Malaysian 777 Plane Crashes in Ukraine

I misunderstood your last comment as being snarky as this information was already released by several public sources very early on. There has been so much irritating drivel in this thread, I've simply lost all perception/focus with what a crap fest this thread has become. Sorry.
 
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ATN_Pilot said:
Talking about geopolitics when a regional war results in an airplane being shot out of the sky is not "off-topic crap." :rolleyes:
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Actually, really, you guys are missing the big picture.

Many countries outside the US are very fragmented, and it's downright impossible to completely protect against flying an aircraft over a potentially hostile region. It's easy to say that we should just stay away from Ukrainian airspace (which we do), but we have no idea if hostile groups with SAM sites are hiding out in Russia, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Romania, etc. Those are countries we still do overfly, even after recent events.

Hell, even with the ISIS issues in Iraq, civilian air traffic is still heavy through Baghdad's airspace, mostly because the only other options are Iran (nope), or Syria (noooope). You can always take a southerly route over Saudi and Egypt, but the latter in particular has its own set of security problems. The general belief about overflying these regions is that these extremist groups don't have the firepower to reach your altitude, but we just learned the hard way that they do. It just depends on who's backing them.

And really, that's what's so gut-wrenching about this: It could have been anybody, and there's not much you can do if you're sitting there eating dinner at FL370 and catch the proverbial Golden BB. It doesn't keep me up at night, but it makes you think. There's a whole lot of world outside domestic hub turns.
 
A Life Aloft said:
I misunderstood your last comment as being snarky as this information was already released by several public sources very early on. There has been so much irritating drivel in this thread, I've simply lost all perception/focus with what a crap fest this thread has become. Sorry.
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Ahhhh. Gotcha.

Whoever doesn't think that the United States knew exactly what happened real time over there is extremely naive IMO. We probably even know the exact person that pressed the firing button.
 
Seggy said:
Ahhhh. Gotcha.

Whoever doesn't think that the United States knew exactly what happened real time over there is extremely naive IMO. We probably even know the exact person that pressed the firing button.
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If they do, then it needs to be shared with the European nations affected.
 
Well, clarity of any satellite surveillance, how good we are at tracking, etc. unless, of course our friend Snowden didn't just drop that data on Vlad's credenza.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Security of what equipment? They've already shipped the missile battery back to Russia. They've probably destroyed it as well.
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Along with the FDR/CVR. I don't know about you but I wouldn't like for the US intelligence agency to start showing our cards. This is a long drawn out game of poker. What I think needs to happen is have the Chinese and German government start putting pressure on Vlad & Co. The USA does not have nearly the size of the dog in this fight that those countries do.
 
It's not poker. It's not a game of any kind, and this "double sekrit probation speshul methods" BS needs to end. The probability of the US facing a threat to its legitimate "interests" (eg. National borders or freedom of navigation) is on par with the probability of getting hit by a meteor. And this bovine belief that when someone says "you can't know about that" it's somehow for your own good is BAFFLING.
 
It's not about "not sharing", it's about not giving away capabilities to China, Russia, NK, etc. While it's highly likely we have observations of the launch, we're not gonna tweet out exactly how good our sensors are. We will share information with our friends to use against our enemies. This is not an accident investigation, it's a military action, and secrets are part of the game, as much as that may ruffle feathers. Civilians die in war, and there's no use trying to explain or justify it. Just a part of war.
 
In my humble opinion this has nothing to do with the U.S., it's an international issue. If aircraft can't be expected to fly safely from one place to another civil aviation will grind to a halt. We have no dog in this particular fight but the implications from this incident will have huge effects from now on.
 
NewYorkophile said:
It's not about "not sharing", it's about not giving away capabilities to China, Russia, NK, etc. While it's highly likely we have observations of the launch, we're not gonna tweet out exactly how good our sensors are. We will share information with our friends to use against our enemies. This is not an accident investigation, it's a military action, and secrets are part of the game, as much as that may ruffle feathers. Civilians die in war, and there's no use trying to explain or justify it. Just a part of war.
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What does the Israeli mantra have to do with Ukraine rebels? The rebels have previously only shot down Ukraine military aircraft.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
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I'm thinking NAS Oceana can handle themselves in a war ;)

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Then again, I was a West coast sailor.......
 
JordanD said:
Not that I'm saying we should be totally isolationist, but I can't help but feel like a ton of our problems would be solved if we stopped playing world police, or not even going that far, the dad that's constantly turning around and saying "Don't make me turn this car around!" when the kids misbehave.

We catch crap every time we do get involved in something, and if we don't get involved all we hear is "why isn't the U.S. doing something?!" Unfortunately it's probably too late for us to throw our hands up and say "everyone's on their own", and the rest of the world knows that.
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The problem is not so much that we are playing "world police" but rather that we are playing "world drunken idiot". Ignoring our parents' and friends' admonitions to not to, we embark on frequent benders fulgent with romantic fantasies of danger, intrigue, and oil-rich, tax-and-regulation-free trade zones. Then we wake up covered in our own puke and excrement feeling like we should never go out again.
 
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