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MH17 - DSB Annex 13 Final Report

Due to understandably high internet traffic, access to the download of the full DSB report is not yet available but here is Youtube footage of the DSB Final Report presentation. 

Courtesy of Planetalking:

Inquiry finds MH17 destroyed by BUK missile over war zone

Ben Sandilands | Oct 13, 2015 11:49PM |


Dutch Safety Board graphic of warhead detonating near MH17 cockpit

The Dutch led investigation into the MH17 atrocity has found a late model warhead compatible with the Russian built BUK missile system destroyed the Malaysia Airlines 777 over eastern Ukraine last year after it was allowed to fly over a war zone by an airline that never recognised the safety risks that killed all 298 people on its flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

The media presentation of the detailed report heard scathing analysis of the conduct of the airlines that continued to use the disputed airspace in which at  least 16 military flights, including some helicopters, had been shot down in the month before the jet was destroyed.

The Missile strike
Tjibbe Joustra, the chairman of the Dutch Safety Board said fragments of metal alloys unique to a recent production warhead compatible with the Russian BUK ground to air missile system were found in the bodies of the three pilots who died instantly when it detonated in a tight one cubic metre space close to the left hand side of their cockpit.
The fracture lines found in the reassembled pieces of wreckage showed that the cockpit was blown off the jet where the business class cabin began, setting off the mid air disintegration of the airliner.

Three simulations of the trajectory that would have been followed by the ascending missile placed the launch site within 320 square kilometres of eastern Ukraine. Those simulations, made for the inquiry by the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the Dutch Safety Board all lie close to each other within that wider area covering possible launch sites.

Chairman Joustra said further refinement of the modelling and analysis as to the more precise location of the missile launch location was potentially a matter for the criminal inquiry being pursued by the Netherlands’ public prosecutor.


The reconstructions of damage on the forward section of MH17

The use of unsafe airspace
The investigation found that 61 airlines flew through the airspace over the disputed areas of eastern Ukraine on the day MH17 was shot down. Between them they send 160 airliners into harm’s way on 17 July 2014 until airspace was closed immediately after the Malaysia Airlines jet took a missile in a region where a large number of military shoot downs had recently occurred.

Chairman Joustra said “We asked ‘Why did these airlines continue to do this’ and the answer was straightforward, and disquieting.

“Every single one of those airlines thought that it was safe. No one considered the possibility that civil aviation was at risk.

“Some airlines had thought otherwise. In the month before MH17 was destroyed at least 16 aircraft, including some helicopters, had been shot down.

“Despite this Ukraine did not close this airspace as a precaution. Ukraine said it didn’t think there was good reason to do so.

“We have concluded that there was sufficient risk for Ukraine to close this airspace.

“No one gave any thought to the possible risk to civil aviation. (Yet) on 6 June there was a NOTAM to pilots that airspace below 26,000 feet was closed because of the hostilities, and on 14 July that exclusion zone was lifted to 32,000 feet. ”

Mr Joustra said that during the previous month before MH17 was shot down targets flying at more than 32,000 feet had been destroyed.

The Dutch Safety Board has made a set of safety recommendations that airlines consider the risks of flying through airspace which is above war zones in which known armed combat has included the use of missiles to destroy aircraft.

He said that the investigation had eliminated theories that MH17 had been brought down by machine gun fire or an air-to-air missile  because the former would have caused different damage patterns in the airliner, and the later would have produced a radar return from  another aircraft.

There were no radar traces of any other aircraft close to MH17 before it broke up and crashed over a wide area of scattered woods and farmlands. There were three other commercial flights in the general area of the missile shoot down of the Malaysian jet but none that were close to it, or saw its destruction.

The Dutch Safety Board showed a video simulation of the events that destroyed MH17, which like the full report of the international investigation, is on its website which in the immediate aftermath of the release of its findings has experienced very high traffic.

Mr Joustra said that a number of counter claims made by the Russian Federation concerning the destruction of MH17 had been carefully considered, with some being incorporated in its findings but others rejected for reasons which are published at length in the full report.

MTF...P2