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UK and US Suspect That ISIS Bomb Took Down Flight 9268 (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes with a report from CNN that U.S. and UK intelligence agencies believe it is more likely than not that the destruction on October 31st of a Russian A321 jetliner in Sinai "was most likely caused by a bomb on the plane planted by ISIS or an affiliate of the group." Kogalymavia Flight 9268 fell apart in flight, killing all aboard. From CNN's article:
The British government announced Wednesday that it had "become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device." A formal conclusion has not been reached by the intelligence communities of either country. An UK aviation team is travelling to inspect the Sharm airport to look at whether there were proper security measures at the airport and the various scenarios by which an explosive device could have made it to the Russian airliner "including a person or in cargo," according to the British transport minister.
Both Russian and Egyptian officials discount the claim, but detecting bombs is hard.
Not after the fact. If there was an explosion inside the cabin or luggage compartment, there will be internal paneling, structural members, etc., blackened and bent and peppered with explosive ejecta littering the deserts of the Sinai. That debris will look radically different from a structural failure due to metal fatigue, composite fairlures, bad repairs, etc., and will be in the wrong place to be the result of a fuel tank explosion. (And, an internal bomb will bend things out, while a missile strike will bend things in.) Making this determination in a case like this (where all of the debris should be easy to find) should be a straightforward case of air crash forensics.
6 Vostok (0 fatalities) [0%]
2 Voskhod (0 fatalities) [0%]
127 Soyuz (4 fatalities - 2 missions) [1.575%]
135 missions - 2 incidents [1.481%]
6 Mercury (0 fatalities) [0%]
10 Gemini (0 fatalities) [0%]
11 Apollo (0 fatalities) [0%]
135 Shuttle (14 fatalities - 2 missions) [1.481%]
162 missions - 2 incidents [1.235%]
Apollo 1 falls under the test/training mission and was never a flight.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Actually China is only top for cheaper goods (i.e. t-shirts, small electronics, plastic toys) whereas the US still reigns supreme when it comes to manufacturing capital goods (i.e. earth movers, jumbo jets, high density silicon devices.)