The Anonymous Widower

Shooting Down An Airliner Is So Easy

With the tragic loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 over Ukraine probably to a missile fired from the ground, it made me think about what sort of missile was used.

I found this article on the American Popular Science web site. The article says this.

Early information comes from an advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister, Anton Gerashenko. In a Facebook post he says the plane was “hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher.”

So what is a Buk  launcher? The system is described on Wikipedia. The operators of these missiles contain some of the usual suspects. So one battery getting into the wrong hands can do a lot of damage.

Now it’s been done once, the odds must have shortened about another idiot following the lead.

We obviously don’t have to worry about Buk launchers in the UK, as I don’t think it would be easy to get the system through the Channel Tunnel.

But there are many man portable systems that if you could get near enough to an airliner would severely damage it and make it incapable of flying. But even smuggling in something like a Russian Igla to a launch point might be difficult. But there are a long list of operators, who aren’t always the most friendly of countries.

I’m no expert on the deployment of missiles such as the Igla, but I do wonder if one could be launched through the cut-away roof of something like a Range Rover. Obviously, the exhaust from the missile wouldn’t do the occupants of the car much good, but the launch could probably be triggered by a simple remote system controlled by a mobile phone.

All you would need to do, is park the vehicle at the end of the runway outside the perimeter fence of an airport, where the planes go over at a couple of hundred metres or so.

And of course it’s very convenient that many airport authorities provide large long term car parks in just the right place. Long term car parks should be well away from the airport, if they exist at all.

The last variable I’ll throw into this post, is beware the innovator. If we believe reports, like this one, terrorists will develop all sorts of devices to down an airliner. So could they develop simpler weapons to shoot down an airliner, as it’ll be much easier than smuggling a bomb onto an aircraft.

July 18, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Flying, Malaysian Airlines, Terrorism