Comment by dm2 | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by dm2 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any idea what types of terrorist controlled surface-to-air missiles would be able to take out this aircraft?

Would any of these systems have prevented it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Guardian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMPS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Guard

BTW, according to the Guardian article a MANPAD can be purchased for as little as $5,000.

Apparently this was something else such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system

I know this happened before, but shooting down civilian aircraft cannot be tolerated.

Some media reports say (citing official ukrian reports and AP visuals in the region) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system

That's what this article says: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/17/us-ukraine-crash-a...

What is a "Pro-Russian militant"? At what point are they considered part of the Russian armed forces?

when they are wearing a uniform and holding an official rank

Are these types of "terrorists" targeted by Putin or are they ignored because they're not targeting Russians?

This airliner was flying at a nice cruising altitude of 10,000m - the man-portable surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS [1]) that the systems you linked to can't easily lock-on to planes that high (only about 6,000m according to the wiki), because they rely on infrared tracking of the plane's engines and exhaust. The defensive systems you listed work by shooting out flares that confuse infrared tracking systems, I believe.

It's more likely that this plane was shot down by a radar-guided system like the BUK [2], at least one of which was captured by Ukrainian separatists recently.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MANPADS

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system

Report say it was flying too high for a manpad. These countermeasures wouldn't work against a Buk or other radar guided missile.

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