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It's true that the Ukrainian authorities should have declared the whole of the eastern region of the country as dangerous, and putting a 32 000 foot minimum safe limit was a bit daft considering that they must have known, or at least strongly suspected, that pro-Russians in the east had anti-aircraft missiles that could reach twice that height (airliners usually cruise at between 30 000 and 40 000 feet). It's also wrong that airlines, in order to save a few bob on fuel, would insist on flying over a region in which aeroplanes are being shot down up to heights not that far short of the safe limit. On the other hand, if one does have possession of such weapons, then it would be best to have personnel in charge of them who know the dangers involved in using them. According to the reports of various military experts, the missiles' guidance systems and ancillary equipment are insufficient to obtain a detailed identification of the target. This has to be obtained by other means, usually via communication with the country's air traffic control, to ensure that one's target is the plane which you wish to hit. If this incident was the work of pro-Russian elements, I suspect that they were aiming at a Ukrainian transport plane and locked the missile on to the Malaysian airliner by mistake, or that they misidentified the Malaysian plane as a Ukrainian one. Either way, they were unable properly to identify it until it was far too late, after it had crashed. Were the missiles of this type supplied from Russia, taking into account the potentially disastrous -- and foreseeable -- consequences of a heavy-duty anti-aircraft missile in amateur hands, it's unlikely that they would have been just handed over and not accompanied with operators who knew how to handle them and hopefully avoid disasters (such as this one) occurring. If this did happen, then this was irresponsible in the extreme. The Ukrainian authorities were amiss in not declaring the region to be dangerous and prohibiting all over-flying; the airlines should have avoided the area once planes started to be shot down (some airlines did do this). True enough. But responsibility must firstly be placed upon those who launched the missile and who in so doing failed to establish beforehand the actual identity of the plane at which they aimed it. Paul F ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
