Some leads to ponder:
I cheer for Dan Dicks but fear he's starting to slip into the realms of over-simplification :(
Q's about the downed Russian Plane/ISIS event
Aviation experts think there's a strong possibility a Russian passenger jet was deliberately blown up over Egypt
http://www.businessinsider.com/aviation ... pt-2015-11
Aviation experts disagree on what caused a Russian jetliner to suddenly plummet from a high altitude and crash into the Egyptian desert on Saturday, killing all 224 people aboard.
On Monday, the airline ruled out pilot error or a technical fault, but Russian aviation officials dismissed those comments as premature. Robert Galan, a French aviation expert, said Metrojet's claim of an "external impact" pointed to two possibilities: a bomb or sabotage.
"Either a bomb was placed during the stopover and programmed to explode after takeoff, or a mechanic sabotaged the plane," he said. "These are the two most probable hypotheses." Sabotage would require familiarity with the electrical or fuel systems of the A321-200, but hiding a bomb would need less knowledge, he added.
Galan said an analysis of the plane's data and voice recorders — the "black boxes" — would not confirm a bomb or sabotage, as it records only the pilots' communications and technical readings. But he said investigators could know within 48 hours whether a bomb downed the jet because the debris would show traces of explosives. James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, said that while there was no direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet, it couldn't be excluded that the plane was brought down by Islamic State extremists in the Sinai Peninsula. "It's unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out," he told reporters in Washington.
Asked whether a terrorist attack could be ruled out, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: "No versions could be excluded."
'An external impact'
The Metrojet was flying at 31,000 feet over the Sinai when it crashed Saturday only 23 minutes after taking off from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg with mostly Russian passengers. Metrojet firmly denied that the crash could have been caused by equipment failure or crew error. "The only possible explanation could be an external impact on the airplane," Metrojet's deputy director Alexander Smirnov told a news conference in Moscow. When pressed for more details, Smirnov said he was not at liberty to discuss them because the investigation was ongoing. Asked whether the plane could have been brought down by a terrorist attack, he said only that "anything was possible."
But Russia's top aviation official, Alexander Neradko, dismissed the company's statement as premature and unfounded. In televised comments from Egypt, Neradko said it would be possible to draw conclusions about the crash only after experts examined the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders and studied the wreckage. He said the large area where debris were scattered indicated the jet had broken up at high altitude, but he refrained from citing a reason for the crash pending the investigation.
Viktor Yung, another deputy director general of Metrojet, said the crew did not send a distress call and did not contact traffic controllers before the crash. Russia's Interfax news service, according to a report cited in The Telegraph, has viewed transcripts of the cockpit recordings and noticed "sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight" right before the crash. "Sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight were recorded preceding the moment that the aircraft disappeared from radar screens," a source told Interfax, according to The Telegraph. "Judging by the recording, a situation on board developed suddenly and unexpectedly for the crew, and as a result the pilots did not manage to send a distress signal."
Alexander Smirnov, the deputy general director of Metrojet, the Russian airline company, speaking to the media in Moscow on Monday.
ISIS warnings
Egyptian officials have offered conflicting accounts on whether the plane issued any distress calls.
Experts say planes break up in flight usually because of one of three factors: a catastrophic weather event, a midair collision, or an external threat, such as a bomb or a missile.
A local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, has claimed it brought down the aircraft, which crashed in the northern Sinai where the Egyptian military and security forces have battled militants for years. Both Egyptian and Russian officials have dismissed that claim as not credible. Still, the US, Germany, and Britain all had overflight warnings in place for the Sinai. They advised airlines to avoid flying over the peninsula below 26,000 feet and to avoid the Sharm el-Sheik airport because of extremist violence and, notably, the use of anti-aircraft weapons.
British military analyst Paul Beaver said he thought the crash was most likely caused by a bomb on board, because ISIS hasn't been known to possess surface-to-air missile systems capable of striking passenger planes at cruising altitude. "That's a very serious piece of equipment, and I don't think they have that sophistication," Beaver said, adding that the Sinai desert was well scrutinized by intelligence agencies, so a missile system would have been seen.
'An explosion on board'
Terrorism expert Michael Clarke, the director of Britain's Royal United Services Institute, told BBC that a mechanical failure would most likely have led to some sort of distress call from the crew, according to The Daily Mail. "So the fact that there was a catastrophic failure at 31,000 feet, with the aircraft falling in two pieces, suggests to me an explosion on board," Clarke told BBC, according to The Daily Mail. "So was this caused by some form of terrible accident, which is unlikely, or a bomb, which is much more likely, my mind is moving in that direction rather than anything that happened on the ground."
A senior United States defense official seemed to rule out a missile attack late Monday, telling NBC News that an infrared satellite "detected a heat flash at the same time and in the same vicinity over the Sinai where the Russian passenger plane crashed." The official said, however, that the satellite did not detect the heat trail of a missile from the ground. A second defense official confirmed the satellite images, according to NBC News, and said the heat flash indicated "there was an explosion of some kind." US intelligence analysts believe the explosion could have been caused by a fuel tank or an on-board bomb, NBC News reports.
Safety concerns
The plane's operator has a spotty safety record and was rebranded recently in the wake of another deadly accident. The airline, registered as Kogalymavia, changed its trade name to Metrojet after one of its Tu-154 jetliners caught fire in 2011 while taxiing before takeoff, killing three people and injuring more than 40 others. The Airbus A321-200 that crashed Saturday was built more than 18 years ago and changed several operators before entering Metrojet's fleet in 2012.
One area investigators will look at closely is whether the tail separated from the rest of the plane in-flight as the result of damage caused by a previous incident in which the tail struck the runway during a landing, aviation safety consultant John Cox said. Such "tail strikes" can cause extensive damage to the aircraft's skin in the region located behind the rear lavatories and galley. The incident occurred in Cairo in 2001. Metrojet said the jet underwent factory repairs and was safe to fly. Cox said monthly maintenance checks typically couldn't spot a return of damage from a tail strike because the cracks are inside the plane in an area that's not normally accessible during visual inspections. Instead, tail strike repairs are examined during heavy maintenance checks that typically take place about every four to five years, he said. Parts of the plane are disassembled so that inspectors can see inside. The plane's skin is checked for cracks using a device that employs low voltage electricity or special dye. "That's a very complex repair and it requires very special expertise," said Cox, a former airline pilot and accident investigator. Investigators will "look not only at whether the repair done properly, but were the inspections of the repair done on a regular basis during the normal heavy maintenance checks." If damage from a tail strike returned, it would be in form of small cracks that grow larger with the normal stresses of repeated pressurization and depressurization.
In 2002, China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrated in midair while flying from Taiwan to Hong Kong, killing all 225 people aboard. Accident investigators cited metal fatigue caused by inadequate maintenance after an earlier tail strike as the probable cause of the accident. The Irish Aviation Authority said the Metrojet plane was registered in Ireland, and regulators there found its safety documentation in order earlier this year.
At the crash site in the Sinai, emergency workers and aviation experts from Russia and Egypt searched the barren terrain for more bodies and examined the debris. Teams finished combing a 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) area for bodies by afternoon and expanded the search to a 30-square-kilometer (11.6 square mile) area. Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov promised the teams would not rest until all victims' remains were found. Investigators from France and Germany, representing Airbus, and from Ireland, where the plane was registered, were to join investigators in Egypt. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the US offered support for the investigation, but he added that he was not aware of any resources that had been dedicated to it so far. "Rather than speculating on what may have led to this terribly tragic incident, we're going to allow the investigation to move forward to try to get the bottom of what happened," he said.
A Russian government plane brought 130 bodies and partial remains to St. Petersburg. The city is holding three days of mourning through Tuesday. In his first public appearance since the crash, Putin described it as an "enormous tragedy" and said his thoughts were with the families of the victims. Mourners have been coming to St. Petersburg's airport since Saturday with flowers, pictures of the victims, stuffed animals, and paper planes. Others went to churches and lit candles in memory of the dead.
Sunday was a national day of mourning, and flags flew at half-staff across Russia.
http://www.businessinsider.com/aviation ... pt-2015-11
Aviation experts disagree on what caused a Russian jetliner to suddenly plummet from a high altitude and crash into the Egyptian desert on Saturday, killing all 224 people aboard.
On Monday, the airline ruled out pilot error or a technical fault, but Russian aviation officials dismissed those comments as premature. Robert Galan, a French aviation expert, said Metrojet's claim of an "external impact" pointed to two possibilities: a bomb or sabotage.
"Either a bomb was placed during the stopover and programmed to explode after takeoff, or a mechanic sabotaged the plane," he said. "These are the two most probable hypotheses." Sabotage would require familiarity with the electrical or fuel systems of the A321-200, but hiding a bomb would need less knowledge, he added.
Galan said an analysis of the plane's data and voice recorders — the "black boxes" — would not confirm a bomb or sabotage, as it records only the pilots' communications and technical readings. But he said investigators could know within 48 hours whether a bomb downed the jet because the debris would show traces of explosives. James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, said that while there was no direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet, it couldn't be excluded that the plane was brought down by Islamic State extremists in the Sinai Peninsula. "It's unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out," he told reporters in Washington.
Asked whether a terrorist attack could be ruled out, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: "No versions could be excluded."
'An external impact'
The Metrojet was flying at 31,000 feet over the Sinai when it crashed Saturday only 23 minutes after taking off from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg with mostly Russian passengers. Metrojet firmly denied that the crash could have been caused by equipment failure or crew error. "The only possible explanation could be an external impact on the airplane," Metrojet's deputy director Alexander Smirnov told a news conference in Moscow. When pressed for more details, Smirnov said he was not at liberty to discuss them because the investigation was ongoing. Asked whether the plane could have been brought down by a terrorist attack, he said only that "anything was possible."
But Russia's top aviation official, Alexander Neradko, dismissed the company's statement as premature and unfounded. In televised comments from Egypt, Neradko said it would be possible to draw conclusions about the crash only after experts examined the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders and studied the wreckage. He said the large area where debris were scattered indicated the jet had broken up at high altitude, but he refrained from citing a reason for the crash pending the investigation.
Viktor Yung, another deputy director general of Metrojet, said the crew did not send a distress call and did not contact traffic controllers before the crash. Russia's Interfax news service, according to a report cited in The Telegraph, has viewed transcripts of the cockpit recordings and noticed "sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight" right before the crash. "Sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight were recorded preceding the moment that the aircraft disappeared from radar screens," a source told Interfax, according to The Telegraph. "Judging by the recording, a situation on board developed suddenly and unexpectedly for the crew, and as a result the pilots did not manage to send a distress signal."
Alexander Smirnov, the deputy general director of Metrojet, the Russian airline company, speaking to the media in Moscow on Monday.
ISIS warnings
Egyptian officials have offered conflicting accounts on whether the plane issued any distress calls.
Experts say planes break up in flight usually because of one of three factors: a catastrophic weather event, a midair collision, or an external threat, such as a bomb or a missile.
A local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, has claimed it brought down the aircraft, which crashed in the northern Sinai where the Egyptian military and security forces have battled militants for years. Both Egyptian and Russian officials have dismissed that claim as not credible. Still, the US, Germany, and Britain all had overflight warnings in place for the Sinai. They advised airlines to avoid flying over the peninsula below 26,000 feet and to avoid the Sharm el-Sheik airport because of extremist violence and, notably, the use of anti-aircraft weapons.
British military analyst Paul Beaver said he thought the crash was most likely caused by a bomb on board, because ISIS hasn't been known to possess surface-to-air missile systems capable of striking passenger planes at cruising altitude. "That's a very serious piece of equipment, and I don't think they have that sophistication," Beaver said, adding that the Sinai desert was well scrutinized by intelligence agencies, so a missile system would have been seen.
'An explosion on board'
Terrorism expert Michael Clarke, the director of Britain's Royal United Services Institute, told BBC that a mechanical failure would most likely have led to some sort of distress call from the crew, according to The Daily Mail. "So the fact that there was a catastrophic failure at 31,000 feet, with the aircraft falling in two pieces, suggests to me an explosion on board," Clarke told BBC, according to The Daily Mail. "So was this caused by some form of terrible accident, which is unlikely, or a bomb, which is much more likely, my mind is moving in that direction rather than anything that happened on the ground."
A senior United States defense official seemed to rule out a missile attack late Monday, telling NBC News that an infrared satellite "detected a heat flash at the same time and in the same vicinity over the Sinai where the Russian passenger plane crashed." The official said, however, that the satellite did not detect the heat trail of a missile from the ground. A second defense official confirmed the satellite images, according to NBC News, and said the heat flash indicated "there was an explosion of some kind." US intelligence analysts believe the explosion could have been caused by a fuel tank or an on-board bomb, NBC News reports.
Safety concerns
The plane's operator has a spotty safety record and was rebranded recently in the wake of another deadly accident. The airline, registered as Kogalymavia, changed its trade name to Metrojet after one of its Tu-154 jetliners caught fire in 2011 while taxiing before takeoff, killing three people and injuring more than 40 others. The Airbus A321-200 that crashed Saturday was built more than 18 years ago and changed several operators before entering Metrojet's fleet in 2012.
One area investigators will look at closely is whether the tail separated from the rest of the plane in-flight as the result of damage caused by a previous incident in which the tail struck the runway during a landing, aviation safety consultant John Cox said. Such "tail strikes" can cause extensive damage to the aircraft's skin in the region located behind the rear lavatories and galley. The incident occurred in Cairo in 2001. Metrojet said the jet underwent factory repairs and was safe to fly. Cox said monthly maintenance checks typically couldn't spot a return of damage from a tail strike because the cracks are inside the plane in an area that's not normally accessible during visual inspections. Instead, tail strike repairs are examined during heavy maintenance checks that typically take place about every four to five years, he said. Parts of the plane are disassembled so that inspectors can see inside. The plane's skin is checked for cracks using a device that employs low voltage electricity or special dye. "That's a very complex repair and it requires very special expertise," said Cox, a former airline pilot and accident investigator. Investigators will "look not only at whether the repair done properly, but were the inspections of the repair done on a regular basis during the normal heavy maintenance checks." If damage from a tail strike returned, it would be in form of small cracks that grow larger with the normal stresses of repeated pressurization and depressurization.
In 2002, China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrated in midair while flying from Taiwan to Hong Kong, killing all 225 people aboard. Accident investigators cited metal fatigue caused by inadequate maintenance after an earlier tail strike as the probable cause of the accident. The Irish Aviation Authority said the Metrojet plane was registered in Ireland, and regulators there found its safety documentation in order earlier this year.
At the crash site in the Sinai, emergency workers and aviation experts from Russia and Egypt searched the barren terrain for more bodies and examined the debris. Teams finished combing a 20-square-kilometer (7.7-square-mile) area for bodies by afternoon and expanded the search to a 30-square-kilometer (11.6 square mile) area. Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov promised the teams would not rest until all victims' remains were found. Investigators from France and Germany, representing Airbus, and from Ireland, where the plane was registered, were to join investigators in Egypt. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the US offered support for the investigation, but he added that he was not aware of any resources that had been dedicated to it so far. "Rather than speculating on what may have led to this terribly tragic incident, we're going to allow the investigation to move forward to try to get the bottom of what happened," he said.
A Russian government plane brought 130 bodies and partial remains to St. Petersburg. The city is holding three days of mourning through Tuesday. In his first public appearance since the crash, Putin described it as an "enormous tragedy" and said his thoughts were with the families of the victims. Mourners have been coming to St. Petersburg's airport since Saturday with flowers, pictures of the victims, stuffed animals, and paper planes. Others went to churches and lit candles in memory of the dead.
Sunday was a national day of mourning, and flags flew at half-staff across Russia.
So what we have here is another classic example of US Mainstream Media/Govt purporting a very specific story, LONG before any investigation has even begun, and the many different possible scenarios have been exhausted.
Why people continue to buy into Western mainstream anything is completely beyond me anymore.
Why people continue to buy into Western mainstream anything is completely beyond me anymore.
People are stupid and don't care if it doesn't affect them directly in a way they notice. I.E taking away their wifi.
And once the first idea has been planted it doesn't really matter what comes after. Propaganda is easy.
And once the first idea has been planted it doesn't really matter what comes after. Propaganda is easy.
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Devil's Advocate
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- Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:52 am
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It had to be a bomb, planted when the plane was at the airport in Egypt.
I think the ISIS claim is bogus, and is a red herring.
This stinks of CIA or Mossad to me.
Payback for Putin interfering in Syria.
I think the ISIS claim is bogus, and is a red herring.
This stinks of CIA or Mossad to me.
Payback for Putin interfering in Syria.
Devil's Advocate wrote:It had to be a bomb, planted when the plane was at the airport in Egypt.
aided by bogus bomb detectors. remember james mccormick?
it was planted.
hard to say if the ISIS claim is bogus because that would depend on who is pulling their stings imho. but doesn't seem their MO if planted bomb.
regardless, they have claimed responsibility for it so the narrative is set in stone.
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Devil's Advocate
- Posts: 314
- Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:52 am
- Reputation: 531
Daglord wrote:
hard to say if the ISIS claim is bogus because that would depend on who is pulling their stings imho. but doesn't seem their MO if planted bomb.
regardless, they have claimed responsibility for it so the narrative is set in stone.
Well, someone that the media described as an "ISIS affiliate in Egypt" allegedly claimed responsibility via a website or social media, which is hardly the most concrete source. The media routinely quote unverified social media sources as being the voice of ISIS when it suits them, so i'm dubious about the claim. That's the beauty of ISIS being at least a 50% unconfirmed mythology, they can be adapted to fit as the bogeyman in any number of scenarios.
Devil's Advocate wrote:Daglord wrote:
hard to say if the ISIS claim is bogus because that would depend on who is pulling their stings imho. but doesn't seem their MO if planted bomb.
regardless, they have claimed responsibility for it so the narrative is set in stone.
Well, someone that the media described as an "ISIS affiliate in Egypt" allegedly claimed responsibility via a website or social media, which is hardly the most concrete source. The media routinely quote unverified social media sources as being the voice of ISIS when it suits them, so i'm dubious about the claim. That's the beauty of ISIS being at least a 50% unconfirmed mythology, they can be adapted to fit as the bogeyman in any number of scenarios.
media on both sides of the conflict.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's the story & they're sticking to it. I have yet to see this video & found it odd that it wasn't included.
ISIS releases video claiming revenge ‘downing’ of Russian passenger jet over Sinai
https://www.rt.com/news/320693-russian-plane-sinai-isis-claim/
A new Islamic State video shows a Russian-speaking jihadist praising his “Sinai brothers” for “taking down” a Russian passenger jet and threatening more attacks, while both Russia and Egypt say the group doesn’t possess the means to shoot down a plane.
In the newly-released video, five Islamic State (IS, formely ISIS/ISIL) jihadists are seen sitting outside as one of them praises militants in the Sinai Peninsula for allegedly bringing down the Russian A321 passenger jet with 224 people on board.
Surrounded by four fellow jihadists, a Slavic-looking man speaking both in Russian and Arabic, addresses President Vladimir Putin, warning the Russian leader that he would regret targeting ISIS in Syria.
With a knife in hand, he threatens to continue taking down planes, invading countries, and killing people in retaliation for Russia’s military operation in Syria.
of course, even if the IS didn't have anything to do with it, why wouldn't they claim responsibility? perfect opportunity to continue to spread the fear of terror with minimal effort. propaganda 101.
That's the beauty of ISIS being at least a 50% unconfirmed mythology, they can be adapted to fit as the bogeyman in any number of scenarios.
yup. they are the new al-qaeda.
And now they've got white people. Hmmm, war machine ramping things up.
LOL @ this crap.
Egypt says 'no evidence' of terrorism in Russian plane crash
The investigation into the crash of a Russian passenger plane killing all 224 people onboard has found no indication of foul play, says Egypt's chief investigator
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... crash.html
Egypt says 'no evidence' of terrorism in Russian plane crash
The investigation into the crash of a Russian passenger plane killing all 224 people onboard has found no indication of foul play, says Egypt's chief investigator
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... crash.html
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