Fourth.:) First two, 2001 and 2002 were more or less “YF” type. Then 2011 and now 2012 appear to be representative of the production version. They are moving very fast, we might see ANOTHER prototype by the end of this year.

I am amazed by the size of the double standards that seem to be floating around in here.

Obviously I am saddened by the downing of the civilian plane. There is however a grave imbalance right now right here.

First of all western supporters should take it down a notch. The US have supported Iraq the fought Iraq, Supported the Taliban, then fought the Taliban, Supported the Islamists in Syria, and now they are taking apart Iraq. They are now supporting the Ukraine government which is openly Far-right (to the point of almost being fascist).

The west openly supported the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ethnic break up of that country but not of Ukraine, it seems if you are a Russian you are not entitled to be self-determined as the Croats or the Bosnian were in Yugoslavia.

The freedom fighters are defined only according to what suits US interests and I am saddened to see that people in here subscribe to this point of view.

It seems a lot of people in here want Putin himself to have pulled the trigger. I have no feelings towards the man, but I do see how one-sided the argument is.
As far as I see it, for the US to be happy and for Putin to be behaving, the russians in Ukraine should simply want to live under Ukraine rule. Right?

Again, I take no sides, but since the US (and the west) previously supported a similar move by some other people, why not by these people? What is different this time other than US interests ?

I find it disrespectful to wage a political war over the bodies of needlessly lost people.

Finally I repeat my statement, no matter who pulled the trigger, the plane should have never been flying over a warzone. NEVER. The only guilty party is the one which routed the plane over a warzone.

A sensible post FD. Not many of these around here, and if they are, usually they are getting swamped by all kinds of russophobic babbling from the usual suspects.

Further to what Paralay said. A well-standing member from acig.org (IIAF-JSF) advanced the following: allegedly a ukr. Su-25 was indeed shot down by a VVS MiG-29 from Millerovo on the 16th of July (this is what the ukr. government claimed, that the Su-25 was shot down not by novs. Buk but by the VVS). After that the ukrs. were keeping fully armed Su-27s on alert flying BARCAP and HAVCAP, and providing “security” to the airliners similar to the Sochi olympics f.e., which matched the spanish controller’s claim of 2 fighters escorting or following MH-17 until 2 or 3 minutes before the shoot-down. He believes the novs. could have thought the Sukhois might be escorting a high-value target and fired at it, however how about this: what if one of the Sukhois accidentally fired a missile (or even more)? How many times these kinds of inadvertent shoot-downs happened in the past?

Oh and come to think of it, regarding what the controller said: according to him MH17 was followed (or escorted) by the fighters until 2 or 3 minutes before it “disappeared from the radar” (his words). This is puzzling in that even if hit, it’s possible the B777 might not have disappeared from radar straight away, it would take a while to descend and disappear below the radar horizon (or disintegrate? any sort of evidence whether it spiraled down in more or less one piece- maybe minus one wing as paralay suggests, or it disintegrated before impact to the ground?). So why did the fighters disengaged? One possible variant is that they noticed on their RWRs being painted. Or it could be they disengaged after the hypothetical accidental launch of an AAM?

I’d like to add my thanks too to Vetinari for a level-headed and realistic analysis of this whole mess rather that follow, promote and take for granted the visceral and loudly vociferous russophobe babbling of the US and associated media.

As to what Nic said, well i think anyone capable of judging for himself would know that cynically the proverbial champagne would be flowing in Tel Aviv and Washington over the shoot-down of MH17, the first for a much welcomed distraction for their “operations” in Gaza (well over 300 gazans dead by now, but who counts it anymore, after all they are just worthless “towel-heads” dying… likely this will end with a full occupation of Gaza and beginning of “colonization” like in Palestine, you watch), the second for gaining an excellent propaganda tool to use against Russia, and implicitly to advance whatever “plans” they have in regards to Ukraine and ultimately the russians themselves.

Why would the Ukrainian army deploy high altitude air defense against rebels who have no aircraft of their own? Since the rebels have shot down several aircraft while the Ukrainian army has shot down none, I don’t see how the odds can be anywhere close to 50:50.

Against the rebels?! They are deployed by the ukrs. against the perceived threat from Russia (so i will not be surprised if there are actually 27 ukr. Buks over there as claimed ). At least one Strela-10 has been captured recently too, so one can bet there are plenty of those around too. I would not be surprised if some Ukr. S-300 batteries are covering the whole of Novorussia region as well.

It is incredibly astonishing that, notwithstanding the fact that the ukr. controllers directed the plane over a war zone that had multiple aircraft shoot downs, the MH17 overflew the exact site of the ONLY Buk in the whole of that region the rebels are sort of confirmed to have. Not a bit further south, not a bit further north, but EXACTLY there (the Buk doesn’t have that long of a range anyway).

Btw, the twitter page of the spanish controller who claimed that MH17 was escorted (or followed?) by 2 ukr. fighters until 2 or 3 minutes before being shot down has been deleted. Not surprised, but on whoever orders that tweet has been deleted, tough, too late.

This one?

http://www.airwar.ru/enc/fighter/su27ubm.html

xxxx, the level this forum’s quality sank to… first we have some who never set foot in Iraq and probably can’t point it on a map acting like they know everything and know who to blame (just regurgitating american propaganda mostly) for all this, and now we have this (islamist fanatic of some creed, who else can spill something like this) individual who openly supports these terrorist jihadist xxx called ISIL, the same terrorist xxxx who comitted THOUSANDS of terrorists attacks in Iraq (and Syria too) and killed indiscriminately INNOCENT men, women and children! This is mad… this is disgusting.