area, and it just takes one idiot with launch authority to decide that a track is a hostile air transport, rather than an airliner, to cause a tragedy like this.

[Terminus]

Terrible case of mistaken identity. A couple of Ukrainian air force transports have been shot down like this recently, and some SAM commander saw this radar track and thought he was looking at another one.

KAL 007, anyone?

[Erkki]

BBC newsfeed:

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

[Terminus]

There's one thing which is absolutely certain right now. Nobody knows ANYTHING that they're telling the news media, and said news media are speculating until their ears droop.

But yeah, an SA-11 would definitely do it.

[Terminus]

But if it were so, how did these seperatist militiamen fire this missile? It's not exactly an AK.

[KenchiSulla]

As it is a warzone: I expect the truth to die together with the innocent...

[CowboyRonin]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

But if it were so, how did these seperatist militiamen fire this missile? It's not exactly an AK.

Which is why I think it is more likely that it was a a "mistaken identity" shoot than a militia shoot. Now, it's not impossible that some technically competent folks have defected to the separatists, especially since the pre-breakup folks would have been trained in Russia. However, that involves more assumptions, and I also don't see what they get by shooting down an airliner. If they really did it, they would have added significant support to Ukraine and the rest of the world would name them criminals and terrorists. Russia would have to distance themselves publicly, or face even more sanctions.

[Terminus]

It was also mistaken identity if it were one of the separatist militias. Nobody has any interest in doing this.

[Erkki]

Apparently one of the separatist leaders, Igor Strelkov, had tweeted something like "we told you to not enter out airspace" only minutes after the disappearance of the flight. That tweet is, unsurprisingly, now gone:

Also see https://twitter.com/StateOfUkraine/stat ... 80/photo/1

[Terminus]

When it's celebrities and companies who don't understand how Twitter works, it's amusing. This has a somewhat different flavour.

[Erkki]

And comments like these...

Lazy Glossophiliac @Glossophiliac75 · 3 t
@Rulamark @StateOfUkraine It might have been led into the war zone by a CIA op and then shot there by Ukrs. Cui bono points to that.

Lazy Glossophiliac @Glossophiliac75 · 3 t
@Rulamark @StateOfUkraine Donbass air space has been closed to civ aircraft for a while.

From Moscow with conspiracies. I wonder if she/he can make a living with that.

[Erkki]

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

It was also mistaken identity if it were one of the separatist militias. Nobody has any interest in doing this.

How do you mistake an airliner cruising @ 30k for a potential military target? Vodka?

I am not so sure about this being an error.

[Terminus]

Oh, the shooting was deliberate, no doubt. They just thought they were shooting at a Ukrainian military airplane.

[Miller]

Everyone will blame everyone else. All down to Putin in the end (IMO).

[LoBaron]

You could of course be right, bit I am still unconvinced the target selection was not deliberate.

None of the military transports were cruising @30k over the Donezk area. No plane with a military purpose in that area does. If they did not notice anything fishy about the target they were real morons.

[Terminus]

Yes, the target selection was deliberate. AGAIN. It was a blip on a screen, looked at by a bunch of armed civilians.

It's happened before, many times. Remember the Vincennes? Or, as I stated earlier, KAL 007.

[JeffroK]

Who is the silly bugger routing Airliners over a combat zone???

[KenchiSulla]

Press conference just held in the Netherlands. 45 nationality not yet established. At least 154 from the Netherlands, about two dozen from Malaysia and a mix of other European, North American and Asian countries