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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Our startup lets you track the event in real-time, and has thousands of people actively confirming and refuting content as to its validity. There is a lot of fake info floating around on Twitter (and even some mainstream media organizations), so act with caution. http://grasswire.com/#/newsfeeds/1e4b388a-8ea7-461d-8acf-ba1...

Confirmed: Malaysia Airlines confirms it has lost contact with #MH17 from Amsterdam. Last known position over Ukraine. Was shot down, all passengers dead.

The pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine deny shooting it down, and are blaming the Ukrainian armed forces.

The Ukraine Defense Ministries claim it was shot down by a BUK missile, which the separatists do have, and it would reach. We also have this interesting translation of Ukraine rebel leader’s VKontakte (Facebook) post regarding another downed airplane: http://pastie.org/9400258. (I translated it, so forgive me for any inaccuracy).

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Interesting, the google cache of that post still works:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3...

and the google translation is as follows:

Message from the militia. "In the area Torrez just downed plane An-26, lying somewhere in the mine" Progress ". Warned same - not to fly in "our sky." And here is the video the confirmation of the next "ptichkopada." Birdie fell for waste heap, the residential sector is not caught. Peaceful people do not suffer. And also have information about the second downed aircraft, like the Su. "

even though the original post has been deleted from VK

http://vk.com/wall-57424472_7256

This is very worrying, an AN-26 does not have the service ceiling of what I would expect the MH flight to be travelling at. A trip seven would be about 2500m higher.

Its also smaller. However, if they identified the target and aimed the missile visually, its possible that they mistook a 777@10000m for an An-26@7500m. I doubt the rebels have much in the way of air search radar. If this was a rebel misidentification, what probably happened is that they fired the missile line-of-sight with the seeker active.

> The Ukraine Defense Ministries claim it was shot down by a BUK missile, which the separatists do have, and it would reach.

Unless I'm mistaken from the description, it takes 3 vehicles, each serving a separate purpose, to utilize the BUK missile system - with a complex series of operations and coordination between all the components (that can only be done by trained operators).

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

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/malaysia-airlines...

The evidence against the anti-Kiev militia seems to only show the missile vehicle component. And it's unknown if it was even fully operational (aside from being drive-able on the roads).

> We also have this interesting translation of Ukraine rebel leader’s VKontakte (Facebook) post regarding another downed airplane

If my understanding is correct (from his other posts), the original info/report came from a post on their social site, where someone saw a plane coming down and assumed it must have been a military plane shut down by their side - and promoted it as such.

EDITED: per Wikipedia it's more complicated (see ADDED below), assuming as speculated elsewhere in this thread that they used visual means for air search, or I would note another albeit unlinked radar system:

"The Buk missile system was designed to surpass the 2K12 Kub in all parameters and its designers including its chief designer Ardalion Rastov visited Egypt in 1971 to see Kub [SA-6, very effective in the Kom Kippur War 2 years later] in operation. Both the Kub and Buk used self-propelled launchers developed by Ardalion Rastov. As a result of this visit the developers came to the conclusion that each Buk transporter erector launcher (TEL) should have its own fire control radar rather than being reliant on one central radar for the whole system as in Kub. The result of this move from TEL to transporter erector launcher and radar (TELAR) was a system able to engage multiple targets from multiple directions at the same time."

If they have a vector to feed the fire control radar, and it then succeeds in acquiring the target, I would expect it to work. Our anti-radiation missiles, plus the system's missiles until the most recent one having semi-active homing (fire control radar must paint the target), put a premium on this sort of arrangement.

ADDED: I too am just learning these fine details; further down, as quoted by powertower in reply to this posting, the above ideal wasn't implemented in full, there's a normal 2-1 ratio of TELARs to TELs. And think about the implications of the TELARs being obviously more expensive: the normal ratio is unlikely to be always observed, the maintenance demands of TELARs and a high TELAR to TEL ratio is going to be higher, etc. etc.

The vehicle shown in the deleted post, and the same one driving on the road, appear to be a pure TEL vehicle from the BUK system, without an integrated radar (not a TELAR vehicle)...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NF6E5FC...

From wikipedia -

"A standard Buk battalion consists of a command vehicle, target acquisition radar (TAR) vehicle, six transporter erector launcher and radar (TELAR) vehicles and three transporter erector launcher (TEL) vehicles. A Buk missile battery consists of two TELAR and one TEL vehicle."

So a TEL vehicle would also require a feed from a TELAR or a TAR vehicle.

Though I'm just learning about all this, so I could be completely wrong.

grasswire link has some explicit images, be warned.

Thank you for that; have been meaning to add an "explicit" warning for weeks.

Why was this civilian plane over Ukraine to begin with?

I seem to recall (can't find the link now) that Ukraine declared their airspace closed to civilian aircraft after the Ukrainian Troop Transport plane was shot down recently.

Even if the airspace was open, it seems highly risky to fly over a battle-zone anyhow where direct radio communication with troops on the ground may not be possible, and opens a wide door for an accidental grounding, if not on purpose.

According to BBC, major airlines like Air France and Lufthansa are only now rerouting their flights to avoid the conflict zone. So, until now it was assumed there was no risk in flying in that altitude.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-28354787

The rebel army (there isn't really any government to "declare" anything in eastern Ukraine right now) warned that it was a no-fly zone, but Malaysian probably assumed they were referring to the Ukrainian air force, which had been shelling eastern Ukraine fairly heavily. A recent FAA notice warned of the potential of misidentification of civilian aircraft over eastern Ukraine, but surely nobody thought they would shoot a civilian aircraft out of the sky.

That being said, touching eastern Ukraine with a 30,000 ft. pole would probably be less than wise at the moment.

> A recent FAA notice warned of the potential of misidentification of civilian aircraft over eastern Ukraine, but surely nobody thought they would shoot a civilian aircraft out of the sky.

Yes, but without any direct communication, no organized Air Traffic Control, and without tracking satellites, it seems very easy for ground troops to mistake a civilian transport with a military transport.

Seems ludicrous for anyone to attempt to fly over Ukraine right now.

>Yes, but without any direct communication, no organized Air Traffic Control, and without tracking satellites, it seems very easy for ground troops to mistake a civilian transport with a military transport.

Except for the transponder...

Which can be spoofed.

not to mention, ground troops in a civ-war-like situation may not have the technology to detect a civilian aircraft's transponder, nor even expect one to be in the area (after all, it's more-or-less a war zone right now).

Just posting an update to my parent comment:

This is now starting to appear very-much-so as an accidental grounding. The rebel's posted on a social network bragging about grounding another military troop transport, then quickly deleted the post as soon as the news broke about a civilian airline going down over Ukraine.

Is grasswire your startup? What does it do?

Yes. It's a platform that lets everyone curate and fact-check news in real-time.

Could you provide the link to original "rebel leader’s VKontakte (Facebook) post"?

It used to be here http://vk.com/wall-57424472_7256 now it's gone http://i.imgur.com/VmwbElq.png

oh and here is them bragging that they've captured Buk http://oi58.tinypic.com/29gmnah.jpg

I think it's pretty clear

EDIT: there is another image of it https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bswy4VtCUAAJCDS.jpg:orig Worse still it is stationed between houses using their own people as human shields

VKontakte doesn't have a very good "share this specific link feature" - but here it is, probably a couple down now. http://vk.com/strelkov_info

I couldn't find the source for the second part of your translation - "we warned them ...". Has it been removed? I am curious to see if AN-26 was also shot down, or they mistook Boeing for AN-26.

EDIT: got the answer in this thread - post was deleted.

It does have that feature (hover over post date).

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