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Sunday, July 20, 2014

The Missile that hit MH17

The SA-11 missile - known as a Grizzly - that hit the doomed Malaysian Airlines flight is designed to pulverise aircraft on impact.

The 298 passengers and crew aboard MH17 will have been oblivious to the horror as a shrapnel-based missile instantly shredded the doomed plane, experts claim.

The SA-11 missile – known as a Grizzly – that hit the doomed Malaysian Airlines flight is designed to pulverise aircraft on impact.

It will have perforated the plane at various points, ignited the fuel, and taken out the engines and the wings within a split second – meaning the people aboard would have been unconscious almost instantly.

The surface-to-air missile hit the Boeing 777 with such force that residents in the area claim to have seen bodies falling from the sky ‘like rags’.

Justin Bronk, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told MailOnline: ‘An SA-11 missile is designed to shred aircraft.

‘The extent at which the remains of the aircraft are spread across a large area seems to confirm that.

‘The missile is programmed using a tracker to get within a metre of the target then let off a ring of shrapnel, which will enter the aircraft at various points.

‘The shrapnel will have hit the wings, the engines and the fuel tanks, igniting the fuel.

‘A large aircraft like that is highly pressurised to allow humans to breathe at that altitude so it will have exploded instantly.

The missile

MH17 was believed to have been taken down by an SA-11 missile, known as a Grizzly or Gadfly in the US, or a Buk in Russia.

The surface-to-air missile has a range of 1.8 to 12.4 miles and can hit targets up to an altitude of 75,000 ft.
It is launched from a command vehicle using a target-acquisition radar.

Once a target has been selected it takes five minutes to warm up.

Depending on the model, the missile would then accelerate to at least 2,790 ft per second to up to 4,035 ft per second.

This means it would have reached MH17 at 33,000 ft high just eight seconds after being fired.

‘Almost nobody on board would have known what was happening. If not instantly, they would  have been unconscious within split seconds.’

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