Flight MH17 crash: suspicions fall on the Russian BUK missile

In the aftermath of the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, the hypothesis of a missile launch causing the destruction of the Boeing 777 is favored by the European Union as well as the American intelligence services. The origin of the missile is not yet proven but the surface-to-air system of Russian design BUK M1-SA 11 or more certainly, the BUK MA2-SA 17, of more recent design, is an "excellent" candidate for this attack. brutal which left the airliner no chance.

• It's a missile, according to spy satellites

Ukraine is a region that has been placed under very high surveillance by NATO countries and the country placed under the “eye” of numerous spy satellites. Similarly, its airspace is closely monitored. The American intelligence services clearly identified a missile launch but did not go further as to its origin.

• What type of missile are we dealing with?

The Russian manufacturer Tikhomirov Instrument has developed several versions of its mobile surface-to-air missile system (installed on a carrier vehicle also equipped with radar) since the end of the 1970s. The first version of the M1 SA-11 (for Surface to Air) was put into service in 1984 and the second in 1994 and the new M2 SA-17 was put into service in 1998. It was used in 2008, during the conflict between Russia and Georgia. According to NATO nomenclature, Ukraine does have BUK missiles. Russia, Georgia, Finland and Syria have also purchased BUK systems.

These are so-called medium-range missiles, with a range of 45 km and 25 km in altitude. The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, which was flying 10 km high, was within the missile's firing envelope. The device weighs 721 kilos and carries a fragmentation charge of 70 kilos - it explodes into hundreds of particles that riddle the target - with a very strong blast effect.

The BUK missile system consists of a command vehicle which processes information and makes the decision to fire, a carrier vehicle equipped with radar and a launch pad equipped with 4 missiles and a vehicle with a surveillance radar.

How could the BUK missile target an airliner?

The airspace surveillance radar must first locate the aircraft, which for it is a moving point. The plane's transponder (that of flight MH 17 was on) sends its identification code to the radar, which describes it as a commercial passenger plane. What happened? Did the missile operators have orders to fire at any object flying over this area? Was the human identification of the target too quick or misinterpreted through "lack of training"? “A single person cannot make the decision to shoot. It's not two or three people who freak out and decide to shoot. It takes about ten people who have knowledge of the system to implement it”.

The Boeing had no chance: everything happened in a handful of seconds

The missile was fired and pointed in the direction of the Boeing but it is "blind". As it flies towards its target, the missile exchanges information with the ground radar, in order to “recalibrate” its trajectory. When the missile is close to its target, it “sees” it thanks to the radar of its semi-active seeker, which is guided not by infrared but by the echo returned by the fuselage of the device.

Barely a few seconds passed. The machine rushes at more than Mach 4 on its target, an airliner which, itself, moves at 0.8 Mach. The Boeing pilot saw nothing coming. Everything is going too fast. The impact is unavoidable because it is impossible for such a “slow” aircraft to perform an evasive maneuver or release countermeasures. The attack was violent, brutal and lightning fast. "The passengers didn't realize anything, it went too fast" assures an expert. A priori, Eurocontrol, the air traffic control system in Europe, has not received any message from the Boeing of Malaysian Airlines.