(Newswire.net — June 30, 2017) — The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of aviation experts and investigators from the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia and Ukraine stated on September 2016 that Flight MH17 had been shot down by a Russian Buk anti-aircraft missile.
The missile was allegedly fired from the territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels. The explanation offered for the absence of a Buk surface-to-air missile system on the ground was that the mobile unit was returned to the neighboring Russia immediately after it had launched the missile.
But there are more challenges to this theory.
The Russian Utes-T air route radar system didn’t catch the reflection of any object in the vicinity, other than the MH17.
Dutch Security and Justice Minister Stef Blok last week said that the missile could slip undetected between two turns of rotary scanning. Comparing a radar system to a lighthouse, he stated that there is a time between turns that could be sufficient for a missile to slip undetected.
An air surveillance radar system is by far more sophisticated than a lighthouse and specifically designed to detect anything that flies, larger than a bird, regardless of its speed, and it is absolutely capable of detecting a missile or any similar object entering the airspace, the head of Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia, Oleg Storchevoy, said on Tuesday.
“It is inappropriate to say that a radar station could miss the missile,” Storchevoy commenting on the latest Dutch claims.
Storchevoy explained that radar turn time is 10 seconds, so the Utes-T could not have missed the Buk missile as it takes more than 30 seconds to hit the target.
Commenting on the Dutch report, according to which the missile was moving along the trajectory in the version of ‘launch on a head-on course,’ Storchevoy said that it means that the radar would register at least two clear ticks during the missile’s flight time of some 35 seconds.
Further more, the Russian Utes-T air route radar system detected the airplane second to the disaster and there was nothing, but the MH17 reflection. The black box found at the crash site indicates that the disaster occurred at 13:20:03 GMT. The Utes-T last registered the aircraft at 13:20:01.87, less than a second and a half before, so it would be virtually impossible for the system not to record the reflection of a missile approaching the airplane.
Yet, the missile “sliped under the radar.”
Moscow has been repeatedly arguing that there is something fishy in the investigation into the MH17 crash. Despite the absence of substantial evidence, such as air control logs, western media rushed to pin the blame for the tragedy on the rebels and, ultimately, on Russia.