Happened. It seems dubious that the Russian Military, in other words, would want to take down a major passenger plane. Certainly with not the intent of taking it down. Again, we simply dont know who brought this down. Im also here with lieu dtenant colonel rick francona. Just in terms of kants, we have not seen separatists heretofor, they have brought down at least one transport plane, but they were not flying at 33,000 feet. Yeah, this would require, as we were talking about, a more sophisticated system. Talking about, you know, hitting it inadvertently, it would be very difficult for that to happen. Generally once youre locked onto the target, it goes to that target. And if it veers off that target and is no longer being guided, they selfdestruct. But when youre targeting a plane at that altitude, are you
clear on exactly what kind of a plane it is . No, its a return on your radar. Right. It will be a certain size, you can estimate the size of the aircraft. You may have other sensors
amount of territory, my guess is it came undone at altitude, and thankfully in this kind of tragedy, death was very quickly. was quick. 295 people on board. and just in that image, we saw a guide book, a lonely planet guide book for bali, the idea you brought up, richard, these are people headed on vacation. these are people probably with their families going on vacation to bali, to other places. absolutely no question in my mind. at this time of the year, that plane is full of holiday makers on their way to do lifelong holidays. now i m sorry, i m told we re getting some more information from jim sciutto. jim, what are you hearing? anderson, i ve just been told by the ukrainian foreign ministry that it is their belief that this plane was taken down by a russian-made buk missile system that you have mentioned
themselves, which we have not done so far. when you say the ukrainians themselves don t have that system, are you talking about the ukrainian government in kiev, or are you talking about ukrainian separatists? the ukrainian government in kiev. the separatists you know, i don t know because they are russian, as we know. they re not separate, russians and separatists. we all know that. the head of the separatists is a kgb army guy or fsb army guy. whether they gave them that capability or whether it was a russian capability is really almost a difference without a distinction without a difference. but again, we don t want to jump to conclusions until we have absolute facts of the case. do you have any information about people on board, if there were any americans on board this flight? have you been given any kind of a briefing at this point? no, we have not. i just talked to some intel people, and they aren t sure yet exactly what happened here.
u.s. air force general who runs all nato military operations in europe has been briefed around the clock since this happened. he s been looking at this. he s looking at nato awacs airplanes. those are radar airplanes that nato flies over europe because of the russian crisis to see if they recorded anything. general breedlove also certainly working with his european military and intelligence counterparts across the continent. so one of the things happening here, anderson, very quickly, because this is an airspace issue, you are now really starting to see other european nations move in, weigh in and look at what information they may have. i also want to go back a minute and underscore some u.s. officials, just as some of your guests said on the air, looking at this russian system called the buk. the buk anti-aircraft missile system. whether it was russian, whether it was separatists, whoever may
before on the air. this is a truck-mounted missile system. they believe that this was a system used to take this plane down, that it occurred at 10,000 meters, about 33,000 feet. they also make the point that a couple of weeks ago, russian separatists claimed and bragged to have captured such a buk missile system inside eastern ukraine. in fact, at a ukrainian base and that there were pictures on russian television of this captured buk missile launcher. and officials also telling me there s a picture up on the screen right now. we re showing our viewers. this is the buk system that you re talking about. yeah. and the official i spoke to in the foreign ministry said that one reason that they re concluding this is that this is the only missile that could hit a plane, a passenger jet like this, at an altitude of 10,000 feet. anyway, that s the conclusion they re coming to already, that this was the system there, as you re seeing on the screen. let me just stop you there. just for cl