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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.
More likely than not most likely!
I know Putin's not the "good guy" but in light of what ISIS is all about?
The fact that you're making this reach with no other input into the situation speaks more of you than it does of Putin.
Yeah, those Russians are so shitty at technology. That's why they've had almost every space "first" and are the only nation on earth still consistently capable of sending men into space (and with an almost spotless cosmonaut safety record for the last 40 years, unlike some other nations).
'Merica!! USA! USA! USA!!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Don't discount the possibility of an accident. Something very similar happened to China Airlines flight 611
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A tail section badly repaired after a minor accident came off in mid-air. The airplane spun out of control and disintegrated before crashing into the ground. That fits this accident very well.
Without conclusive evidence of a bomb, I would be very careful to scream terrorism. Terrorists claiming responsibility doesn't mean a thing without evidence.
Thank you for being so contemptuous of America.
.... /deleted rant.
It's true that the USSR/Russia have great mathematicians and engineers but its also true that many of their mass-produced items (including cars, tanks, planes, warships, and submarines) left a lot to be desired.
Your oversight of that point plus your gratuitous "'Merica!! USA! USA! USA!!" says a lot about you.
Namely - you think Americans are stupid and uneducated (probably also fat and lazy) and forget that each of these traits applies to other countries as well. You probably think Chinese are all thin, in shape. (Which means you haven't been to China lately.)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
So although the experts don't know what caused the crash, it seems that the British PM David Cameron does know, and it's ISIS.
In other news, Cameron wants British airstrikes on ISIS but can't get the support of parliament.
No matter how much I tell myself that correlation is not causation, this just looks like too much of a coincidence.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Justification for escalation. Full scale ground invasion, tactical nukes, who knows what he's planning?
If you'd think for a moment, that's exactly what they would do.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I would. I hate Putin, I think he's at least as evil as some of the worst leaders through history, but he's also not stupid.
Putin can get away with what he's doing becaus the Russian people support it. The Russians are however weak when it comes to standing firm when reality hits them in the face. Putin got away with what he did in Ukraine because he was able to keep the deaths of hundreds of Russian soldiers largely out of the press, and dismiss those who did tell their stories as full of shit.
He's able to get away with what he's doing in Syria because there are no boots on the ground and so hardly any risk to Russian soldiers. The chance of a shoot down at the altitude Russian sorties are being flown at is pretty negligible.
But if reality comes to bite Russians by way of a terrorist attack against them due to Putin's actions in Syria then that will be a massive blow to Putin's ability to keep up the tempo.
Russians are still raw from Afghanistan in the 80s, because whilst they were defeated largely as the Americans were in Vietnam, the defeat was felt much more greatly for the Russians because it was really the turning point at which the Soviet Union begin to see it's collapse, and that was followed by a decade (the 90s) of severe economic problems. They didn't just lose a war with Afghanistan, they lost their empire including both what little wealth they did have, and what influence in the world they had also.
The Russians want another Afganistan even less than the Americans want another Afghanistan or Iraq right now. When Russians, civilian or military, start coming home in body bags and Putin can't hide it, then Putin will come under immense pressure to reconsider his support for Assad and the Syrian regime. That's precisely why Putin and his regime are so desperate to declare this not a bomb.
But all this said, I'm not convinced it's ISIS either. If it was ISIS why now, why against Russia when British and American tourists could presumably have been just as easily targeted at the exact same airport all this time and ISIS hates the British and Americans as much as the Russians? Why on a plane so perfectly full of Russians bar the 3 Ukrainians on board? Why weren't ISIS able to say how they destroyed the plane if it was them, only claiming they shot it down, which has been dismissed as a possibility and the likely method was a bomb? I don't think any conspiracy theory involving the Americans or British is likely, it'd just be way too risky for them to get involved blowing up Russian civilians. I don't even think it's a play they'd want to make. If I had to guess I'd wager it's more likely to be anyone from Israel, to Qatar, to the Saudis - none of these countries particularly give a shit about Russia's feelings because Russia has sided with their arch enemies - Iran and Syria, and both don't want to see Assad propped up.
But who knows, I'm just guessing as much as the next guy there's a lot that's a little weird about this case though. The other possibility being of course that it simply isn't a bomb and the tail half of the plane genuinely just ripped away somehow, that too would explain why ISIS claim of blame doesn't really make any kind of sense, but then why are the British and Americans so certain of evidence of a bomb declaring they detected a heat flash and cancelling flights and so forth?
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.
Umm, you DO know, don't you, that the Russians lost two capsules full of men in ~120 flights, right?
And that the USA lost two shuttles full of men in 135 flights, right?
And that 2/135 is SMALLER than 2/120, right?
In other words, the failure rates of the Russian and American launches is just about the same (Sorry, the fact that American failures were on international TV (unlike the Russian), does NOT make American failures more common - just more visible to the ignorant....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's sad! The western media, with no personnel on the ground but with their respective government agendas to advance, report news with innuendos being taken as the truth by the consuming public.
No wonder none of them took their governments to task when Iraq was being bombed years ago.
Question: Who provides reliable truthful media reports in today?
Umm, you DO know, don't you, that the Russians lost two capsules full of men in ~120 flights, right?
Umm, you DO know what 40 years is, don't you?
Who cares how many years it spans - it's the number of flights that matters. If they sit there for six months NOT flying, then having zero flight deaths during those six months isn't exactly a point of pride. Deaths per astronaut flight is a lot more meaningful, statistically, and as a measure of competence. Regardless, we're splitting hairs. The point is that nothing about their survived hours in flight paints a picture of the Russians being wildly more successful in that regard. They do, though, have an administration that's actually keeping their people in the business of putting people in space - though they're doing a fair bit of that with other people's money.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Are these the same intelligence agencies that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Trillions of dollars and millions of deaths later, I am not so fast to accept this convenient accusation.
Quick, everyone! Let's invade... *spins a globe* Zimbabwe!
Because not all Muslims are violent terrorists? And not all Muslims wear traditional dress believe it or not.
The Master Of Muppets,
CAPTAIN: TAKE OFF EVERY "SIG"!!
Maybe, but there's similarly a risk for the US and UK in this case. If they insist it's a bomb it harms Egyptian tourism which is a major source of income for them, and they're already facing a fairly strong degree of risk in isolating Egypt. As soon as the Americans distanced themselves from Sisi when he seized power by stalling the further AH-64 Apache sales, he went wandering straight over to Russia. The last thing they want is to push Egypt into the arms of Russia when Syria, Iraq, and Iran have already moved that way. It would give Putin an axis of control right from Africa to Asia, and would provider further access to everything from the Med to the Indian Ocean to the Caspian and give Putin influence over the Suez.
Couple this with the fact that Putin wants nothing more than to put egg in the face of America and Britain and if his (and even 3rd party such as the involved French) investigators come out and say there was no bomb, then the British and American governments are only going to end up hurting that particular cause and face even more complaints of crying wolf than they already do.
I know the British and Americans are keen on their fear mongering to push anti-terrorism legislation, but I'm not convinced it's a meme that holds every single time such a thing happens. There's way too much for them to risk losing in being wrong in this particular case, it's not something where it's a domestic incident and the results have no impact outside their borders. The result of being wrong in this particular case has geopolitical consequences and that makes it a much more awkward game to play.
Wow, way to paint with a broad brush.
You know that Egypt's largest industry as % of GDP over the past 20 years has been tourism, right? And that millions of people visit every year wearing Western garb with absolutely no problem. Jordan,Turkey, Albania, Morocco, Malaysia, and until recently Syria and Iraq (before the West destabilized them and allowed fundamentalists to take over) are all places where wearing Western garb would be just fine.
In fact, walking through any major city in the US in Western garb, you are far more likely to be killed violently than you would be in many predominantly Muslim countries.
There could be many explanations. They could have a agent at the airport who only has access to Russian flights - or some other explanation that fits in the "opportunist" category. They could be more worried about Russian involvement since the regime was about to fall until the Russians stepped in, or some other simple explanation that fits into the "motivation to attack the Russians" category. They might fear a physical on-the-ground American presence as the result of an act of terror, whereas with the Russians this has already happened. That could fall in the "strategy" category. Who knows? But it is at least plausible.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
To be "that guy" it is a widely held belief that Russia (The Soviets) did not announce the death toll from their space program. They, in fact, have censored out famous cosmonauts from photos when they lost favor. There's even at conspiracy about the capsule and crew lost in space, supposedly radioing back to earth before they were too far out.
If the heat flash had been a bomb they should've seen another one when the plane crashed into the ground and the fuel ignited. So seeing one heat flash would actually suggest to me it wasn't a bomb.
Cancelling flights is exactly what you expect to happen in the aftermath of MH17. The authorities will be overly careful.
Same happened after the failed attack on the Thalys high speed train. The next time somebody hid in a toilet everyone immediately assumed it was another terrorist. This is the way of public servants.
He doesn't want to learn. He pops up in almost every thread to do with terrorism or Islam and spouts his nonsense. Sometimes the thread has nothing to do with that topic yet still he pops up, vomits his ill-informed hatred everywhere, and then disappears back into the sewers from whence he came.
If the plane broke up, you wouldn't have a tube full of fuel hitting the ground and burning up. Even if it was still full of fuel, the impact soul not necessarily ignite it.
Have you looked at the crash scene photos? There's a lot of luggage that appears intact, not burned to a crisp.
Who cares how many years it spans - it's the number of flights that matters.
Yeah, convenient way to ignore the fact that to find the last Russian space fatality you have to go back over 40 years, whereas NASA space shuttles were blowing up as recently as 2003.
Yes, the fact that Russia has had a spotless record for over 40 years is completely irrelevant. What matters is that they had two fatal accidents in the 1960's.That makes them somehow worse, or at least no better than, a space agency that fatal accidents in 1986 and 2003.
The point is that nothing about their survived hours in flight paints a picture of the Russians being wildly more successful in that regard.
No, but the fact that Russia had almost every space first in the 1960's and 70's DOES paints a picture of an agency that has well-earned and deserves respect. You would think that the fact that Americans have to beg Russia for a ride to ISS these days would at least make Americans inclined to treat the Russian space program with a little of that respect. But never underestimate the self-aggrandizing delusion of the average American, or the lingering effect of bullshit Cold War propaganda on that national psyche. In American movies, the U.S. is still the king of space. In real life, you can't even put a human in low earth orbit anymore.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Devil's advocate here (and I cannot believe that I'm mentioning Putin a positive light.)
Putin wouldn't have to do anything for this to happen. It was going to happen, sooner or later, and Daesh was quite prompt to take credit for it, which they likely wouldn't do in another case.
Daesh made a big mistake. Putin keeps Russia from being overrun by his image as a strongman. Unlike the US where Daesh can hold operations at will with no fear of reprisal, Russian pride is at stake here, and Russians will not let a jetliner full of citizens go un-avenged (unlike the US where it is blamed on "guns" or ethnic groups). Bringing in the Russians means that a true army, but one trained to fight wars (and not win no-bid contracts), will be entering this conflict theater.
But Putin doesn't want to bomb Daesh. At least, not yet. Most of the bombing sorties Russia has made so far have been in support of loyalist Syrian forces against the more moderate rebels. As long as Daesh remains active in Iraq and Syria and the US stays impotent to stop them(stop pussyfooting around and trying to protect the ineffective Iraqi government; arm,support, and train the Kurds because they're the only ones with the balls to stand up to Daesh) it drives them closer to Russia and, in the case of Syria, Iran. The whole point is to erode US influence in the region. Only until that happens will Russia truly go after Daesh (they also get the added bonus that radical Chechens are currently going to Syria to fight with Daesh instead of causing trouble in Russia which has been a big source of internal trouble for Russia). So Putin has no reason for any maskirovka-esque self bombing, and even if it was a bomb it is Russia's self-interest to deny it as much as possible otherwise they might be forced to have to engage Daesh.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There is reasonable evidence floating around-- what looks like shrapnel in the rear exit door panels, and an "ejection" hole in the same vicinity of the airframe. Nothing conclusive-- the "shrapnel" could have been caused by the door falling on the rocks and being repositioned by search and rescue personnel.
I give it about 60-40 odds of being a bomb vs structural failure from repair.
I think there are a couple things going on here. First off, Russia (as in Putin and the government) desperately wants this to be an accident or something they can at least claim to be an accident (and by accident I mean some massive mechanical failure of the plane where it spontaneously broke into pieces during the safest part of flight when cruising). A successful attack by ISIS is the last thing they want, because up to this point Russia appears strong and unassailable in their air campaign in Syria. If this was an attack by ISIS it shows that Russian people have been directly attacked and are vulnerable. So I would imagine Russia would drags its feet as much as possible in admitting it if this is indeed an attack by ISIS, although the direct involvement of so many other countries in the investigation may make that difficult.
The other thing going on is US intelligence. This crash happened in one of the most intensely watched areas of the world. Sinai is the buffer area that lies between Israel and Egypt. In addition to the US's spy satellites, drones, etc, Israel certainly has its own close surveillance of the region as well. It has already been leaked that US satellites detected a "heat flash" while the plane was at altitude. More than likely the US or Israel has direct evidence that a bomb went off in flight, but the information is too sensitive (for example, betraying just how good the US's surveillance technology is) that no one can officially and unequivocally state that it was a bomb.
That pretty much leaves one other semi-realistic scenario, which is that a repair made a long time ago has failed. Again, that is very unlikely, because a structural failure of that kind would happen when the plane is under maximum stress - during the take off and climb. Not when the plane is at altitude and cruising along with very, very little stress on the airframe. Further, pictures of the tail after the crash show the tail is still attached to the fuselage. The type of tail failures in the past with the Airbus (like flight 587) were the rudder, not the entire tail. With the Russian plane, the entire tail section was intact and attached to the rear fuselage, but separate from the plane. That is a gross failure of the entire fuselage itself, not the tail failing.
It's very likely that both the US and Russia already knows for certain what happened - if it was a bomb it would be extremely obvious from examining the wreckage.
Better known as 318230.
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
I wouldn't, but then I'm not labouring under the misapprehension that they record 360x180 degree HD video.
They capture basic flight parameters like speed, altitude, angle, control positions etc. If the tail was blown off by a bomb, bitten off by a dragon or fell off of its own accord because some vodka-sozzled dunderhead used chewing gum instead of rivets the trace would be pretty similar.
Voice? There might be the first syllable of whatever the Russian is for "Shit!". If you're lucky.
Not that there's aren't other ways to tell. Residues, shrapnel, distortion, teeth marks. But the recorder? Nah.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I was talking about the end of the last century, before they started really exploiting their natural resources. As you're apparently unaware, this is what the Russian economy looked like in the 90s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yes of course they've made lots of money on natural resources since, but it took 10 years before they started to see that recovery. That was an extended period of strife and growing poverty following the pullout of Afghanistan and the collapse of the USSR that isn't easily forgotten. The fact that they've grown in wealth since then is precisely why they're nervous about repeating the events that led to that, and any sign of mass casualties due to a war on foreign soil is bound to bring back bad memories and create cause for reconsideration about supporting such a policy.
"Well, I don't know exactly how many American and British tourists there really are in Egypt. If you're American and you go, if you don't know the risks, which have been around for more than a decade now (cough cough - ask Mexico about that if you need to), I really don't know what to say."
Perhaps it's a less popular destination for Americans but Sharm El Sheikh is a massively popular tourist destination for British tourists. It's largely been free from the insecurities that have plagued the rest of Egypt. Obviously it's declined since the arab spring regardless, but have a look here, there's still 300,000 people a year visiting. That's a lot of targets:
http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news...
I actually did go to China very recently and the stereotype is very strong. Sure, obese Chinese exist, but literally 99% are thin. But all this is moot as you've fallen into the strawman fallacy.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
The cold war fear was over a nuclear exchange. Re the military it was not an issue of 1 NATO plane/tank v 1 Warsaw Pact plane/tank. The west positioned themselves on the premise that superior technology and tactics would trump a numerical disadvantage in men and material.
Your point misses the target. The US was not scared about facing a technologically superior opponent. Only one that threatened to attack and bury the west. (And nuclear war is a scary, pant-wetting, scenario.)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I think the exact wording from the US was that they detected an air based heat flash. Presumably it wouldn't be too difficult (someone else here no doubt has the knowledge to clarify) to determine the difference between such an event at 30,000ft, and one at ground level. I'd have thought that's a reasonable enough altitude difference to fathom from the satellite data whether the event happened in the air, or on the ground.
It's also worth noting that the plane blew up some distance from where the bulk of it ended up on the ground too, and as such it's possible that the air based heat flash was detected a mile or so away from the location that the fuel ended up such that if the location data for the heat flash is reasonable that in itself would be enough to separate the two incidents.
"You say "Unlike the US" but that sounds an awful lot like what happened after 9/11."
It WILL be just like what happened after 9/11, but with Russian rules of engagement. They won't hesitate to do something like drop three fuel/air bombs on Raqqa, decapitating ISIS instantly.
CNN unsurprisingly had been running hard with the bomb narrative even before they had any evidence of any kind to support it.
If people in the US government are making the claim a bomb took down flight 9268 then why the hell does this information have to be unofficially leaked to the media with no attribution? Is there no better way to communicate? The same person apparently hedges by saying "there has not been a formal conclusion" and uses weasel words like "definite feeling" ... WTF does that even mean?
The bomb narrative happens to be the most profitable one for both stated US interests against Russia's Syria adventures and CNN's ratings with all assertions carefully constructed such that they get to walk away when they are proven to be wrong.
I have no faith or reason to believe any of this conjecturbation. I'll wait for investigation by the grownups actually doing the work.
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.)
You can't really hide deaths in space. The radio chatter is easy to pick up from multiple points on the globe. In fact that conspiracy theory is based on an alleged transmission received in Italy but mysteriously not picked up anywhere else.
It is known that some cosmonauts were kicked out for bad behaviour and erased from records, and that some ground accidents were covered up for a time. But space accidents couldn't be hidden, only passed off as say a failed comms satellite instead of a failed military spy satellite. Manned flights were easy to spot because they had voice comms.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Russia's first boomer nearly sank on it's maiden voyage because of a pervasive culture of corruption. It's not enough to have sufficiently talented geeks. Management also needs to not screw things up.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
NASA space shuttles were blowing up as recently as 2003.
I believe the correct engineering and PC term is "catastrophic self-disassembly."
I was in Beijing and Shanghai and there were more overweight people there than in NYC -by far. And the eating and smoking habits don't bode well for the future.
/= the USA and Beijing and Shanghia /= China.
Of course my points of comparison are limited - NYC
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
high density silicon devices
I realize this is a nerd site, but you can still call them breast implants. No need for technical jargon in that category.