boeing 777. it s more than capable of bringing down a commercial jet. here s tom foreman. if you want to figure out what could have hit this plane, you have to think about the circumstances of the plane at the time. it was about 32,000, 33,000 in the feet in the air over ukraine, it was about 30 miles away from the russian border. so you cannot hit this with some shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. they re just not strong enough. what you would need is something much more like this. this is the buk anti-missile system. it s one of those being talked about in this case. it is a four-man unit. it has four ready-to-fire missiles up on top. it can set up and fire very quickly and it can move away after firing very quickly. and those missiles have a tremendous amount of power. let s bring one in here and talk about that. each one is about 16 feet long. we re showing them a little bit smaller here just to make it all fit. it will weigh about 1,500
commercial airliner out of the sky? cnn s tom foreman has that for you. reporter: to figure out, don, what sort of system was used for this, you have to think about where the plane was at the time. they had been making this flight over ukraine. it was at about 32, 33,000 feet at the moment that it seemed to have failed and go to ground, about 30 miles from the russian border. so what could reach it up here? not a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile of any sort. you re going to need something much more robust, something like this. this is the buk anti-missile system. it s operated by four people. it has four ready to launch missiles. it can move very quickly. it can fire very quickly. and then it can move on. and these missiles have a tremendous amount of power. let s bring one down here and talk about what it s capable of doing. a buk missile, one of the missiles fired off a unit like this is about 16 feet long. so we have made it a little smaller here just to get it into the pictur
self-propelled missile fired from a launcher on a vehicle like a truck. up to 35,000 meters in the air, around 82,000 feet, if you like. roughly double a commercial jet s maximum cruising altitude. according to defense analysts, both ukrainian and russian military do have these weapons in their arsenal. tom foreman with more on the buk missile system. reporter: if you want to figure out what could have hit this plane, you have to think about the circumstances of the plane at the time. it was about 32,000, 33,000 feet in the air over ukraine. it was about 30 miles away from the russian border. so you cannot hit this with some shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. they re just not strong enough. what you would need is something much more like this. this is the buk anti-missile system. it s one of those that s being talked about in this case. it is a four-man unit.
there are some that can. it was about 30 miles from the russian border. we re not saying it came from russia but saying this is what you should know about the lay of the land. so if someone wanted to strike this plane from russia or from here in the areas where the pro-russian separatists are or from over in ukraine, could they do it, yes, this he could with one of these systems. the buk anti-missile system that we re showing here is about half the size it is in real life. this is a state-of-the-art system operated by four people, it comes with four ready to launch missiles. it is highly mobile. it can move around from the time it s rolling, it can stop and fire in five minutes. acquiring a target and shooting in just 22 seconds. here s a little bit about those missiles up on top there. each one is about 16 feet long. each one weighs about 1500 pounds, carries a warhead of 154 pounds of high explosive. doesn t have to hit the target. simply has to get close. but these are all guided