Calling All Munitions and Fighter Plane Experts: Is German Pilot Claim "Air-to-Air Attack" Brought Down MH17 Credible? - InvestingChannel

Calling All Munitions and Fighter Plane Experts: Is German Pilot Claim “Air-to-Air Attack” Brought Down MH17 Credible?

Peter Haisenko, a German aviation expert made a claim yesterday that air-to-air fire brought down MH17.

The above link is to a translated page.

As a lay person, it’s easy to be persuaded by such arguments. Moreover, even if Haisenko is an aviation expert, one has to wonder about his munitions expertise.

I have some questions later, but first let’s take a look at the essential claim, and some images.

Haisenko provides this High-Res Image of MH17 Cockpit.

Click on chart for sharper image or click on the preceding link.

Haisenko Notes

  • Cockpit shows traces of shelling, clean round hole, about 30 mm caliper.
  • Some holes are bent inward, some outward
  • Rivets bent outward
  • Minor cuts can be seen, all bent outward, which indicate that splinters the outer skin from the inside of the cockpit ago by beat [I struggle with that direct sentence translation – will update as soon as I get a better one].

Bullet Holes in Shell

That much is visible. The rest of what Haisenko has to say is quite controversial. Here is my modified translation (corrections welcome).

So what can be happening? Russia has published radar recordings, that show at least one Ukrainian SU-25 in close proximity of MH17. This corresponds with the statement of the lost Spanish controller who claims to have seen two Ukrainian fighter aircraft in the immediate vicinity of MH17.

Consider the armament of the SU 25: It is equipped with a double-barreled 30-mm gun, type GSh-302 / AO-17A, capable of firing 250 rounds anti-tank fire or splinter-explosive projectiles, in a defined order. The cockpit of the MH17 has been fired from two sides: the entry and exit holes on the same page.

Now just imagine what happens when a series of armored fire and splinter-explosive projectiles, designed so that they can destroy a tank, hit the cockpit. The shells partially escape across the cockpit from the other side, slightly deformed again.

The splinter-explosive projectiles will explode inside the cockpit, as designed.

Because the interior of a commercial aircraft is a hermetically sealed chamber, the pressure inside the aircraft in a split second will rise to extreme levels by these explosions. But the aircraft is not equipped. It will burst like a balloon.

Coherent Picture

The largely intact fragments of the rear sections are broken at the points that are based on the construction breakup most likely under extreme pressure. The image of the widely scattered debris field and the brutally damaged cockpit segment fit to do so. Furthermore, a wing segment shows traces of a grazing shot, which directly leads to extension to the cockpit.

Interestingly, I found that both the high-resolution photo of the cockpit as the segment are also now been removed from the grazing shot on the wing from Google Images. One can find virtually no other pictures of the wreckage, except smoking ruins.

Accident?

Even if Haisenko is correct, the image presented does not rule out an accident.

It is conceivable Ukrainian military aircraft thought they were firing on a Russian plane. Notice I did not say likely, I said conceivable.

Regardless, if plane damage rules out a Buk, then the air-to-air thesis that remains, however unlikely initially, must lead to the truth.

Six Questions

  1. Is the MH17 damage consistent with either a buk or an air-to-air attack?
  2. Does the damage assessment favor one type of attack vs. the other?
  3. Could a Buk reasonably have only hit the cockpit?
  4. Could multiple Buks be in play to cause both input and exit holes as show?
  5. If so, could multiple Buks have only hit the cockpit?
  6. Could the flechettes (dart-like or ball bearing-like projectiles) launched when the buk exploded simply have traveled completely through it leaving both entry and exit holes?

Three Scenarios

  1. If the damage is only (or primarily) consistent with air-to-air, we have a new ballgame.
  2. If the damage is consistent with either a buk or an air-to-air attack, with roughly equal probability, we have not learned much.
  3. If the answer to number 6 is yes, and the rest of the damage is also consistent with a Buk, and the damage is inconsistent with an air-to-air missile, then it is safe to rule out an air-to-air attack.

For now, I would like some military fighter-plane and munitions experts to assess the damaged parts and make a yes-no-maybe type of assessment on Haisenko’s analysis, not on who did it or why, but rather on an assessment of the images shown (and what type of weapon did the damage).

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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