It was a horrendous military blunder-——bovine excretement, those systems know what kind of plane that was. It picks up the signal that tells it what kind of a plane it is.
Maybe if these smart weapons are in the hands of not-so-smart para-military types - the distinctions between types of planes is not so clear.
As horrified and aghast as I am about this MURDER, you are wrong in specific about the capabilities of an individual "BUK' launch type. While this individual launcher / vehicle is designed with a fire-control radar, the system concept behind the original Soviet setup had the IFF (Identification: Friend or Foe) at a different location. The whole system is designed with Russian institutional paranoia and top-down command in mind. This is part of the indictment against Russia and Putin, they gave their surrogates in Ukraine weapons designed for a different mission and MH17 is a wholly foreseeable consequence!
I was also waiting for the inevitable recollection of this incident...
I make no claim to fame to be intimately knowledgeable to that specific incident...
I can say that Captain Rogers (CO of the USS Vincennes) waited for way too long to actually shoot...
The “mistakes” were started when an IFF “read gate” was put over the contact while it was departing Bandar Abbas airport, one that is used for civilian AND military aircraft of ALL types...
Anyone who understands how that system and the operational side of things knows what I am talking about...
We had in that area a timeframe to react which was based upon “seconds”, not minutes...Combine that with the stress of transiting those waters and the surrounding threats does leave the door open for such mistakes, and not a lot of time to disseminate, or re-evaluate...Not where they were when this occurred...
The Russian backed separatists certainly DID (from my experiences) have the time and the wherewithal to determine these factors before shooting...
No one individual could have done this, the same went for the crew of the Vincennes...
The “REAL” thing is will anyone really pony up and admit to the causes leading up to weapons release???
I have my doubts about anyone on the Russian side of this admitting to anything...
I would be shocked if they did...They may actually get someone to fall on the sword, and save Putin’s reputation and those who are supporting this effort to destabilize the Ukrainian government and society...
I don’t know if the early 70s tech portable ones have the transponder readers on them - I thought this was of that vintage ... I could be wrong since I haven’t had time to dig into the system details.