for sure, especially considering how many nationalities were on that flight ...
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No, that was half a world away on the eastern side of the then USSR (near Kamchatka) and the US had been provoking them in that and other areas for some time prior - not that it in any way excuses an air-to-air attack on a well lit civvie aircraft, but brinksmanship had been actively pursued and this had somewhat shortened the odds of an tragic error occurring.
Besides the horror/terror of the attack, such incidents like are also unbelievably hard on families of deceased.
Six RPT jets shot down by various militaries since 1973.
MH17 crash: The terrible history of passenger planes getting shot out of the sky
In this case Malaysian had chosen to fly (albeit legally) where others had taken a more prudent approach in avoiding the area. MH had probably done this for economic (short-cut fuel saving) reasons over which the US litigation lawyers will no doubt have a field day.
And yes sheerluck, it could well be the end of MH (unless their govt carries it through).
Further to your post Pickles, the reported weapon (Buk) would be horrifically effective on a civilian aircraft.
Continuous-rod warhead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tragic and sincere thoughts go out to victims, family and friends. Also to the locals having this rained down on them.
Must be Russian backed as the Ukraine dont have any known truck mounted SAMs capable of getting to this height. They may have some shoulder mounted SAMs capable of around 10,000 feet not the 33,000 feet that MH-17 was flying at.
The sad think is the UN and the rest of the worlds governments will be to gutless to take Putin to task if the Russians are responsible. They would know very quickly as there would be multiple US, Chinese, Russian and EU satellites monitoring this area constantly. Do not want to see any war escalate but the world needs to economically cripple Russia if they are responsible, closing all in and out transport, freezing all monies and assets held outside Russia and deporting all Russian nationals. But we know this wont happen as too many high powered investors are tied up in Russia including ex govt officials from many govts. It is sad there will be some token response and then these people will be forgotten.
We do need to remember that this was an act of war against all nations as this was a legitimate civilian aircraft in supposedly safe airspace.
Some airlines had chosen not to use this air space, however there were around 300 civilian airlines in this air space around this time and is a well used main route. In all honesty after the 2 military planes were shoy down this air space should have been closed.
The voice transcript shows clearly the pro Russians thought they were shots ting at a military transport.
Shades of USS Vinvennes Iran Air all over again, and that shooter got a medal for that tour of duty.:(, not even a reprimand, let alone a murder charge.
The world has gone completely mad :mad::censored:
I see its officially cleared airspace.
Putin has a lot to answer for for arming the rebels in the Ukraine.
Hope the world gets serious about this.
Unfortunately I doubt the EU will do much as some of their members get roughly 20-30% of their power and/or gas from Russia. Part of which is the reason for this conflict with the main pipeline running through the Ukraine.
Probably right.
And as for the rest of the world, well that would mean the UN taking some definitive action - and we all know the likelihood of that. ;)
So I guess it comes down to the good old US of A and maybe another "coalition of the willing" or something similar - and then all the do-gooders will come out blaming the US and its allies for the world's troubles.
Sound familiar ................
My guess would be that nothing will happen other than a lot more hot air contributing to "global warming". ;)