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Comment by actuator | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone remember how much time it took to nail down the cause of MH17 crash?

If memory serves me right, during the MH17 shoot down over Ukraine it was established quite early that it was a work of a surface to air missile launched by rebels.

If Iran did really shoot down the plane by mistake, can they cover it up by not giving access to the debris?

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The investigation is on Iranian soil. There is no access to the FAA or similar agencies. Iran would have every reason to want to cover up an erroneous missile launch.

In Ukraine, there was a cooperative effort to investigate the crash, and it was found to be a Russian missile.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. But others are saying it is possible to track missiles with systems other countries have. So, hopefully we will have some answer.

Not possible for a low altitude SAM that would be used for something like that, unlike MH17 at much higher altitude.

To track it you'd have to be really close. Like next neighborhood or so.

The US has plenty of detection capability for missiles, such as how they tracked the ballistic missiles earlier. As in the Ukraine case, I'm sure they'll be more than willing to share the missile trajectory sooner rather than later if there is one (they shared the Ukraine one 5 days after the crash). I'm not sure how trustworthy it'll be, but that's something I'm waiting for as the situation develops.

Aren't all those tracking systems mostly ground based. But Saudi Arabia and its neighbors do provide proximity to Iran so I guess they should be able to catch it.

I'm not 100% sure. I remember reading this about the MH17 (satellite-based infrared tracking) and assumed similar would be possible in this case. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/how-us-satellite...

Well if they don't release the black boxes or give Ukraine access to the wreckage it will tell a lot about the causes.

It's hard to hide in this day and age with everyone having a internet connected phone. There are already plenty of videos and photos showing the wreckage and the debris field.

Extremely unlikely. With the amount of surveillance I imagine the world is directing towards Iran (think sattelites and radars), I find it hard to believe the current US administration wouldn't jump to take that chance to declare war against Iran.

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