The shrapnel damage is pretty much established as there are multiple videos from inside the plane during this flight prior to the crash and you can see shrapnel damage on the fuselage. The survivors are also confirming it, and report that there was a bang(which might be confused for bird strike).

The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.

> The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.

It doesn't seem to be too difficult to put together what is likely. Grozny was under active drone attack at the time with air defenses working. And Russian air defense crews are pretty infamous for the jumpy trigger fingers at this point.

And notably, the "drones" were civilian propeller aircraft fitted out to fly an unmanned suicide trajectory. I'm not sure they would even look all that distinguishable on a SAM operator's screen from a small jet like this.

It's one of the reason Russia was very hesitant to shoot them down initially. Some of the planes were cessna and similar single engine prop planes that were loaded with explosives and remote controller:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/02/ukraine-pac...

They weren’t Cessnas. They were Aeroprakts.

Except.. they are not jets, terribly slow, and fly at much lower altitude.

A regional jet on approach and a prop aircraft in cruise don't necessarily look that different in ground speeds, altitudes, or even radar cross section to most radars.

The regional jet is sqwalking on ADS-B, though.

Yeah but the ADS-B transponder didn't know its own location because GPS was being jammed by the Russians to try to force the drones off course.

Why is the jet even flying in an active war zone?

This is the Russia war coming home to roost. They better admit that they are engaged in an actual war, and stop allowing civilian aircraft in areas that are attacked frequently.

Secondary surveillance radar does not depend on tracked aircraft knowing their own position, though.

ADS-B is an augmentation of that, which makes receivers simpler, but ATC generally does not rely on it exclusively (except in some very remote regions), nor on any type of active/cooperative signal or response – if everything else fails (maliciously or accidentally), there's usually primary radar as well.

These "drones" are more like enclosed ultralights, heavily loaded, 50-80mph, which an airliner would have already stalled at and be dropping out of the sky.

Ukraine is modifying a large variety of smaller aircraft to be suicide drones. Yes, A-22s/A-33s are used which cruise at like 100-120MPH or so (though there's been some talk of turboprop conversions of the same, too). But other small civilian aircraft which cruise at more like 160MPH have been employed, versus a late approach speed of the Embraer of 180-190MPH or so.

And remember, radars vary groundspeed, which can easily vary by +/- 25MPH from actual (and will be reading the Embraer's speed on the low side).

The Airliner has a transponder and a radio. Pretty sure the drone does not.

The transponder code, assigned by various ATC would identify that aircraft as a civilian airliner when it checks in, and on the screens of the SAM operators.

Also, the speed and altitude of the airliner, even approaching Grozny would not be the same as a drone. Airliners, even on approach, are somewhat faster, probably 200-250mph, or faster, and much higher in altitude, at least 5000ft, probably more like 10,000ft until close to the airport.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't a hostile power also put a transponder on their drone (maybe one even replaying a nearby plane's code)? Surely that could help it blend in and avoid defenses

That would be too clear cut a war crime and would get the rest of the world to react rather harshly.

MH17 was shot down by Russians and nothing happened. Only harsh words.

Ukraine needs European and US support. If you are not Israel, doing easily provable war crimes is a good way to loose it.

As indicated below, it would be a war crime.

More importantly, it's not uncommon when crossing Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) regions (eg. from Washington Center, to NY Center) for controllers to instruct pilots to change Squawk codes. Same applies when crossing from one country's airspace to another.

One of these drones, without a bunch of extra avionics would be unable to change transponder codes in flight, and talk with controllers via relay, that would probably double the cost of the drone, or at least significantly increase it.

So even doing something creative, like spoofing the transponder Squawk code, from another aircraft, probably wouldn't help.

Also, with Mode-C, and Mode-S transponders, the later used with ADS-B, which feeds all the flight tracking websites, the transponder transmits altitude.

A SAM operator will figure out somewhat quickly if an airliner is supposed to be at 10,000ft and 250mph but isn't according to primary radar tracking, but much lower and slower, that it's spoofing it's transponder.

My brother is flying to Japan tomorrow and we were talking about how the flight has gotten longer because of all the active war zones that they can't fly over any more.

Is there anyone besides Russia who would have even been capable of shooting it down?

Yes, who shoots down entire civilian aircrafts?

Itavia 870 comes to mind: In the 80ies, a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft, and the speculation is that France shot the convoy, killing 81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870

It’s sadly somewhat common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...

Russia/USSR does seem overrepresented here.

Sure, but who's most likely to have shot down this plane over Russian territory?

The russians.

> [...] a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft [...]

Do you have any sources for that? The article you link does not seem to mention that theory.

That’s what I understood from a documentary, I think it was from Al Jeezira, a civilian was pointing that there was a double radar echo from the plane and it meant there were probably two planes on top of each other.

Sure the article mention a theory that Gaddafi was in a fighter jet, and the civilian plane was a collateral damage from a dogfight, but given the lack of information in the public space, both theories still have a lot of common points.

Yeah, definitely seems like a strange incident, but as far as I can tell there isn't any widely accepted theory for what exactly happened.

Well considering the incident happened in Kazakhstan, one might imagine Kazakhstan has air defences too...

The aircraft was sent away / prohibited from landing after reporting the explosion over Grozny, and had to divert to Kazakhstan to land without real pitch control.

Some view the denying of emergency landing clearance as an effort to destroy/obscure evidence: https://x.com/DailyTurkic/status/1872008574878298418

The pilots probably should have ignored that. There’s no such thing as “denying landing clearance” to an aircraft experiencing an emergency. There’s only “get out of the way of the incoming emergency.” But I can’t blame them for not wanting to take their chances when they were just shot by local air defense.

Do you really wanna push your luck with the people who just shot at you while also handing over all physical evidince to them?

"Yah, ATC is saying to leave-- but instead let's say 'unable' and shoot an approach at same airport where we just got shot at."

There’s also “accidentally shoot another missile at the threat that wasn’t shot down last time” phenomenon

The more obvious explanation would be that air controllers surmised that it was at risk of being shot at again if it continued attempting a landing in Grozny and the safest thing to do was to divert it out of Russia.

Regional air traffic control is in Rostov (on-Don) - you’d think they’d at least be able to get the military controllers at Rostov (Southern military district HQ) on the horn?

Assuming they have an established channel of communication, yes they would have, but imagine trying to communicate to them which blip on the radar screen is an actual civilian aircraft, and hoping they're able to track it and make sure they only fire on other targets.

The plane crashed in Kazakhstan. It was shot over Russia. It was still sufficiently airworthy to make quite a distance before crashing.

In particular some of the damage has a "linear" quality that could plausibly come from a continuous rod warhead, which would be typical for a system like Pantsir. If as the Russians claim, it was a bird-strike, you wouldn't expect debris from the failure of the engine to make a pattern like that on the tail, unless the entire engine body broke apart.

Likewise, it didn't look like it was on a glide path, but rather that as discussed the hydraulics failed and they has to use thrust vectoring to fly. Obviously for very fine correction on final approach that becomes difficult, and the result was what we saw. All of that is consistent with a missile.