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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Do people often say when reporting on wars: Chinese AK-47s killed 20 civilians in Afghanistan, or do they say 10 Isis fighters fired AK-47s killing twenty civilians in Kabul?

Oh, Twenty American guided missiles killed Houthi fighters —but but they were fired by Saudi Arabian forces from Saudi Arabia. Or French Exocet missiles killed blah blah blah in blah blah blah (without further context?)

You want to know who in hell fired them not who the hell actually manufactured the damned armaments. WTF kind of idiotic reporting is that?

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Now that you mention it though this should be stated every time. Certainly not instead of, but in addition yes.

It's academic yes, but in a murder investigation you want to know who had the gun and pulled the trigger not so much what make it was. For evidentiary purposes, yes, you want to know what exact gun it was and who manufactured it, but that's not at all the point of a murder trial. you want to know who the perp was.

War weapons are not really like murder weapons in this sense. If you want to stick with that metaphor, the country of manufacture here is more like the friend who bought the gun for the murderer. That sort of relationship is very relevant in a trial.

I don't recall reporters customarily mentioning the country of origin/manufacture of weaponry unless it was germane to the discussion.

When they report ISIS or Taliban killing people they might mention it was with AK-47s but they don't mention where they were manufactured. They may say things like The Taliban are buying AK-47s from China which they then issue to their members.

If this reporter wanted to be correct, they likely want to say Soviet missile fired by Ukraine, given the age of the missile fired, it was likely of vintage manufacture.

You will be surprised how many times in the news about those missiles they were specifically called Russian-made/produced.

Another funny fact that most likely it's USSR-made missile. I don't think Ukraine bought any arms from Russia, so everything they have is USSR-made they were an integral part of.

Given the vintage I expect they are Soviet missiles —though the actual factory of these unlike Anyonov were/are in the Moscow general area.

Some factories were in Ukraine, the factory even did some stuff for S-300 after USSR broke.

https://uk-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%96%D1%83%...

I get what you’re saying but also larger weapon systems often get referred to by their country of origin. Reason being is threat labeling/studying I think in the face of weapon sales. “Russian vs American artillery” gets eval’d a lot without referring to Russian and American soldiers, for example. “Iranian drones in Ukraine.” And so on. If the person quoted is from that background, easy to see this happening. It’s not a hard and fast rule but I don’t see as much justifiable outrage as you do.

Or an American Stinger missile shoots down an American Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-ta...

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