BUK missile impacts in residential area at Makeevka in Eastern Ukraine
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A tail section of a BUK missile impacted the ground in a residential area in Makeevka, Eastern Ukraine at February 1.
According Pro Russian press the missile was shot by Ukraine Army at a OSCE unmanned drone. OSCE uses drones to observe military actions in Eastern Ukraine.
The location the missile was shot from however indicates separatists shot the BUK missile.
However the OSCE monitoring missing in Ukraine reported on none of their drones was a target. Nor any wreckage of a drone was found.
A more likely target could be a United States Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk UASs (Unmanned Aerial Systems) drone. These fly at around 15000 and can easily be reached by BUK missiles. These do operate above eastern Ukraine as this post shows.
УТОЧНЕННЯ:
Всупереч повідомленням деяких ЗМІ, останнім часом жоден з безпілотників СММ не зазнавав атак.— OSCE SMM Ukraine (@OSCE_SMM)
Many photos showing the wreckage are displayed here.
This video shows the remains.
A which shows the direction the BUK missile was launched from. Reports say the missile was launched from the YaKKhZ factory (location here) which is about 3 km from the place where the missile impacted. The complete area is under control of the separatists supported by Russia.
At Russian forum mh17.webtalk.ru a photo of the BUK wreckage was shown. It shows a serial number which looks to be in the same range as a BUK missile which was handed over to the Joint Investigation Team investigating MH17.
However there does not seem to be a relation between the two numbers.
Smolensk website has some additional info like the exact location the missile landed.
The serial/batch of the crashed BUK missile is 9M38M188
The serial of the JIT supplied BUK missile is 9M38M1887221023
One of the photos published by JIT shows a container to store a missile in with a serialnumber ending with 88563784
The structure of the numbering is yet unknown. Most likely the structure is
where type is either 9M38M1 , 9M317
yy is the year of manufacturing
xxxxx is a unique serialnumber
This post has some more photos showing serialnumbers.
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The fragment with a serial number looks like a fake to me. Seems too unlikely it would have such a look after detonation of a warhead and the tail section having impacted the ground. But lets assume this was a real launch of a Buk missile. Obviously, a tail section could not fly away too far from the vertical projection of a point of warhead detonation. So the warhead detonated over the territory controlled by hybrid pro-Russian troops. Solid fuel was burning low yet after the impact, that mean the missile had been launched not much earlier than ~20 sec ago before the tail section impacted the ground, so it was likely launched from that territory too. If the target was a drone, reasonably to assume it was not Russian, since it would be too silly for UAF to fire at a Russian drone flying over the occupied territory, with a Buk missile. Hope there is no need to explain why. Yet more stupid for UAF would be firing at an OSCE drone flying over there, with a Buk missile. But OSCE denies any attack anyway. Other versions for the target could be Russian or Ukrainian warplanes, but so far there is no evidence for that. So, IF the launch was real, the most likely target was a UAF drone. But IMHO the most likely version it was just a propaganda fake.
My 0,2 cents so far (3.Feb)…
If the site is not just a “set-up” for propaganda:
-missile seems to be 9M38M1 from y1988
-it did not detonate on air (because remains hitting ground were large)
-if it did not detonate on ground (too little explosion / frag effects) it was dead HW when hitting ground
-it perhaps malfunctioned after launch?
-or attempt was made to launch it by just igniting the rocket engine to make it work like a larger GRAD?
(in 2014 we saw Russian 9M38M1 in Rostov from y86 and y89 & also 9M38 from y1986, UA delivered y1988 BUK M1 to JIT)
We also know at least 6 BUK boxes was left behind by UA in Donetsk base. We do not know if those boxes were empty etc.
Anyway/nevertheless, both sides could have BUKs from same production “batch”.
It does not seem sane to use BUK vs small drone.
But there has been US Raptor drone flying above Ukraine.
+UA has said RU had been testing bombing capable drone vs their troops.
+ if I may remind a link:
https://whathappenedtoflightmh17.com/usaf-drone-operations-over-eastern-ukraine/
“A user on Twitter did some geolocation which shows the direction the BUK missile was launched from.”
fun way http://s06.radikal.ru/i179/1702/1d/42643c023f94.jpg
If we took on the excavated pit to determine the direction, then do not give out the desired for the reality
http://s018.radikal.ru/i509/1702/a9/d15d115b5248.jpg
http://s45.radikal.ru/i109/1702/81/0db6d1bf37c2.jpg
http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/296416
Mission observed
…..
surface-to-air missile system near Hannivka.
Hannivka two in the Donetsk region
47.90889,37.26000
48.480449, 37.124147
Which surface-to-air missile system, OSCE unfortunately not thinned
I’m sorry, did not immediately noticed,
“surface-to-air missile system (9K33 Osa, 210mm) near Hannivka (58km west of Luhansk).”