Major failure by Dutch prosecution service. Requesting radar data of 2nd Russian radar 2,5 years too late
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Dutch Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie) at May 15 2017 made public it sent a request for legal assistance to Russia. The request is to provide radar recordings of a radar station located in Buturinskaya.
How is it possible Dutch prosecutor sent such a request 2,5 years after Russia made public TWO radar stations had primary radar capabilities.?
It is a combination of ignorance and Russia not willing to help the investigation.
Below the text taken from the ezine.
Furthermore, the OM reminded the Russian Federation of remarks that had already been made on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Defence during a press conference on 21 July 2014 and which refer to the presence of a second radar station that had covered the airspace at the crucial moment. This concerns a radar station in Buturinskaya. In a supplementary request for legal assistance, the OM explicitly requested the radar data of this radar station as well. Until today, the OM has not received any response to this request.
To start with, there is an error in this statement. Dutch Ministry of Defence did not do a press conference on 21 July 2014. The sentence should read ” Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation’.
At the July 21 2014 press conference by the Russian Ministry of Defence it was said that Russia detected objects from two radar stations located in Ust-Donetsk and Buturinskoe (Buturinskaya). (source)
“At 17:21’35, with [the Boeing’s] velocity having dropped to 200 kilometers per hour, a new mark detecting an airborne object appears at the spot of the Boeing’s destruction. This new airborne object was continuously detected for the duration of four minutes by the radar stations Ust-Donetsk and Buturinskaya“.
We can conclude from the own words of the Russian Ministry of Defence that Buturinskaya has also primary radar capabilities as it detected debris of MH17 after the transponder response was lost. We can also conclude the range of Buturinskaya radar is long enough. As this is an Utes-T radar as well this is logical. The range of this type of radar is 360 km while distance between radar antenna and missile is less than 270 km.
Dutch prosecutor should have been aware of this ever since July 21, 2014. At least I was aware soon after the press conference.
Dutch Safety Board already concluded in the final report published in October 2015 that Russia failed to hand over any radar recording in RAW or ASTERIX format. RAW is required to investigate what exactly happened as JIT explains here.
In other words: if the data had been submitted according to an internationally recognised standard such as ASTERIX, this would have enabled us to guarantee the integrity of the radar system including its subsystems. Internal checks could have been performed and the data could have been compared very well with data from other radar stations. It would have enabled us to gain better insight into possibly additional detection of objects which had not appeared on the radar screen of the air traffic controller, but that would have been collected by the radar system and stored in the subsystems.
There are 3 possible explanations for this 2,5 too late request by the prosecutor.
- The MH17 investigation team is totally ignorant and was not aware of a second radar station until recently
- The MH17 investigation team is totally ignorant and expected Russia to hand over all radar data. So recordings of both Ust Donetsk and Buturinskaya. However Russia sent only data recorded by Ust Donetsk radar station.I fail to believe that in a request for legal assistence something like this can be written ” please hand over all your radar recordings covering the Eastern Ukraine airspace dated July 17 2014.
I believe Dutch prosecution service should mention in a request all details including the location of the radar antenna.As all involved countries are requested by United Nations to help, the fact that Russia did not sent radar recordings of all stations raises some questions. Russia will likely respond to this latest request that it does not have recordings of the Buturinskaya radar station. - The team is delaying the investigation on purpose.
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From ezine:
“The first request by the OM to the Russian Federation for primary radar data regarding the area Donetsk/Luhansk for the period from 14 July up to and including 18 July 2014 dates from 15 October 2014.”
When the Russian MOD were making these claims they were pushing the line that a Su-25 might have shot down MH17. I have no expertise but the DSB’s claim that the second signal was a segment of MH17 detaching seems the most plausible – although hypothetically it could be an SU-25 bobbing up into radar visibility and then bobbing back down.
As I understand it these distant radar station have the issue that the curvature of the earth means the altitude where objects disappear beneath the horizon the further away you get. Since the role of a BUK missile is one of the firmly established facts now, I am not sure what the failure of the Russian radar station to detect one proves, other than the detection window was quite small.
Perhaps the Russians could claim that it less likely that a Buk missile fired from Svizhne could escape detection than one fired from a position further west. That is a question live firing exercises from the alleged Buk location might be able to answer.
It is one thing to criticize the Russians for tardiness in providing radar images, on the other hand at least they have provided some….