Another Malaysian jet goes down with 295 passengers, at Ukraine/Russia border

[Callisto]

ok... what about joe biden? do you believe him?

Isn't that the biker dude? He's okay in my book

[Correction]

ok... what about joe biden? do you believe him?

Biden's in Detroit and said it was shot down.

Now the WSJ article has the blurb:

it was hit by what U.S. intelligence agencies said was a surface-to-air missile.

The intelligence sources didn't say whether the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces or pro-Russia separatist rebels.

[Wulfgang]

The SBU is not a U.S. intelligence agency.

Are you people even reading the news before posting it?

Separate statement from a separate article by the Wall Street Journal ya fuck. The fact that I said "Also..." should make it pretty clear that I am segueing to a separate topic (i.e. the transcript posted by the SBU). Why don't you settle down?

http://stream.wsj.com/story/malaysia...ash-in-ukraine

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Confirm Surface-to-Air Missile Fired at Malaysian Jet

*U.S. Intelligence Agencies Confirm Surface-to-Air Missile Fired at Malaysian Airliner: Officials

*Intelligence Detected Surface Missile Launch, Tracked Explosion of Plane, Official Says

*Intelligence Community Divided Over Whether Missile From Russia or E. Ukraine, Official Says

[Correction]

Guardian liveblog:

The European head of Malaysia Airlines has announced nationalities of some of the passengers on board MH17, agencies report.

Among the other nationalities on board were 154 Dutch, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, six Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines and one Canadian.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has established a hotline for anyone who believes a relative may have been on board: 1300 555 135

[kuronosan]

Fuck sake.

[archibaldcrane]

How could there only be 23 Malaysians on a Malaysian Airlines flight? Clearly an inside job.

[Brill Weave]

The ball is in your court now Netherlands.

[Correction]

How could there only be 23 Malaysians on a Malaysian Airlines flight? Clearly an inside job.

It was flying from the Netherlands to Malaysia. Most of the Malaysian nationals would have been flight crew.

[archibaldcrane]

It was flying from the Netherlands to Malaysia. Most of the Malaysian nationals would have been flight crew.

So you're saying the flight crew was involved?

[Correction]

So you're saying the flight crew was involved?

They were likely Sunni Muslims.

Clearly all terrorists.

[bluefan]

...one Canadian...

I have something witty I wanted to say, but thought better of it.

RIP my fellow Canadian.

[Krazy]

How could there only be 23 Malaysians on a Malaysian Airlines flight? Clearly an inside job.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma

[Brill Weave]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma

[Cutriss]

As soon as I saw this story a few hours ago, my mind shot back to Archduke Ferdinand.

[Helm]

Works exceptionally well with your sig, Brill.

[Quicklet]

As soon as I saw this story a few hours ago, my mind shot back to Archduke Ferdinand.

If it's confirmed the separatists/Russians did this, the most you will see out of it might be increased sanctions on Russia, if even that. Comparisons to that event are borderline absurd given the reality of the situation.

[archibaldcrane]

US and EU just hit them with sanctions like yesterday. Should be interesting to see if they'll put any teeth to 'em now.

Elon Musk is stoked as fuck, gonna take over the US space program when we can't use Russian rockets anymore.

[Weegion]

I probably shouldn't put on the tin foil hat, but does this mean it is possible the last malaysian plane was shot down, too? Or at least was sabotaged by the same people who did this?

So fucking sad these people died, and so fucking sad I feel this is just going to lead to more deaths.

https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/stat...97371061362688

[Jefe]

As soon as I saw this story a few hours ago, my mind shot back to Archduke Ferdinand.

Nah, not even close lol. Pretty sure his assassination was just an excuse to go to war. Did you forget the Austro-Hungarian empire formulated this batshit insane ultimatum, to which Serbia agreed to (except allowing the A-H army into their territory or some shit)? So yeah, no.

[Abandon]

Depends on the missle systems that was used.
If it was an ARM system, then all it saw was a sourse transmission and it could track it in. These missles have no active emission and can only be seen on radar. By and large, their radar cross section is fairly low.
If it was an active seeker, then it would have been furiously slamming the plane with a emissions to keep updating its flight profile. I have no idea if commercial planes have the capability of detecting this, but would expect it in at least some capacity.
If it was a beam rider, then 1) the range was small and 2) whoever operated it knew damn well what it was targeting. These are the real world version of that hollywood "using a dot to light a target up" thing you see in movies but much more sophisticated. Anything in the last 20 years isn't using visible light anyway.

It will come down to the system used and the training level of the operators. An ARM system is going to be my guess. System just detects something "up there" and if the operator is not knowledgeable of missle sytems, radar systems and the particular system hes on, he can just fire it at anything that makes a noise. ARMs are truly fire-and-forget systems. And unless you knew it was coming and set EMCON (EMissions CONtrol, you shut down all your radar systems so it has nothing to ride in on), then there was nothing the pilots could do.

EDIT: FUCK!! Its the Buk system. Ok, these things are ACCURATE. It's like a russian ripoff/mobile version of the USN's SM-3. They were designed to take down anything that hit their AOR. The command mondule uses a...Telstar? Telsar...something like that system that has an exceedingly large range considering the size of the radar employed. Official reports are 18-22miles but thats bullshit. Its range is 25m+ and excess of 75k feet. Its fast too. From time of aquisition to firing is something on the order of 20-25seconds.

Short version: it was aimed and it was guided to target. This wasn't an accident of "we fired it and couldnt stop it." No, this was guided in.

your FC is showing