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Posted on 20th July 2014 |
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Since I posted the comment about the Malaysian Arlines' jet shot down in Eastern Ukraine, I have found a new story from the Associated Press. There is one very pertinent statement in their story: "the rebels ... had assumed civilian aircraft were avoiding the area and that anything in the air was hostile." Apparently information about this assumption was posted online before the shooting down of MH17, on social media, and therefore accessible to both airlines and air-traffic-control. All this really begs the question: why did the people responsible for aircraft routing continue to assume that flights over the conflict zone were safe, in contradiction to the evidence available (and common sense)? The main thrust of the AP story is that the rebels used only half of a missile system: only the SA-11 launcher, and not the central radar command to which is is meant to be connected. They apparently don't have the central radar command units, which help to identify the aircraft detected by the launcher's targeting radar (using, for example, IFF). This is a bit like driving a car that has no brakes. | |