In mid-July Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 017 was shot down by a Russian SA-11 missile while flying over the eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 on board. This incident seems likely to have far greater impact on Western relations with Russia than the Russian attacks on Ukraine and, previously, on Georgia. Western governments inclined not to enforce expensive economic sanctions against the Russians may find it almost impossible to ignore the images of innocent citizens, most of them Dutch and Australian, killed by a Russian missile fired irresponsibly (or perhaps intentionally, which would be far worse) into an area traversed by airliners. Conversely, that the Russians preferred to cover up responsibility for the attack, rather than make any attempt at an apology and restitution, seems destined to inflame the affair and to keep its memory alive.
It seems likely, moreover, that the missile was moved into Ukraine specifically to preclude aerial surveillance of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, to preserve what might be called plausible deniability of direct Russian official involvement. Russian cover was already thin when the airliner was shot down. Internet video shows Russian tanks rolling across the Ukrainian border (with Ukrainian markings added) to participate in the civil war. Rocket batteries on the Russian side of the border have bombarded Ukrainian troops. Further video shows the SA-11 launch/control vehicle (minus one of its missiles) rolling back from Ukraine into Russia. Any Russian hope of plausible deniability of involvement in the Ukrainian war has been destroyed, with the airliner shoot-down dramatizing this aggression.
The aircraft was flying at 33,000 feet, above a no-fly zone posted for altitudes up to 32,000 feet. Airline authorities were apparently unaware that most missile-acquisition radars (and hence most missile systems) might not be able to distinguish a thousand-foot difference in altitude. After the disaster, it turned out that several airlines had continued blithely to fly above the Ukrainian battle zone because it was on a direct, hence fuel-efficient, path from Europe to the Far East (this particular airliner was en route to Australia). Many routes were hurriedly rearranged, but the impression remained that commercial aviation authorities often imagine that local wars do not concern them. Conversely, anyone using high-performance missiles in a local conflict is courting disaster.
After the Malaysian airliner was destroyed, a few commentators recalled the destruction of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes (CG-49) in the Persian Gulf in 1988. At that time it was argued in mitigation that the airliner pilot had ignored clear warnings from the ship. Moreover, the United States quickly owned up to responsibility and made enormous efforts to change procedures so that a repetition of the tragedy was far less likely. The Russians have done neither.
Friend or Foe?
Nothing about the hazards of flying over an active war zone excuses the attack on an airliner totally disconnected from the war in Ukraine. The explanations given by the Russians and their Ukrainian proxies offer no sense that they understand they have committed a rather public form of mass murder and that they face consequences. The initial story circulated by the Russians and their Ukrainian separatist allies was that the airliner was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter, which their missile then shot down. In an attempt to buttress this cover story, the Ukrainian separatists contaminated the crash site with pieces of other aircraft, but no one outside Russia and Ukraine seems to have bought the ruse. For a time they withheld the black box from the crash, and there was an attempt to refuse repatriation of the bodies, presumably for fear that identifiable missile warhead fragments would be found in them.
It seems bizarre to associate an SA-11 with Russians volunteering to support the rebellion in eastern Ukraine. The SA-11 is a large high-performance missile externally resembling the U.S. Standard Missile. It is fired from a triple launcher on board a tracked vehicle, which also carries a tracking/illuminating radar (the missile is guided semi-actively). A volunteer might walk or drive across a border, but it takes official connivance to provide him with a scarce and expensive piece of hardware such as an SA-11 vehicle.
The Russians tried to avoid any admission of direct involvement. An anonymous Ukrainian claimed that untrained Ukrainian volunteers had used the missile upon discovering that the system was much easier to operate than they had imagined. This anonymous spokesman claimed that he risked a great deal by making his admission, but it seems fairer to say that he represented a second layer of deceit, insurance against widespread rejection of the original cover story. Those familiar with the Russians’ poor record of human engineering will have doubts that anyone could rapidly learn to use the SA-11. Given the usual Russian penchant for secrecy concerning military systems, it’s also unlikely that anyone but a trained Russian would be permitted anywhere near it.
Typically an SA-11 battery includes a command vehicle with its own search radar (incorporating some form of identification friend or foe, or IFF), but the guidance radar on board the launcher vehicle (which has no IFF) can also acquire and track targets. The launch vehicle in question was apparently not accompanied by the usual command vehicle. There has been speculation that, had the command vehicle been present, its IFF would have identified the Malaysian aircraft as an airliner and thus prevented the tragedy.
That seems unlikely. IFF is primarily a means of avoiding attacks on friendly aircraft. The Russians have never shown much interest in identifying non-targets that are not friendlies. IFF operates on an interrogator-transponder basis: the IFF system sends out an interrogation pulse, and it looks for the appropriate answers. In its basic form the system concentrates on identifying and avoiding its friends. In the interest of protecting friendly forces, it attacks everything else. The absence of the command vehicle suggests that those involved were not much interested in avoiding attacks on the wrong aircraft.
The Russians certainly had reason to provide their antiaircraft systems with IFF. During the Cold War, NATO intelligence concluded that in the event of hostilities, the Russians would quickly shoot down much of their own tactical air force due to poor IFF. A Russian post-Cold War system would probably have some means of reducing such fratricide. Note, however, that Russian military IFF operates in a frequency range different from that used by NATO and by commercial airliners (which use a variant of the standard Western military system). It seems a reach for Western writers to assume that Russian IFF measures would include listening for airliner emissions to identify non-targets. Surely the Russians would concentrate on avoiding attacks on aircraft with Russian military IFF emissions. The SA-11 command system is sometimes credited with incorporating a means of non-cooperative identification (jet engine modulation: counting jet engine compressor-blade rate), but that was probably a means of identifying Russian aircraft returning to base with damaged IFF systems.
Western commentators initially pointed out that for all the anger about the airliner, the West is more dependent on Russia than it has been, and to cut economic ties might be rather painful. For example, the British buy much of their coal from Russia. When Prime Minister David Cameron demanded that the French cancel delivery of an amphibious assault ship (scheduled for October), the French accused him of gross hypocrisy. Britain has approved some arms sales to Russia such as sniper rifles and personal armor, both of which, it might be argued, are more relevant than a ship to the developing war in Ukraine. Germany and other European countries depend heavily on gas exported by Russia.
Putin’s Tough Spot
President Vladimir Putin may have counted on such interdependence to sap any Western will to impose sanctions to punish him for attacking Ukraine. He apparently discounted popular revulsion in the West, where the images of all those dead innocents exert enormous power. It is not clear, moreover, to what extent Putin understands how much Russia has been integrated into the global economy over the last quarter-century, and therefore how potentially vulnerable it is. The luxury goods that so many of Putin’s plutocrat allies like come from the West. Too, the West still supplies much of what Russia needs to extract the natural resources, such as oil, which provide so much of the country’s income.
For many in the West, the mass murder (by missile) and the cynical cover-up are proof that, 25 years after the Cold War, little has changed in Russia. Putin’s Communist predecessors were most aggressive when they felt weakest at home, and many commentators tie his adventures in Ukraine to the weakness of the Russian economy. These adventures are a source of great national pride; before he undertook them, Putin was in some difficulty because the economy is so poor. The sort of massive corruption and cronyism that keep him in power also sap economic growth. Moreover, Putin is investing a good deal more in military modernization than his country can afford. Given his Soviet-era background, it is unlikely that he appreciates the way in which economic strength is related to military resources now that Russia has a Western-style economy rather than a Soviet-era command economy.
The shoot-down is not the beginning of a new cold war, simply because Putin does not wield his predecessors’ ideological power outside the country. He does not command revolutionaries in the Third World; indeed, he is endangered by the main current subversive force, radicalized Muslims. Thus he cannot threaten the West in any way like Soviet leaders could. His position is particularly difficult because so much of his national wealth is concentrated in Siberia—in territory the Chinese have long considered stolen by earlier Russian regimes. Some commentators have pointed out that the West is Russia’s main hope of balancing Chinese power exerted to recover most of Siberia, and the shoot-down and cover-up have made any near-term deal with the West difficult or impossible.