I have also heard sometimes countries call in the US or whatever EU agency to consult along with their personnel.
For satellites, wouldn't you want the most accurate data anyway? Using US, EU and Russian (even China/India) imagery would probably be better than pointing a finger at the right country/agency and saying we should use their images because the plane crashed in their country.
> 16:05 GMT: > The Donetsk People’s Republic – where heavy fighting continues between Kiev and opposition – has denied reports in the Western media which claim that the Malaysian plane was shot down.
http://rt.com/news/173628-malaysian-plane-crash-ukraine/
Not seen that claim reported elsewhere. Lets see what happens.
edit: also, I bet dollars to donuts there were US citizens on the flight.
Do you mean the Swedish neo-nazi snipers fighting there? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329
Or are you referring to people who have taken up arms because they no longer want to be part of the Ukraine. Why not simply call these people "rebels" or "separatists"?
For that matter, Ben Franklin, George Washington and crew were "terrorists" from some POV.
But hey, the winners write the history books.
Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism. Terrorists use political violence to further their ends, but not everyone who uses political violence is a terrorist.
Exactly. It's terrorism when other people do it.
Yeah, that too. That's another reason that all of these definitions are a bit fuzzy.
And in case you're wondering, no, they didn't impeach the President or follow the constitution when seizing power.
http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/2849/was-the-cha...
Or are you just going to shoot the messenger?
You might want to double check that link you posted.
It would be a waste of resources otherwise.
Some launch areas are well-known (e.g., fixed land-based silos), some aren't (e.g., mobile launchers, submarines). So a wide-area detection capability is almost certain, though whether this includes arbitrary land surface areas is an interesting question. I'd be inclined to think so.
The Buk missles are ~700 kg (1500 lb), 5.5 m (15.3 ft) solid rocket systems. They're close to a sub-orbital missile system, and might be picked up by an orbital tracking system.
That said, I'm not sure what optical or infrared tracking exists. There's some discussion of SLBM/ICBM detection by the 7th Space Warning Squadron, but it seems largely reliant on ground-based PAVE-PAWS radar.
There was the 1960s MIDAS orbital infra-red detection system, replaced by the Defense Support System:
"The satellites are in geostationary orbits, and are equipped with infrared sensors operating through a wide-angle Schmidt camera. The entire satellite spins so that the linear sensor array in the focal plane scans over the earth six times every minute."
So any given spot on Earth is scanned once every 10 seconds. DSS involved 23 launches, I don't see information on presently active satellites.
There's also the note:
"The DSP constellation may have offered an excellent vantage point for an early warning system against state-centric threats such as missiles, but military analysts warn its ability to collect intelligence on non-state actors is severely limited."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MANPADS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system#Missiles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Space_Warning_Squadron#Miss...