Malaysian Airlines MH317

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by August

So I guess the anti-American theories of Skybird and Catfish remain just wishful thinking.

Well, with Skybird they always seemed more anti-Ukrainian theories to me. He seemed to have a pretty strong bias against the current regime in Kiev.

But, as CCIP notes the Russian military don't make any conclusions about who launched it. But, hopefully it will put to rest rumours of Ukrainian SU-25s operating at near orbital altitudes. The SU-25 narrative was a fractured and contradictory mess that featured mystery witnesses, dubious theories, dodgy experts, and fake evidence, not mention the plane's ordinance being used in such a way that it always resembled a strike by a Buk missile rather than an attack by a SU-25. It would be good to see it finally set aside.

[August]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

It would be good to see it finally set aside.

That is my wish as well but I fear that the the truth has been obfuscated to the point that I doubt any of it will ever be settled.

[Oberon]

Ah yes, the Su-25 space shuttle...glad to see that one has been given the boot.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by August

That is my wish as well but I fear that the the truth has been obfuscated to the point that I doubt any of it will ever be settled.

JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Yeah, conspiracy theories will always linger even on those rare occasions when you have ironclad proof, because there is always a eager built-in audience for the 'alternative' narrative.

Originally Posted by Oberon

Ah yes, the Su-25 space shuttle...glad to see that one has been given the boot.

I was waiting for the heavily edited Wikipedia article that stated they could dock with the ISS in a pinch.

[CCIP]

And a more skeptical view of the leak (provided by a few Russian opposition gives in the past few days): after months of spin and selling conspiracies, it's likely that the Russian military has realized that with the evidence that it as a Buk at hand, the official EU/Malaysian investigation of the crash was going to release a damning report soon. The leak was likely intentional, to pre-empt official reports and fall back to the next line of defense, retreating from "it wasn't a Buk" to being a jump start in the argument over "whose Buk". It's likely that you'll be seeing a lot of "investigative reporting" from Russian sources trying to establish that the missile was launched from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

On the other hand, one thing this report does seem to point to is that the Russian military must not have had any actual operational control over whoever launched the missile, if they need to commission an internal investigation to figure out what it even was. Considering how sophisticated Russia's air defense forces are, it would be very difficult for one of their units to go rogue and start shooting at airliners, particularly by mistake. The PVO would be very well-aware of everything in that airspace.