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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

Just curious why the US would play any role in this situation... it's a Malaysian plane, over Ukraine, coming from the EU. Seems like the EU should be tasking their satellite's, or even Russia.

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I believe certain agencies in the US (FAA or NTSB etc...) help out other countries when planes crash. Smaller countries may not have the man power or skills necessary to handle a plane crash investigation. Especially if its an America plane, if they find a defect they will ground the fleet (787 Dreamliner for instance).

I have also heard sometimes countries call in the US or whatever EU agency to consult along with their personnel.

For satellites, wouldn't you want the most accurate data anyway? Using US, EU and Russian (even China/India) imagery would probably be better than pointing a finger at the right country/agency and saying we should use their images because the plane crashed in their country.

The plane was manufactured by Boeing, a US company. See http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/foreign.aspx

Boeing made and sold the plane, they did not operate it.

The NTSB is involved in the investigation of any crash involving an American-made aircraft. That's SOP.

Source? (Not doubting, just seeking confirmation).

Read the link to the NTSB a few posts up.

Thanks.

Probably because the US has by far the most extensive surveillance satellite programme in the world. Not many countries operate surveillance sats at all. France has a few. Israel and Japan have some. I know Britain has none at all and has a deal with the US to access its material.

It's important to have as many sides involved as possible - I wouldn't trust US satellites alone or Russian satellites alone, but I would trust all satellites together. Russia, US, and EU could all try to spin this story in their own ways.

Probably a fair assessment. The EU, Russian, and especially the US spin machines have been in full swing for the past few months.

On this topic on rt.com:

> 16:05 GMT: > The Donetsk People’s Republic – where heavy fighting continues between Kiev and opposition – has denied reports in the Western media which claim that the Malaysian plane was shot down.

http://rt.com/news/173628-malaysian-plane-crash-ukraine/

Not seen that claim reported elsewhere. Lets see what happens.

I think the US would be pretty interested at any civilian airline being taken out... not least one carrying lots of US Nationals.

News reports have it that there were 23 US citizens on board. given the situation in Ukraine and the current increasingly stiff sanctions on Russia, this is a very serious matter; either Putin pulls in his claws and abandons the Russian separatists in Ukraine completely, or the matter could escalate into a much worse international conflict.

It feels ominous doesn't it. I feel wars that killed millions started for less.

It's highly likely that this was shot down by terrorists currently fighting in eastern Ukraine. I seem to recall the US being interested in fighting terrorism.

edit: also, I bet dollars to donuts there were US citizens on the flight.

Just who exactly are the "terrorists" you talk about?

Do you mean the Swedish neo-nazi snipers fighting there? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329

Or are you referring to people who have taken up arms because they no longer want to be part of the Ukraine. Why not simply call these people "rebels" or "separatists"?

Generally when you take up arms against your country, the act is called 'treason' and proper term for the perpetrators is 'traitors.'

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's all completely subjective, depending on your perspective.

For that matter, Ben Franklin, George Washington and crew were "terrorists" from some POV.

Even speaking as a US citizen, I can admit that the actions of some rebels did constitute terrorism. Innocent Loyalist civilians were targeted, for the purpose of political change. It doesn't get much closer to the textbook definition of terrorism than that.

But hey, the winners write the history books.

The actions of many national armies in wartime counts as terrorism by application of various textbook definitions was well. That does not make those armies or their soldiers terrorists.

I disagree. However, nobody wants to admit that their team did evil things, so we whitewash. Very rarely do people see anything but black and white when it comes to 'Us vs Them' situations.

Then you are extending the definitions of "terrorist" and "terrorism" to such broad lengths as to make the terms useless for anything except political and propaganda purposes. It has nothing to do with admitting to or denying evil things.

Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism. Terrorists use political violence to further their ends, but not everyone who uses political violence is a terrorist.

> Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism.

Exactly. It's terrorism when other people do it.

But hey, the winners write the history books.

Yeah, that too. That's another reason that all of these definitions are a bit fuzzy.

So do you consider the coup leaders who violently overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine as traitors and terrorists too?

And in case you're wondering, no, they didn't impeach the President or follow the constitution when seizing power.

http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/2849/was-the-cha...

Your source is a stackexchange post? C'mon.

Do you dispute the facts contained in the post?

Or are you just going to shoot the messenger?

I read the page. There are no facts contained therein, just someone posting a link to a BBC article about the venerable Ukrainian legal scholar Vladimir Putin's opinion on the legality of the events. Additionally, some other people share their opinions.

You might want to double check that link you posted.

You can't task a satelite to monitor for an explosion after the fact...

You think those imaging satellites aren't constantly recording everything they see and sending it somewhere? Especially in and around such a hot area as the Ukraine, I'm sure there is near-constant surveillance.

It would be a waste of resources otherwise.

Except there probably aren't quite enough satellites to always have one over that area? Plus, yeah, downlink bandwidth probably wouldn't be sufficient anyway.

surely Ukraine is a priority right now though, right?

And how does that increase the number of satellites in orbit or the available downlink bandwidth?

Presumably satellites were watching this area due to the conflict and all data will have been recorded.

Early warning defense systems are configured to look for specific events, particularly missile launch signatures. They would likely be scanning wide areas and automatically record launch signatures, possibly then tasking optical or other sensors on the specific region, in realtime.

Some launch areas are well-known (e.g., fixed land-based silos), some aren't (e.g., mobile launchers, submarines). So a wide-area detection capability is almost certain, though whether this includes arbitrary land surface areas is an interesting question. I'd be inclined to think so.

They're configured to look for missile launch signatures of ICBMs. SAMs are much smaller. Whether they have the sensitivity to detect an SA-11 launch is unknown, but apples and oranges, folks.

Low-altitude SAMs (a/k/a "MANPADS", Man-portable air-defense systems) can be quite small. But SAMs as a weapons class cover a lot of ground.

The Buk missles are ~700 kg (1500 lb), 5.5 m (15.3 ft) solid rocket systems. They're close to a sub-orbital missile system, and might be picked up by an orbital tracking system.

That said, I'm not sure what optical or infrared tracking exists. There's some discussion of SLBM/ICBM detection by the 7th Space Warning Squadron, but it seems largely reliant on ground-based PAVE-PAWS radar.

There was the 1960s MIDAS orbital infra-red detection system, replaced by the Defense Support System:

"The satellites are in geostationary orbits, and are equipped with infrared sensors operating through a wide-angle Schmidt camera. The entire satellite spins so that the linear sensor array in the focal plane scans over the earth six times every minute."

So any given spot on Earth is scanned once every 10 seconds. DSS involved 23 launches, I don't see information on presently active satellites.

There's also the note:

"The DSP constellation may have offered an excellent vantage point for an early warning system against state-centric threats such as missiles, but military analysts warn its ability to collect intelligence on non-state actors is severely limited."

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system#Missiles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Space_Warning_Squadron#Miss...

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

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

Plane was US made, and I'm sure there was at least one US citizen on board.

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