Dutch investigators say Buk missile downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Show Caption Hide Caption MH17 report: Plane shot down by Russian-made missile Dutch investigators say Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was taken down by a Buk missile fired from eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board were killed in the July 2014 crash.

The Dutch Safety Board concluded Tuesday that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

The missile struck near the cockpit, instantly killing the two pilots and another crewmember while breaking off the front of the plane, the board said in its final report of the incident that killed all 298 on board. Some passengers may have remained conscious for up to a minute and a half before the Boeing 777 crashed into the ground, but they probably were not fully aware of what was happening amid the oxygen-starved chaos, the report said.

Safety board chairman Tjibbe Joustra announced findings from the report — which does not say who was responsible for firing the missile — and showed a reconstruction of the front of the airliner.

Animation illustrates MH17's final moments Dutch investigators released this animation illustrating what happened in the final moments of doomed flight MH17 based on the Safety Board's investigation findings, which were published on October 13, 2015.

The investigators said the missile exploded less than a yard from the cockpit, and the aircraft came down over eastern Ukraine, where a conflict was raging between Russian-backed separatists and government forces.

Ukraine should have closed its airspace to civil aviation, Joustra said. “None of the parties involved recognized the risk from the armed conflict on the ground,” he said.

Very confronting. We are looking at cockpit and area marked by high speed penetration #mh17 pic.twitter.com/Ofj3WEpazH — Lisa Millar (@LisaMillar) October 13, 2015

Western officials have long said the plane flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Russia has denied involvement in the July 17, 2014, tragedy.

Ukraine says the missile was launched in Snizhne, an area controlled by separatists. The Dutch report identified an area of 320 square kilometers where the missile had been launched but did not state an exact site.

On Tuesday, the Russian state-controlled manufacturer of Buk missiles said its own investigation contradicts the Dutch report's conclusions.

Claudio lost his husband Glenn - this is the first view of aviation report #MH17 pic.twitter.com/Q5mwtXSnsd — anna holligan (@annaholligan) October 13, 2015

The firm, Almaz-Antey, said it conducted two experiments — including one that detonated a Buk missile near the nose of an airplane similar to a Boeing 777 — that dispute the report's findings. The experimental aircraft’s remains showed a much different damage pattern than seen on the remnants of MH17, the firm said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

Speaking at a news conference before the Dutch report was released, the firm's head Yan Novikov said: “We have proven with our experiments that the theory about the missile flying from Snizhne is false." He said evidence shows that if the plane was hit by a Buk, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time.

At the White House in Washington, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price called the report an important milestone to hold those responsible accountable for shooting down the plane.

“The report also serves to remind us of this terrible tragedy and the impact it continues to have on those left behind,” Price said.

Robert Latiff, a retired Air Force major general who is now a professor at the University of Notre Dame, said if separatists launched the missile, they probably lacked training in the weapons system, which includes radar and communications technology to track a plane’s transponder identification code. Russian troops would have been too professional and disciplined to make that kind of error, Latiff said.

“The people who ‘pulled the trigger,’ so to speak should have, as a matter of training, ensured that the target was not a commercial aircraft by checking for this code first,” Latiff said. “I suspect this was not the case, and some nervous, anxious or trigger-happy soldier was at fault.”

The Dutch Safety Board investigated the incident because 193 of those on board were from the Netherlands. The plane’s voice and data recorders were recovered within days of the crash.

The cockpit voice recorder offered no clues that the crew was aware they were about to be shot down. Two bursts of sound were captured in the final 20 milliseconds of the recording, with each lasting only four one-hundreds of a second. “Crew communication gave no indication that there was anything abnormal with the flight,” the Dutch report said.

Ukraine received information in June 2014 that “illegal armed units within the area” possessed portable surface-to-air missiles, according to the report. Ukraine’s military aircraft were being shot at and shot down.

On June 5, Ukraine ordered civil aircraft to fly at least 26,000 feet above the conflict territory. By July 14, three days before the Flight 17 incident, Ukraine raised the order for planes to fly at least 32,000 feet high. The order came the same day a Ukranian Antonov An-26 military transport aircraft was shot down.

But European air traffic control found that the restrictions did little to reduce flights over the region, a popular route for flights between Europe and Asia. After the airspace was closed where Flight 17 was shot down, the number of flights over all of Ukraine fell from about 1,300 daily to 700, according to the report.

Wreckage helped investigators piece together what happened. But investigators found it difficult to reach the crash site and gather evidence because fighting continued in the area.

The governments of Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia, which each lost travelers in the incident, have asked for an international tribunal to prosecute whoever shot down the plane. Russia vetoed the proposal at the United Nations Security Council, but Ukraine’s foreign minister said in July that another attempt would be made after the Dutch report was published.

The incident was the second disaster in one year for Malaysia within a few months. Flight 370 went missing March 8, 2014, on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and the search continues off the coast of Australia for the plane, after a wing part washed up on an island near Africa.

The Ukraine incident sparked a worldwide effort to get governments to share more information about conflict zones where planes should avoid flying. The issue is complicated because intelligence agencies that could warn where it is dangerous to fly don’t want others to figure out how they got their information.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a branch of the United Nations that sets policies, set up a web page to check which countries have been declared no-fly zones.

The decisions about where to fly are hotly debated. For example, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued a warning Friday that warships were launching long-range missiles from the Caspian Sea at Syria, leading to flight risks above the Caspian Sea, Iran and Iraq. But the agency didn't urge airlines to avoid the region.

HOW A BUK SA-11 WORKS

Soviet Union’s Buk is a medium-range surface-to-air missile system is capable of shooting down fighter jets traveling up to 70,000 feet. An example of one configuration of the system:

1. Brigade-level radars provide early warning to SNOW DRIFT radar, which identifies a target’s height, bearing and range.

2. SNOW DRIFT shares data with a command and control vehicle, working in tandem with it.

3. Confirmed target, data is used for missile launch and sent to the TELAR launch vehicle.

4. The missile travels at Mach 3, or 2,100 mph, with a warhead of 154 pounds of explosives.

SOURCE: GlobalSecurityorg