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Alleged Satellite Photo Says Ukraine Shootdown of MH17
theshowmecanuck (703852) writes A group calling itself the Russian Union of Engineers has published a photograph, picked up by many news organizations (just picked one, Google it yourself to find more), claiming to show that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter plane. The interesting thing is the very quick ad hoc crowd sourced debunking of the photograph using tools from Google maps, online photos/data, to their own domain knowledge backed up with the previous information. It would be interesting to understand who the "Russian Union of Engineers" are and why they in particular were chosen to release this information.
It's a laughably bad fake ... but speaks volumes about the lack of math or science training amongst reporters to propagate this stuff.
Why would they bother with the missile if they had disabled the flight deck?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Look, it's Russian propaganda. We know that it is fake, they know that we know that it is fake.
That still doesn't prevent them from using it internally to motivate a military operation in Ukraine.
The military operation will probably be over before people have stopped arguing about the photograph.
It's not for 'lack of training' that they propagate this stuff. The boss wants it on the front page. Makes for a good whodunit.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It does, though not much. Most forget that before this incident, most of the Europe was very much on the fence about who was more aggressive in the conflict.
Downing of a plane with a lot of Dutch on board triggered a heavy anti-Russian sentiment in a lot of European countries. It was literally a turning point in propaganda warfare.
But to be fair, even if we found out today that it was Ukrainians who did it, the damage has already been largely done. EU has taken the path it took, and a ship this big doesn't turn fast. Too many bridges burned on both sides, too many insults traded. It will probably take at least a decade to fix relations to pre-downing levels even if we find out that Ukraine was the one that shot down the plane.
And let's face it, even if they did, we won't be told for aforementioned "face saving" reasons. Union is already on a very shaky ground with GB almost splitting off, Juncker drowning in tax avoidance allegations, Hungary taking openly conservative anti-EU stance within EU and the obvious elephant in the room, Eurocrisis. Greece is due for the next "shaving of the debt" soon enough, which is bound to create even more internal tensions. External enemy makes it much easier for politicians to rally their people, and Russia played the proverbial bad guy role like champ by ramping up its aerial penetration testing across Europe.
The most common (cheapest) ground based heat seeker missiles in use today detonate prior to impact and throw shrapnel (multiple, small, high velocity projectiles) into the target to obtain the widest kill radius. It's like the difference between buckshot and a slug. And yes there are missiles of all sorts where the warhead stays intact until impact but they are usually more high end (expensive) and need the guidance systems intact as long as possible to make sure it goes through the right window or down the correct air shaft when launched from several miles away.
Not to mention it's "attacking" from the wrong side since most of the projectile damage is on the port side of the plane, and missile smoke trails start BEHIND the firing aircraft not directly under the wing - especially if the aircraft is moving (and a MiG-29 would have to be moving at a fair clip to avoid stalling at 10km). The engine on the missile is what provides its increased speed over the aircraft they are launched from. So necessarily the engine has to run for a few fractions of a second (and produce smoke) before the missile can catch up to the aircraft it was released from (drag starts to slow it down immediately on release) and then overtake it and move forwards. So you'd expect a long trail from the missile behind the MiG. This missile is represented as already being several plane lengths in front of the MiG which necessitates that its engine has been running a while - certainly long enough for the MiG to have overtaken the original smoke column.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
> modern aircraft stay airborne for a long time even without any active controls because of fly-by-wire
Perhaps, but they don't stay airborne at all when the front of the aircraft is missing. And since the controls are on or around the flight deck, losing that would take the FBW offline anyway.
> The goal was apparently to silence the crew and prevent calls for help
Pffft. Nothing silences a crew like blowing them up with a missile. Just ask KAL 007.
> They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume
No it doesn't. The booster is very smoky but the upper stage is pretty clean firing. Here's what a missile actually looks like:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F-105_dodging_SA-2_over_Vietnam.jpg
Note that even though the engine is still firing in this case, there is no visible trail. That's not always the case, but just like any aircraft, the trail is caused mostly by physical effects on the atmosphere and thus highly dependant on the state of the weather.
> does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile
Oh come on. Next time you're walking around, see how many people are looking up at planes. And how many of them are taking pictures?
> Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation
Sure, if you know nothing about aircraft, missiles, photography and are prone to believing conspiracy theories.
> What we do know is that the plane was downed with multiple, small, high velocity projectiles
Yes, it's called "shrapnel".
> even entertain the possibility that this was cannon fire
Because cannon fire has a minimum size of the puncture it can make, the size of the shell. The resulting marks on the aircraft will be a circle of that size, given a nice face-on strike, or elongations if the angle was more glancing. It can get much larger if the metal tears.
Now look at the image. There are many, many holes in the aircraft that are much smaller than a cannon shell. In fact, there are quite a few that are exactly the size of a piece of shrapnel.
So that's why "west no one seems to want to even entertain" the idea, it's clearly false.
Their other point on the other hand sounded much more reasonable. They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume and persistent smoke trail as it goes through its trajectory, and there were apparently no confirmed instances of footage of this in relation to the plane. Considering just how obviously exceptional it would look in the sky and how many photos there are of pretty much anything weird happening in the warring region, it does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile. It should be visible for tens of kilometers in all directions.
Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation.
Pro russian/rusian forces used BUKs to shot down three other Ukrainian planes days before the MH17, got any pictures from those? No? see, not so weird.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
It doesn't matter that it's obviously fake. These images were all over Russian media to cause a flurry of indignant response in favor of the Russian military and political position. Tomorrow's papers and newscasts won't bother to dissect the glaring errors -- all that matters is that millions of people saw "proof" that it was the evil Ukrainians all along. Sadly, many will believe the smear campaign.
After all, 10 or 20 million people honestly believe that your president was actually born in Kenya, simply because someone made up a preposterous tale that they desperately wanted to believe.
Because the only thing they could do that would work is sending NATO troops into Ukraine, which would be mighty fucking risky. And not risky as in "we could lose a few thousand troops for no damn good reason and waste a $Trillion or three doing it," risky as in nuclear fucking war.
So they decided on sanctions. Apparently the sanctions are pretty effective, because there's no good economic news out of Russia.
Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation.
No, no it is not. This is a pretty blatant forgery - for a step-by-step walkthrough of what's obviously faked about it (including screenshots of the months-old Google Maps images and others that were used) please visit here.
Giving this any credence by saying the case "gets stranger" is like reading some 9/11 truther's article and saying that it makes the truth behind the attacks "more puzzling." It doesn't. It just shows that some people are either disconnected from the truth or (in this case) willing to actively fabricate things to obscure it.
"95% of all Slashdot
I'm not saying Russia is innocent or that Kiev is guilty....
Technically that's correct even if that's how you roll. The rest of your post pretty much ignores Russia and smears Ukraine.
I'm curious, how it is that given your hypersensitivity towards the US government and its actions that Russia doesn't merely get a pass from you, but you've been an apologist for its actions in Crimea? And Ukraine?
The whole situation in the Ukraine is a mess. Both sides (East and West) are being dishonest about everything. Who do you trust when everyone is a liar?
How about the people and countries not invading Ukraine with their armed forces (including tanks and artillery), or actively firing into it with artillery?
This isn't even close, and yet you seem befuddled by it? Really?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
> I'm curious, how it is that given your hypersensitivity towards the US government and its actions that Russia doesn't merely get a pass from you, but you've been an apologist for its actions in Crimea? And Ukraine?
Maybe because not everything is black and white? Maybe because asking intelligent, objective questions doesn't mean you are an "apologist"? Maybe because intelligent people usually know when they are being bullshitted, and when a conversation goes like "Well, that is an interesting perspective, but what about...APOLOGIST!! WHY DO YOU QUESTION THAT WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY RIGHT!!" this just serves to ring more alarm bells?
I cannot speak for the guy you are insidiously claiming is on "the wrong side of the debate" but that is how your comments come across to me.
I've watched the Russian original, and it's very weird. Their claim is that pilot first strafed the cockpit with guns which resulted in cockpit detaching from the aircraft, which they claim Dutch investigators have confirmed. The goal was apparently to silence the crew and prevent calls for help. Then the aircraft fired a heat seeker into the engines causing aircraft to spin out of control and crash.
Their other point on the other hand sounded much more reasonable. They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume and persistent smoke trail as it goes through its trajectory, and there were apparently no confirmed instances of footage of this in relation to the plane. Considering just how obviously exceptional it would look in the sky and how many photos there are of pretty much anything weird happening in the warring region, it does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile. It should be visible for tens of kilometers in all directions.
Overall, the case is getting stranger with every revelation.
Why would they bother with the missile if they had disabled the flight deck?
Because this is is an really strange story that does not make sense on any level. I would have expected better fiction, even from a conspiracy theorist. The fighter in that picture looks like a MiG-29 or a Su-27 to me. The UkAF has both of these fighters and they can fire BVR missiles. BVR missiles are big fat 3.5-4 meter long monsters with a massive range and a large warhead intented for air to air use for anything up to bomber and large transport sized aircraft. The main BVR missile variants used by the RuAF and the UkAF are the R-27 (Nato code: AA-10) and the newer R-77 (Nato code: AA-12). The range of the AA-10 and AA-12 BVR missiles is something like 80-110 kilometers. I'm not sure if the Ukrainians have any AA-12s but they definitely have the older AA-10 whose seekers they have extensively upgraded to the point where they are still able to sell the AA-10 abroad for use on modernized MiG-29s and SU-27/30s with other air forces. So why the hell would a Ukrainian air force fighter have had to shut up the crew of MH17 with gunfire before downing the airliner with a WVR missile (presumably an AA-11, 7kg fragmenting warhead) when they could have picked MH17 off with a more powerful AA-10 radar guided missile (which has a 39 kg fragmenting warhead) that more closely mimics a BUK? I'm pretty sure that even if a UkAF fighter had fired a BVR missile from a 60 degree cone behind MH17 to make sure the crew did not see it coming (a more realistic scenario), they could still have fired it from about 25 km away and that missile would have come like a bat out of hell for the crew of MH17. They wouldn't have known what hit them, i.e. no need for gunfire and with a 39 kg warhead... you can imagine the rest.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow