Europe-US Officials Say They Suspect SA-11 or SA-20 Missiles Brought Down Malaysia Jet

American officials, who said a surface-to-air missile was responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on Thursday, said they suspected that the missile was either an SA-11 or SA-20, both Russian made.

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777/200 ER 

In the early hours of the investigation, determining clear accountability for a missile attack was impossible, in part because all three of the forces in or near the conflict area - the pro-Russian separatists, the Ukrainian military and the Russian military - could possess SA-11s, which are one of many legacy weapons from the Soviet Union circulating through this war.

Known in Russian as a "Buk" and among Nato nations as a "Gadfly," the SA-11 was first designed in the 1970s. Successor variants are in the inventories of both Russian and Ukrainian air-defense units. A Buk system is vehicle-mounted and self-propelled, which means it can be moved around the battlefield, making it hard to track.

Buk / SA 11

For ordnance, the SA-11 system fires roughly 18-foot-long missiles that can reach much higher than the reported altitude - 33,000 feet — of the Malaysian passenger jet. (Some variants of the missiles can reach above 70,000 feet.) Each missile carries a large high-explosive warhead, against which a thin-skinned Boeing 777 would have no defense.

SA-11s are normally operated in a battery, with a command vehicle and a separate target-acquisition radar. According to a written analysis by Doug Richardson of IHS Jane's, a sole SA-11 vehicle "can also operate in stand-alone mode."
"Its built-in radar is normally used to track the target being engaged, but can be operated in a target-detection mode, allowing it to autonomously engage targets that were present in the radar's forward field of view," he wrote.
This would mean the separatists might be capable of using an SA-11, too, even without a full battery. (Recent interviews with rebels by The New York Times found that many were veterans of the Soviet or Ukrainian militaries, including air-defense units.)
But whether the rebels possess SA-11s, as part of a battery or otherwise, is an unsettled question.


Ukrainian and American officials have accused Russia of providing the separatists with many sophisticated and powerful weapons, and the rebels have also captured many Ukrainian weapons, meaning they could have obtained SA-11s from either source.

A social media post attributed to Igor Strelkov, the shadowy pro-Russian commander, showed him claiming to have captured Buk missiles. That claim has not been verified independently, and the rebels have been given to boasts.

The Ukrainian government released audio recordings that it claimed were intercepted phone calls between rebels discussing shooting down the plane.

The separatists have repeatedly spoken of other, verifiable air-defense capabilities, and have often been seen with other surface-to-air missiles — heat-seeking, shoulder-fired missiles known as Manpads.

With maximum elevations that are not much beyond 10,000 feet, Manpads cannot reach to the cruising altitudes of commercial passenger jets. Both pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian officials have said, however, that they have shot down helicopters in the conflict.

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Malaysia Airlines 17 (MH 17) CONSPIRACY THEORY

Putin may have been target of plane shot down presidential Jet & MH17 intersectioned at same point & echelon minutes apart

“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft – 15:44 Moscow time,” a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

“The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical“, the source added.

Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that US Intelligence detected a surface-to-air missile launch and tracked the explosion of the plane, confirming that MH-17 was in fact shot down.

Similarities between Putin's and Malaysian Airlines Planes

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Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH 17)

A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by militants on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

The aircraft, which other sources said was a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, Anton Gerashchenko said, adding that it was hit by a ground-to-air missile.

There was no further confirmation of the report, although Ukrainian officials said local residents had found wreckage.

 Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed it had lost contact with its flight MH-17 from Amsterdam. "The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace," it said.

Gerashchenko was quoted as saying: "A civilian airliner travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has just been shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft system ... 280 passengers and 15 crew have been killed."

Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), a typical cruising altitude for airliners.

It came down at Torez, near Shakhtersk, some 40 km (25 miles) from the Russia border. The area has been the scene of fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.

Ukraine has accused Russia of taking an active role in the four-month-old conflict in recent days and accused it earlier on Thursday of shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet - an accusation that Moscow denied.

My heartfelt condolence to all the families involved in this accident. My their souls rest in peace. 

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