TomcatViP-

Once again you’re judging by reason and not science. You might have a quarter of the energy at twice the height, but the air density drops off considerably above 18K feet, so your sound median isn’t very helpful to bringing the sound back down.

Nicely restored

The Ukraine is a modern example why you maintain armed forces as an assurance of sovereignty. I don’t think treaties can ever be trusted. Some of the greatest battles shouldn’t of ever happened because both parties already had signed treaties. It happened before the Battle of Vienna. It happened before Operation Barbarosa. It’s still happening today.

Yes the double boom is the supersonic missile. Few on the ground would have heard the hit, because those sounds would have bounced around up high. The sound isn’t like a firework because the charge is a tens of thousands of feet per second, not the paltry hundreds of feet per second of a firework.

Technically the group that fired the SA-5 is part of the breakaway Crimea. Chalk that one up for the rebels, too, now. It was a sign. /sarcasm

Well there once were MiG-15’s that required new engine overhauls every 100 hours. Don’t underestimate the stubbornness of management.

Such an outlandish conspiracy theory could work if we were to believe that the Buk missile system operators could recognise the difference between the Ukrainian air force and a civilian airliner passing through – but the Buk operators almost certainly didn’t know the identity of any aircraft out of visual range flying overhead, the had no IFF to go on – they simply attacked everything that flew overhead.

Even though it has an EO device meant to see targets out to maximum range even in moist conditions?