JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER
RUSSIAN BUK M-1 SUSPECTED OF SHOOTING DOWN MH17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNSMjPxhmrY
BUK - M1-2-etexport pic
http://etexport.net/en/catalog/rocket-artillery-armament/anti-aircraft-missile-system.html
-BUK-M1 (RUSSIAN BUILT)
-BUK-M2 (RUSSIAN BUILT)
BOEING 777-MH17 POSSIBLY SHOT DOWN BY RUSSIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUkqs9CQ0w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48YlDSVFVMI
UPDATE JULY 17,14-05:15PM
WELL WE KNOW KNOW FOR SURE RUSSIA AND ITS ALLIES IN THE UKRAINE SHOT THIS MH17 DOWN.ONE CANADIAN WE KNOW WAS KILLED IN THE MASSCRE BY RUSSIA OF THESE INNOCENT CITIZENS.AND RUSSIA LIKE THE ARABS-HAMAS IN GAZA ARE PULLING A REVERSE BRAIN WASHING BY BLAMING THE UKRAINE FOR SHOOTING THE PLANE DOWN AND KILLING 295 WORLD INNOCENT CITIZENS.WE CAN TELL RUSSIA WILL BE LEADING THE ARAB-MUSLIMS IN THE FUTURE.THEY BOTH PLAY THE SAME HEAD GAMES.SO THIS TELLS ME RUSSIA TAUGHT THE ARABS-MUSLIMS THEIR TRICKS AGAINST ISRAEL.
We warned you not to fly in our sky': Boasts of Russian separatist as evidence emerges of Russians launching missiles into Ukraine days before MH17 disaster-By Staff Writer -By Will Stewart-Published: 13:49 EST, 17 July 2014 | Updated: 14:14 EST, 17 July 2014-georgia Newsday
Rebel commander Igor Strelkov - widely believed in Kiev to be a serving Russian military intelligence officer - tweeted a boastful message about shooting down a military plane shortly before Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was downed.The tweet indicated his rebels had shot down an Antonov-26 military plane of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Antonov is a large transport plane of a type used by Ukraine's forces.The message read: 'In the area Torez we just hit down An-26, it's lying somewhere in the mine "Progress".'We warned you- do not fly in "our sky". And here is the video confirmation of the "bird dropping".'Bird fell fell near the mine, the residential sector was not disturbed. Civilians are not injured.'Later as the horror became clear, the tweet was deleted. Separatist forces have blown at least three Ukrainian military planes out of the sky in the past 48 hours.Today, militia from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) brought down a military transport Antonov-26 (An-26) plane of the Ukrainian Air Force on the outskirts of the town of Torez, eyewitnesses said.A missile hit the An-26, it fell on the ground and caught blaze, they said.Earlier, pro-Russia rebels claimed responsibility for surface-to-air missile strikes on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets yesterday.The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile adding that the pilot was unscathed and managed to land his plane safely.The news comes as footage that
The images allegedly show an attack by a truck-mounted 'Grad' 122 mm multiple rocket launcher from close to Gukovo in Russia's Rostov region across the frontier into neighbouring Ukraine.Kiev has been making increasingly strong complaints that Moscow is mounting attacks from its own territory as well as supporting insurgents with weapons and reinforcements.
Moscow has denied such accusations.
The head of organization 'Civil Initiative' Dmitry Snegirev claimed today that this footage - from late on 16 July - shows strikes from Gukovo onto Krasnodonsk district in the Lugansk region of Ukraine.He claimed locals had provided the information about the 'Grad' strikes.Ukrainian journalist Roman Bochkala wrote on Facebook: 'Here is direct evidence of shelling of Ukraine with "Grad" from the territory of the Russian Federation. Two units are firing in the village Gukovo, Rostov region.'Claiming it was not the first such strike, he posted a map showing where the alleged attack originated.One horrific account of the crash said bodies had fallen out of the stricken plane over the village of Rassypnaya.More than a dozen corpses of people who appeared to be of Asian descent, some naked, were strewn around the village, said Aleks Noit, who has relatives living nearby.'Wreckage and bodies fell on the private houses in the village and near the hospital. People in uniform collected the corpses.'Among the possessions were passports of the victims, which were quickly copied onto the social media.A Russian news agency reporter stated: 'I am at the Grabovo village, there are debris of a civilian plane, passports of Malaysian and Netherlands citizens are all over it'.The BUK surface-to-air missile system believed to have shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 is an old Soviet- built weapon designed to engage aircraft, cruise missiles and drones that is still widely used in eastern European states, including Ukraine.They are capable of taking down aircraft the size of a Boeing 777 flying at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet, meaning the intensity of the impact is likely to have blown the plane apart in the sky.http://www.georgianewsday.com/news/regional/264246-we-warned-you-not-to-fly-in-our-sky-boasts-of-russian-separatist-as-evidence-emerges-of-russians-launching-missiles-into-ukraine-days-before-mh17-disaster.html#sthash.etQH5Mzt.dpuf
Malaysia Airlines Plane Crashes in Ukraine With 295 on Board
Mh17-flight-path-By Brian Ries JULY 17,14
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew crashed in Ukraine near the country's border with Russia, according to an Interfax report.Malaysia Airlines tweeted that it "lost contact" with the plane. "The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace."A Malaysia Airlines spokesman tells Mashable they have no information at this time.An adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry reports the plane was brought down by a ground-to-air missile.A government minister says Ukrainian rebels shot it down.The Ukrainian Air Traffic agency reportedly confirmed Malaysian Airlines plane crashed near Ukrainian-Russian border. Reuters, citing Interfax as well, reports that the plane was shot down at an altitude of 10 km above eastern Ukraine, which has been the battleground of a months-long war between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels.The flight was said to be "found burning on the ground in Ukraine," a source tells Interfax. Below is the flight path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which left from Amsterdam on Thursday.
Russian jets shoot down Ukrainian warplane over Ukraine: Kiev military-Reuters-By Richard Balmforth -JULY 17,14-YahooNews
KIEV (Reuters) - Russian jets shot down a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter plane that was on military operations over the east of Ukraine, where government forces are fighting to quell a pro-Russian separatist rebellion, the Ukrainian military said on Thursday.It was the first time Ukraine had directly accused Russia of using air power in the war. In a previous attack on a military transporter, which it said was launched from Russia, Kiev was unable to specify whether it came from landbased missiles or airborne.Russia's defence ministry declined to comment on Thursday's accusation by Kiev.The Ukrainian Defence Ministry said the plane was brought down on Wednesday night near Amvrosiyivka, about 15 km (about 9 milles) from the border with Russia, by rockets which hit it in the tail as it wheeled away from the border."It is likely that this was carried out by air-to-air rockets from the Russian airforce which were patrolling the border in a pair," the ministry said in a statement on its website.The pilot safely ejected, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the National Defence and Security Council, told journalists.The downing of the SU-25 came against a background of increasingly strident charges of direct Russian involvement in the three and a half month conflict in which the pro-Western government in Kiev is fighting to put down a rebellion by separatists who want a future in Russia.Moscow denies orchestrating the rebellion. But Western governments accuse it of failing to do enough to help curb the violence. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Wednesday on some of Russia's biggest companies, limiting their access to funding.
"VERY TOUGH"
"The situation on the border in the zone of the 'anti-terrorist operation' is still very tough. Grad missile systems, heavy artillery and mortar is continually being used. The firing on the border posts and (government) forces is often coming from the territory of the Russian Federation," Lysenko said.Five Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in the past 24 hours, he said. This would bring to more than 270 the number killed since the government launched an "anti-terrorist" operation in April to crush the rebels.Hundreds of civilians and rebels have also been killed.Ukrainian positions had come under fire from artillery from the Russian border settlement of Kuybyshevo, Lysenko said, adding that more and more Russian units were coming up to the border with Ukraine.A Ukrainian paratroop tactical group deployed at Dmytrivka in particular had come under heavy fire from the Russian side, he said.In the past 24 hours, the separatists had carried out 27 attacks on army checkpoints and positions of government forces, Lysenko said.Attack planes are one of the Ukrainian military's most effective weapons for inflicting heavy losses on concentrations of rebels and military equipment which Kiev says is being brought in from Russia to fortify rebel positions.The shooting down of the SU-25 was the third reported incident this week in which a Ukrainian plane has been hit by a missile.Kiev has said that an An-26 military transporter was brought down last Monday probably by a missile fired from Russia, either from the air or from the ground. Two out of the eight people on board that plane were killed, the Ukrainian military said.On Wednesday, another SU-25 was hit by a rebel missile but the pilot landed the plane successfully with relatively slight damage. Kiev did not allege Russian involvement in that case.The rebellions erupted in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions after months of pro-Europe protests drove out a Moscow-backed president. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine's Crimea, sparking the biggest Russia-West crisis since the end of the Cold War.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko refused to renew a 10-day unilateral ceasefire by government forces on June 30, saying it had been repeatedly breached by the separatists and had cost Ukrainian lives. Efforts to forge another more effective truce have failed.(Additional reporting by Natalya Zinets in Kiev and Tatyana Ustinova in Moscow; Writing by Richard Balmforth)
IN THIS CASE I BELIEVE IT WAS RUSSIA THAT SHOT IT DOWN BECAUSE THE EUROPEAN UNION AND PUTINS PAL OBAMA SANCTIONED HIM YESTERDAY.
April 2003-Plane Threat-Terrorists have never shot down an American passenger jet with surface-to-air missiles. But it's only a matter of time.By Soyoung Ho
Late last November, two slender metal tubes arced into the Kenyan air, streaking toward a charter aircraft that had just taken off, laden with Israeli tourists, from the Mombasa airport. Fired by suspected al Qaeda operatives, the Soviet-made missiles missed their target--leaving passengers relieved, and Americans suddenly aware of yet another terrorist threat. It may be new to them, but it's not to security analysts. Since the 1980s, shoulder-launched missiles have been fired at commercial airliners roughly twice a year, and even more frequently since September 11. And while terrorists haven't yet managed to blow up a nuclear power plant or detonate a dirty bomb, over the last 30 years, according to Jane's, the respected defense publication, such missiles have brought down enough charter, medical, or cargo planes flying over conflict zones to kill 900 people. More than two dozen guerrilla and terrorist groups are known to possess them. "If it has happened before, certainly we have to think … that it will be tried again," says Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.How big is the threat? For all the fear they inspired, last year's anthrax attacks killed just four people, while 1995's sarin gas attack in Tokyo, perpetrated by a Japanese cult, cost only 11 lives--terrible, to be sure, but illustrative of the relative difficulty of employing chemical and biological agents as weapons of mass destruction. By contrast, a single shoulder-fired missile could take down a Boeing 747, killing up to 500 people. And last May, the FBI warned American law-enforcement agencies that terrorist cells may already have smuggled such weapons into the United States. Yet the attention paid to this threat is minuscule compared with that of chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. Legislation, proposed by the Senate, requiring all U.S. airlines to retrofit their passenger jets with antimissile countermeasures has met a tepid response. Meanwhile, top administration officials almost never talk about this threat. And for all the pressure it has put on other countries to check the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, the administration has done little to keep these deadly yet economical weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Even worse, it has done a few things that might make the eventuality more likely.
Menace in a Golf Bag
Known technically as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, such missiles are in some ways an ideal weapon for the al Qaedas of the world. They are far more powerful than most small arms, and can strike from a distance, enabling would-be terrorists to inflict great damage at minimal risk. Small and light at about 35 pounds, they're easily smuggled. (With 20,000 uninspected cargo containers coming into U.S. ports every day, and fairly porous land borders, says Jenkins, "How difficult can it be for something that fits in a golf bag?") Nor are such weapons hard to find. The world's arsenals boast an estimated 500,000, from American Stingers to Russian Strelas; 5,000 to 10,000 of these are unaccounted for, including between 300 and 600 American-made Stingers delivered by the CIA to Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s. (When the Soviet-Afghan war ended in 1989, the CIA tried to buy some of them back, but only with limited success.)-Some 56 countries are known to have the SA-7, a widely-copied, 1960s vintage Soviet model. Another 20 own variations on the American Stinger. Pakistan, North Korea, China, and Egypt all manufacture variants on U.S. or Russian missiles. For terrorists seeking reasonably high body counts and wider ripples of fear and chaos, taking down a commercial airliner would do nicely, disrupting air travel and tourism as 9/11 did. "Al Qaeda, in particular, likes to destroy symbols of American economic power and global domination," notes Alan Kuperman, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. "Destroying American aircraft, especially overseas, would fit the bill quite well."So if they have the means and motivation, why haven't terrorists brought down an American 747? For a missile attack to be successful, an individual or group needs three things: missiles, motivation, and opportunity. And it's not easy to get all three at the same time.One simple reason shoulder-launched missiles haven't often been used against commercial airliners is that, until recently, it was simply easier to hijack a plane. But as airlines installed metal detectors and better airport security during the 1970s, hijackings became harder to pull off: There were 72 in 1969, but only seven in 1998. In-flight bombs, like the one that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, began to replace hijackings (9/11 notwithstanding).If terrorists were willing to use bombs, why not missiles? Here, too, the answer is that getting a bomb on a plane has been technically easier than downing it with a portable missile. Such missiles are more complex and delicate than simple timed bombs. Indeed, many of the shoulder-fired missiles most widely available on the black market are older models nearing the end of their shelf life. Over time, crucial components such as battery cooling units wear down. And although these can be replaced, refitting surface-to-air missiles isn't quite as simple as popping in a few Duracells. The end result is that terrorists wind up with more than a few duds. During the 1980s, Libya supplied a dozen SA-7Bs to the Irish Republican Army, but most turned out to be unusable. When U.S. troops raided al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan, they found shoulder-fired missiles piled up in caves, their fuses and other parts corroded or damaged. So it's not surprising that, out of the 1,250 aviation terrorist incidents catalogued by RAND since 1968, only 42 have involved shoulder-fired missiles. Since 9/11, a total of five missiles have been fired at civilian airliners--two in Kenya, one in Saudi Arabia, and two in the Czech Republic. All five either missed or misfired.
Even when the missiles aren't defective, they're not easy to operate. It's not as if Joe Terrorist can wander down to the local range and fire off a couple of practice shots. Before the mujaheddin received training by CIA operatives, they had significant trouble hitting Soviet aircraft with their U.S.-supplied Stingers. Most shoulder-fired missiles sitting in arsenals today have a range of 11,000 to 15,000 feet. Since that's far lower than the 33,000 feet airliners normally cruise at, terrorists must fire off the weapon while planes are taking off or landing. Likewise, the missiles still most widely available, SA-7s, have to be launched from behind an aircraft so that their targeting mechanisms can lock onto the heat emitted from a plane's engines. SA-7s also can't maneuver once in the air, making it relatively easy for pilots to take evasive action and avoid being hit.During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, according to a U.S. Air Force report, Arab armies fired more than 5,000 SA-7 rounds against Israeli Air Force ground-attack aircraft, but shot down only 30 planes. Even today, as a general rule, the best soldiers trained in the missile's use only hit about 70 percent of their targets in combat. And civilian jumbo jets, while bigger and slower-moving than fighters, can actually be harder to bring down with shoulder-fired missiles, since they can usually still fly after losing one or two engines. Of those aforementioned 42 attempts against non-military aircraft, about a dozen were successful. But only twice have larger commercial passenger jets been brought down--once in 1993, when Abkhazian rebels in Georgia shot down a Russian airliner, killing 106 passengers; and once in 1983, when UNITA rebels in Angola claimed to have bought down another such aircraft, killing 130.No one has ever taken down an American airliner with a shoulder-fired missile, in part because American airlines do a good job staying out of trouble. Most anti-American terrorists operate out of countries that don't get a lot of U.S. airliner flights. Of the groups known to both have the missiles and target Americans, few target civilians en masse. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, though affiliated with al Qaeda, limits its scope of operation to the southern Philippines, where few Americans venture by plane. Hezbollah famously attacked the American embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and was involved in the 1996 attacks on a Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, but generally shies away from going after American civilians.For that matter, American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have actually been pretty good at nipping missile attacks in the bud. Over the years, the FBI has prevented the real IRA from obtaining Stingers in the United States and blocked Muammar Qaddafi's attempt to provide rocket launchers to an Islamist street gang in Chicago. More recently, last November, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that two attempts to exchange drugs for cash and Stingers were foiled; in one case, the missiles were destined for al Qaeda camps.
Jam the Attackers
That's the good news. The bad news is that, to some extent, each of these barriers to entry is slowly crumbling. Since 9/11, for instance, the United States has made major strides tightening up airport security, from scanning luggage to searching passengers to a new program that would allow pilots to carry sidearms. But the harder we make it to hijack or place bombs on airliners, the more incentive terrorists have to try something else--like shoulder-fired missiles.Advances in missile technology, meanwhile, mean that should terrorists attempt to shoot down an airliner, they'll be more likely to succeed. The latest models, manufactured primarily by the United States, Russia, Japan, and France, have ranges of over 22,000 feet. That means terrorists can fire from farther away; it also means that airliners are vulnerable during a longer portion of their takeoffs and landings. The new missiles are also more agile, so that, once launched, they're better able to home in on the target and counter the pilot's attempts to evade. Finally, they're able to close in on aircraft from any direction, not just from behind--giving would-be terrorists greater flexibility in choosing a secure place from which to fire.That doesn't mean shoulder-launched missiles can't be countered. Under legislation proposed by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), airlines would oufit their planes with electronic devices that would jam the attackers' guidance systems. And other countermeasures can be deployed, from tighter security around airfields (thus forcing the rocketeers to fire at a higher and shorter sector of the aircraft's path) to scheduling more flights at night (when planes are harder to target). Airports could also reduce the number of flight paths and deploy aerial buoys--basically big balloons broadcasting IR and UV static--along those that remain, providing a curtain of sorts that would interfere with missiles' targeting systems.But in the long run, it's a lot more efficient to keep the missiles out of terrorists' hands than to defend thousands of airplanes and hundreds of airports. Unfortunately, new-model missiles have already been copied or acquired by Pakistan, North Korea, China, and Egypt, countries that have been willing to export military technology--and very irresponsibly--in the past. And when it comes to rogue regimes, like North Korea or Iran, "There's not much that you can do about proliferation," says Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks, a public affairs officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. The sale of missiles is perfectly legal between states, and Pyongyang won't exactly issue press statements should it decide to sell the equipment to Iran, which, in turn, could hand it to Hezbollah or Hamas. Aside from lodging protests, the next step is military action, such as the United States' interception last year of a North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles to Yemen. But as missiles proliferate, they'll be harder to interdict.The Bush administration has at least acknowledged the problem. After the attacks in Kenya, they belatedly convened an interagency task force to study the problem, and according to one State Department official, sought to persuade foreign governments to destroy some of the missiles in their arsenal, and to take more stringent measures against the theft of the rest. But other White House policies have undercut these efforts. Preventing missiles from proliferating requires foreign countries to more carefully guard their own arsenals and track down terrorists who may have already acquired such weapons. Right now, as a result of the administration's penchant for overbearing "diplomacy," most countries are not in the mood to help. And the White House's evident disdain for arms-control treaties makes it unlikely that Bush would ever seek an international agreement to more tightly regulate shoulder-fired missiles. (Currently, the United States is party to the so-called Wassenaar Arrangement, which in theory binds countries to keep close track of arms sales in general and shoulder-fired missiles in particular. Unfortunately, states not party to the agreement include China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and all of the Central Asian republics.)-Finally, we must factor in the unforeseeable effects of any war against Iraq. The administration clearly believes that taking out Saddam will send an unequivocal message to state sponsors of terrorism. Since sympathetic regimes are the best source for hardware and training for terrorists, the invasion could in theory lessen the threat from these weapons. On the other hand, the invasion is likely to inflame existing terrorist networks, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that haven't before made a habit of targeting American civilians. Both groups are known to possess SA-7s (and possibly more advanced models), and have operational capacity within the United States. So far, when it comes to the threat of shoulder-launched missiles, the United States has been fortunate. In the future, we may not be so lucky.Soyoung Ho is a Washington Monthly researcher-reporter.
RUSSIAN BUK M-1 SUSPECTED OF SHOOTING DOWN MH17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNSMjPxhmrY
BUK - M1-2-etexport pic
http://etexport.net/en/catalog/rocket-artillery-armament/anti-aircraft-missile-system.html
-BUK-M1 (RUSSIAN BUILT)-BUK-M2 (RUSSIAN BUILT) BOEING 777-MH17 POSSIBLY SHOT DOWN BY RUSSIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUkqs9CQ0w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48YlDSVFVMI
UPDATE JULY 17,14-05:15PM
WELL WE KNOW KNOW FOR SURE RUSSIA AND ITS ALLIES IN THE UKRAINE SHOT THIS MH17 DOWN.ONE CANADIAN WE KNOW WAS KILLED IN THE MASSCRE BY RUSSIA OF THESE INNOCENT CITIZENS.AND RUSSIA LIKE THE ARABS-HAMAS IN GAZA ARE PULLING A REVERSE BRAIN WASHING BY BLAMING THE UKRAINE FOR SHOOTING THE PLANE DOWN AND KILLING 295 WORLD INNOCENT CITIZENS.WE CAN TELL RUSSIA WILL BE LEADING THE ARAB-MUSLIMS IN THE FUTURE.THEY BOTH PLAY THE SAME HEAD GAMES.SO THIS TELLS ME RUSSIA TAUGHT THE ARABS-MUSLIMS THEIR TRICKS AGAINST ISRAEL.
We warned you not to fly in our sky': Boasts of Russian separatist as evidence emerges of Russians launching missiles into Ukraine days before MH17 disaster-By Staff Writer -By Will Stewart-Published: 13:49 EST, 17 July 2014 | Updated: 14:14 EST, 17 July 2014-georgia Newsday
Rebel commander Igor Strelkov - widely believed in Kiev to be a serving Russian military intelligence officer - tweeted a boastful message about shooting down a military plane shortly before Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was downed.The tweet indicated his rebels had shot down an Antonov-26 military plane of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Antonov is a large transport plane of a type used by Ukraine's forces.The message read: 'In the area Torez we just hit down An-26, it's lying somewhere in the mine "Progress".'We warned you- do not fly in "our sky". And here is the video confirmation of the "bird dropping".'Bird fell fell near the mine, the residential sector was not disturbed. Civilians are not injured.'Later as the horror became clear, the tweet was deleted. Separatist forces have blown at least three Ukrainian military planes out of the sky in the past 48 hours.Today, militia from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) brought down a military transport Antonov-26 (An-26) plane of the Ukrainian Air Force on the outskirts of the town of Torez, eyewitnesses said.A missile hit the An-26, it fell on the ground and caught blaze, they said.Earlier, pro-Russia rebels claimed responsibility for surface-to-air missile strikes on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets yesterday.The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile adding that the pilot was unscathed and managed to land his plane safely.The news comes as footage that
The images allegedly show an attack by a truck-mounted 'Grad' 122 mm multiple rocket launcher from close to Gukovo in Russia's Rostov region across the frontier into neighbouring Ukraine.Kiev has been making increasingly strong complaints that Moscow is mounting attacks from its own territory as well as supporting insurgents with weapons and reinforcements.
Moscow has denied such accusations.
The head of organization 'Civil Initiative' Dmitry Snegirev claimed today that this footage - from late on 16 July - shows strikes from Gukovo onto Krasnodonsk district in the Lugansk region of Ukraine.He claimed locals had provided the information about the 'Grad' strikes.Ukrainian journalist Roman Bochkala wrote on Facebook: 'Here is direct evidence of shelling of Ukraine with "Grad" from the territory of the Russian Federation. Two units are firing in the village Gukovo, Rostov region.'Claiming it was not the first such strike, he posted a map showing where the alleged attack originated.One horrific account of the crash said bodies had fallen out of the stricken plane over the village of Rassypnaya.More than a dozen corpses of people who appeared to be of Asian descent, some naked, were strewn around the village, said Aleks Noit, who has relatives living nearby.'Wreckage and bodies fell on the private houses in the village and near the hospital. People in uniform collected the corpses.'Among the possessions were passports of the victims, which were quickly copied onto the social media.A Russian news agency reporter stated: 'I am at the Grabovo village, there are debris of a civilian plane, passports of Malaysian and Netherlands citizens are all over it'.The BUK surface-to-air missile system believed to have shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 is an old Soviet- built weapon designed to engage aircraft, cruise missiles and drones that is still widely used in eastern European states, including Ukraine.They are capable of taking down aircraft the size of a Boeing 777 flying at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet, meaning the intensity of the impact is likely to have blown the plane apart in the sky.http://www.georgianewsday.com/news/regional/264246-we-warned-you-not-to-fly-in-our-sky-boasts-of-russian-separatist-as-evidence-emerges-of-russians-launching-missiles-into-ukraine-days-before-mh17-disaster.html#sthash.etQH5Mzt.dpuf
Malaysia Airlines Plane Crashes in Ukraine With 295 on Board
Mh17-flight-path-By Brian Ries JULY 17,14
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew crashed in Ukraine near the country's border with Russia, according to an Interfax report.Malaysia Airlines tweeted that it "lost contact" with the plane. "The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace."A Malaysia Airlines spokesman tells Mashable they have no information at this time.An adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry reports the plane was brought down by a ground-to-air missile.A government minister says Ukrainian rebels shot it down.The Ukrainian Air Traffic agency reportedly confirmed Malaysian Airlines plane crashed near Ukrainian-Russian border. Reuters, citing Interfax as well, reports that the plane was shot down at an altitude of 10 km above eastern Ukraine, which has been the battleground of a months-long war between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels.The flight was said to be "found burning on the ground in Ukraine," a source tells Interfax. Below is the flight path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which left from Amsterdam on Thursday.
Russian jets shoot down Ukrainian warplane over Ukraine: Kiev military-Reuters-By Richard Balmforth -JULY 17,14-YahooNews
KIEV (Reuters) - Russian jets shot down a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter plane that was on military operations over the east of Ukraine, where government forces are fighting to quell a pro-Russian separatist rebellion, the Ukrainian military said on Thursday.It was the first time Ukraine had directly accused Russia of using air power in the war. In a previous attack on a military transporter, which it said was launched from Russia, Kiev was unable to specify whether it came from landbased missiles or airborne.Russia's defence ministry declined to comment on Thursday's accusation by Kiev.The Ukrainian Defence Ministry said the plane was brought down on Wednesday night near Amvrosiyivka, about 15 km (about 9 milles) from the border with Russia, by rockets which hit it in the tail as it wheeled away from the border."It is likely that this was carried out by air-to-air rockets from the Russian airforce which were patrolling the border in a pair," the ministry said in a statement on its website.The pilot safely ejected, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the National Defence and Security Council, told journalists.The downing of the SU-25 came against a background of increasingly strident charges of direct Russian involvement in the three and a half month conflict in which the pro-Western government in Kiev is fighting to put down a rebellion by separatists who want a future in Russia.Moscow denies orchestrating the rebellion. But Western governments accuse it of failing to do enough to help curb the violence. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Wednesday on some of Russia's biggest companies, limiting their access to funding.
"VERY TOUGH"
"The situation on the border in the zone of the 'anti-terrorist operation' is still very tough. Grad missile systems, heavy artillery and mortar is continually being used. The firing on the border posts and (government) forces is often coming from the territory of the Russian Federation," Lysenko said.Five Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in the past 24 hours, he said. This would bring to more than 270 the number killed since the government launched an "anti-terrorist" operation in April to crush the rebels.Hundreds of civilians and rebels have also been killed.Ukrainian positions had come under fire from artillery from the Russian border settlement of Kuybyshevo, Lysenko said, adding that more and more Russian units were coming up to the border with Ukraine.A Ukrainian paratroop tactical group deployed at Dmytrivka in particular had come under heavy fire from the Russian side, he said.In the past 24 hours, the separatists had carried out 27 attacks on army checkpoints and positions of government forces, Lysenko said.Attack planes are one of the Ukrainian military's most effective weapons for inflicting heavy losses on concentrations of rebels and military equipment which Kiev says is being brought in from Russia to fortify rebel positions.The shooting down of the SU-25 was the third reported incident this week in which a Ukrainian plane has been hit by a missile.Kiev has said that an An-26 military transporter was brought down last Monday probably by a missile fired from Russia, either from the air or from the ground. Two out of the eight people on board that plane were killed, the Ukrainian military said.On Wednesday, another SU-25 was hit by a rebel missile but the pilot landed the plane successfully with relatively slight damage. Kiev did not allege Russian involvement in that case.The rebellions erupted in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions after months of pro-Europe protests drove out a Moscow-backed president. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine's Crimea, sparking the biggest Russia-West crisis since the end of the Cold War.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko refused to renew a 10-day unilateral ceasefire by government forces on June 30, saying it had been repeatedly breached by the separatists and had cost Ukrainian lives. Efforts to forge another more effective truce have failed.(Additional reporting by Natalya Zinets in Kiev and Tatyana Ustinova in Moscow; Writing by Richard Balmforth)
IN THIS CASE I BELIEVE IT WAS RUSSIA THAT SHOT IT DOWN BECAUSE THE EUROPEAN UNION AND PUTINS PAL OBAMA SANCTIONED HIM YESTERDAY.
April 2003-Plane Threat-Terrorists have never shot down an American passenger jet with surface-to-air missiles. But it's only a matter of time.By Soyoung Ho
Late last November, two slender metal tubes arced into the Kenyan air, streaking toward a charter aircraft that had just taken off, laden with Israeli tourists, from the Mombasa airport. Fired by suspected al Qaeda operatives, the Soviet-made missiles missed their target--leaving passengers relieved, and Americans suddenly aware of yet another terrorist threat. It may be new to them, but it's not to security analysts. Since the 1980s, shoulder-launched missiles have been fired at commercial airliners roughly twice a year, and even more frequently since September 11. And while terrorists haven't yet managed to blow up a nuclear power plant or detonate a dirty bomb, over the last 30 years, according to Jane's, the respected defense publication, such missiles have brought down enough charter, medical, or cargo planes flying over conflict zones to kill 900 people. More than two dozen guerrilla and terrorist groups are known to possess them. "If it has happened before, certainly we have to think … that it will be tried again," says Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.How big is the threat? For all the fear they inspired, last year's anthrax attacks killed just four people, while 1995's sarin gas attack in Tokyo, perpetrated by a Japanese cult, cost only 11 lives--terrible, to be sure, but illustrative of the relative difficulty of employing chemical and biological agents as weapons of mass destruction. By contrast, a single shoulder-fired missile could take down a Boeing 747, killing up to 500 people. And last May, the FBI warned American law-enforcement agencies that terrorist cells may already have smuggled such weapons into the United States. Yet the attention paid to this threat is minuscule compared with that of chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. Legislation, proposed by the Senate, requiring all U.S. airlines to retrofit their passenger jets with antimissile countermeasures has met a tepid response. Meanwhile, top administration officials almost never talk about this threat. And for all the pressure it has put on other countries to check the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, the administration has done little to keep these deadly yet economical weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Even worse, it has done a few things that might make the eventuality more likely.
Menace in a Golf Bag
Known technically as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, such missiles are in some ways an ideal weapon for the al Qaedas of the world. They are far more powerful than most small arms, and can strike from a distance, enabling would-be terrorists to inflict great damage at minimal risk. Small and light at about 35 pounds, they're easily smuggled. (With 20,000 uninspected cargo containers coming into U.S. ports every day, and fairly porous land borders, says Jenkins, "How difficult can it be for something that fits in a golf bag?") Nor are such weapons hard to find. The world's arsenals boast an estimated 500,000, from American Stingers to Russian Strelas; 5,000 to 10,000 of these are unaccounted for, including between 300 and 600 American-made Stingers delivered by the CIA to Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s. (When the Soviet-Afghan war ended in 1989, the CIA tried to buy some of them back, but only with limited success.)-Some 56 countries are known to have the SA-7, a widely-copied, 1960s vintage Soviet model. Another 20 own variations on the American Stinger. Pakistan, North Korea, China, and Egypt all manufacture variants on U.S. or Russian missiles. For terrorists seeking reasonably high body counts and wider ripples of fear and chaos, taking down a commercial airliner would do nicely, disrupting air travel and tourism as 9/11 did. "Al Qaeda, in particular, likes to destroy symbols of American economic power and global domination," notes Alan Kuperman, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. "Destroying American aircraft, especially overseas, would fit the bill quite well."So if they have the means and motivation, why haven't terrorists brought down an American 747? For a missile attack to be successful, an individual or group needs three things: missiles, motivation, and opportunity. And it's not easy to get all three at the same time.One simple reason shoulder-launched missiles haven't often been used against commercial airliners is that, until recently, it was simply easier to hijack a plane. But as airlines installed metal detectors and better airport security during the 1970s, hijackings became harder to pull off: There were 72 in 1969, but only seven in 1998. In-flight bombs, like the one that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, began to replace hijackings (9/11 notwithstanding).If terrorists were willing to use bombs, why not missiles? Here, too, the answer is that getting a bomb on a plane has been technically easier than downing it with a portable missile. Such missiles are more complex and delicate than simple timed bombs. Indeed, many of the shoulder-fired missiles most widely available on the black market are older models nearing the end of their shelf life. Over time, crucial components such as battery cooling units wear down. And although these can be replaced, refitting surface-to-air missiles isn't quite as simple as popping in a few Duracells. The end result is that terrorists wind up with more than a few duds. During the 1980s, Libya supplied a dozen SA-7Bs to the Irish Republican Army, but most turned out to be unusable. When U.S. troops raided al Qaeda strongholds in Afghanistan, they found shoulder-fired missiles piled up in caves, their fuses and other parts corroded or damaged. So it's not surprising that, out of the 1,250 aviation terrorist incidents catalogued by RAND since 1968, only 42 have involved shoulder-fired missiles. Since 9/11, a total of five missiles have been fired at civilian airliners--two in Kenya, one in Saudi Arabia, and two in the Czech Republic. All five either missed or misfired.
Even when the missiles aren't defective, they're not easy to operate. It's not as if Joe Terrorist can wander down to the local range and fire off a couple of practice shots. Before the mujaheddin received training by CIA operatives, they had significant trouble hitting Soviet aircraft with their U.S.-supplied Stingers. Most shoulder-fired missiles sitting in arsenals today have a range of 11,000 to 15,000 feet. Since that's far lower than the 33,000 feet airliners normally cruise at, terrorists must fire off the weapon while planes are taking off or landing. Likewise, the missiles still most widely available, SA-7s, have to be launched from behind an aircraft so that their targeting mechanisms can lock onto the heat emitted from a plane's engines. SA-7s also can't maneuver once in the air, making it relatively easy for pilots to take evasive action and avoid being hit.During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, according to a U.S. Air Force report, Arab armies fired more than 5,000 SA-7 rounds against Israeli Air Force ground-attack aircraft, but shot down only 30 planes. Even today, as a general rule, the best soldiers trained in the missile's use only hit about 70 percent of their targets in combat. And civilian jumbo jets, while bigger and slower-moving than fighters, can actually be harder to bring down with shoulder-fired missiles, since they can usually still fly after losing one or two engines. Of those aforementioned 42 attempts against non-military aircraft, about a dozen were successful. But only twice have larger commercial passenger jets been brought down--once in 1993, when Abkhazian rebels in Georgia shot down a Russian airliner, killing 106 passengers; and once in 1983, when UNITA rebels in Angola claimed to have bought down another such aircraft, killing 130.No one has ever taken down an American airliner with a shoulder-fired missile, in part because American airlines do a good job staying out of trouble. Most anti-American terrorists operate out of countries that don't get a lot of U.S. airliner flights. Of the groups known to both have the missiles and target Americans, few target civilians en masse. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, though affiliated with al Qaeda, limits its scope of operation to the southern Philippines, where few Americans venture by plane. Hezbollah famously attacked the American embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and was involved in the 1996 attacks on a Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, but generally shies away from going after American civilians.For that matter, American intelligence and law enforcement agencies have actually been pretty good at nipping missile attacks in the bud. Over the years, the FBI has prevented the real IRA from obtaining Stingers in the United States and blocked Muammar Qaddafi's attempt to provide rocket launchers to an Islamist street gang in Chicago. More recently, last November, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that two attempts to exchange drugs for cash and Stingers were foiled; in one case, the missiles were destined for al Qaeda camps.
Jam the Attackers
That's the good news. The bad news is that, to some extent, each of these barriers to entry is slowly crumbling. Since 9/11, for instance, the United States has made major strides tightening up airport security, from scanning luggage to searching passengers to a new program that would allow pilots to carry sidearms. But the harder we make it to hijack or place bombs on airliners, the more incentive terrorists have to try something else--like shoulder-fired missiles.Advances in missile technology, meanwhile, mean that should terrorists attempt to shoot down an airliner, they'll be more likely to succeed. The latest models, manufactured primarily by the United States, Russia, Japan, and France, have ranges of over 22,000 feet. That means terrorists can fire from farther away; it also means that airliners are vulnerable during a longer portion of their takeoffs and landings. The new missiles are also more agile, so that, once launched, they're better able to home in on the target and counter the pilot's attempts to evade. Finally, they're able to close in on aircraft from any direction, not just from behind--giving would-be terrorists greater flexibility in choosing a secure place from which to fire.That doesn't mean shoulder-launched missiles can't be countered. Under legislation proposed by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), airlines would oufit their planes with electronic devices that would jam the attackers' guidance systems. And other countermeasures can be deployed, from tighter security around airfields (thus forcing the rocketeers to fire at a higher and shorter sector of the aircraft's path) to scheduling more flights at night (when planes are harder to target). Airports could also reduce the number of flight paths and deploy aerial buoys--basically big balloons broadcasting IR and UV static--along those that remain, providing a curtain of sorts that would interfere with missiles' targeting systems.But in the long run, it's a lot more efficient to keep the missiles out of terrorists' hands than to defend thousands of airplanes and hundreds of airports. Unfortunately, new-model missiles have already been copied or acquired by Pakistan, North Korea, China, and Egypt, countries that have been willing to export military technology--and very irresponsibly--in the past. And when it comes to rogue regimes, like North Korea or Iran, "There's not much that you can do about proliferation," says Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brooks, a public affairs officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. The sale of missiles is perfectly legal between states, and Pyongyang won't exactly issue press statements should it decide to sell the equipment to Iran, which, in turn, could hand it to Hezbollah or Hamas. Aside from lodging protests, the next step is military action, such as the United States' interception last year of a North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles to Yemen. But as missiles proliferate, they'll be harder to interdict.The Bush administration has at least acknowledged the problem. After the attacks in Kenya, they belatedly convened an interagency task force to study the problem, and according to one State Department official, sought to persuade foreign governments to destroy some of the missiles in their arsenal, and to take more stringent measures against the theft of the rest. But other White House policies have undercut these efforts. Preventing missiles from proliferating requires foreign countries to more carefully guard their own arsenals and track down terrorists who may have already acquired such weapons. Right now, as a result of the administration's penchant for overbearing "diplomacy," most countries are not in the mood to help. And the White House's evident disdain for arms-control treaties makes it unlikely that Bush would ever seek an international agreement to more tightly regulate shoulder-fired missiles. (Currently, the United States is party to the so-called Wassenaar Arrangement, which in theory binds countries to keep close track of arms sales in general and shoulder-fired missiles in particular. Unfortunately, states not party to the agreement include China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and all of the Central Asian republics.)-Finally, we must factor in the unforeseeable effects of any war against Iraq. The administration clearly believes that taking out Saddam will send an unequivocal message to state sponsors of terrorism. Since sympathetic regimes are the best source for hardware and training for terrorists, the invasion could in theory lessen the threat from these weapons. On the other hand, the invasion is likely to inflame existing terrorist networks, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that haven't before made a habit of targeting American civilians. Both groups are known to possess SA-7s (and possibly more advanced models), and have operational capacity within the United States. So far, when it comes to the threat of shoulder-launched missiles, the United States has been fortunate. In the future, we may not be so lucky.Soyoung Ho is a Washington Monthly researcher-reporter.
