Russian soldiers fired at a Ukrainian State Border Guard Service that was patrolling the border area along the Perekop Isthmus.
The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine’s press service has released an interesting video recorded by a Diamond DA42 light surveillance plane.
The unarmed four seat, twin engine, propeller-driven airplane was patrolling the border, keeping an eye on the numerous block-posts of Russian troops deployed along the Perekop Isthmus, in the northern part of Crimea, when it was fired upon.
Noteworthy, the Russians used what seems to be a green laser for either determine the range of the aircraft or blind the DA42′s onboard Wescam EO/IR camera.
Authorities have confirmed that two names listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 flight disappeared from radars 40 minutes from take off were stolen in Thailand.
On Mar. 8, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing B777-200 aircraft (registration 9M-MRO), operating from Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, disappeared from radars about 40 minutes after take off from Kuala Lumpur.
According to the details released by the airline, the flight was carrying a total number of 239 passengers and crew – comprising 227 passengers (including 2 infants), 12 crew members. The passengers were of 13 different nationalities.
The aircraft was regularly transmitting ADS-B data until contact was lost over the Gulf of Thailand, when the wide body cruising at 35,000 feet at 474 knots in reportedly good weather. The radar coverage in that area is good so as that of Flightradar24.com’s affiliated receiving stations.
The crew did not broadcast any emergency radio call and the plane simply “vanished” as if a catastrophic failure did not give the pilots the time to inform the Air Traffic Control that they were going down, something that seems to rule out the possibility that MH370 experienced an engine problem or was hijacked.
As a large Search And Rescue operation is underway in the area the news that two used stolen passports were used to board MH370 is fueling speculations that the Boeing B777 may have exploded mid-air because of a bomb.
Indeed, based on the details currently available, an explosive decompression caused by an unknown factor (bomb, missile, airframe collapse, etc.) seems to be the most likely root cause of the crash.
Still, this is no more than speculation until further details surface but it may take days, or weeks to collect data and recover Flight Data Recorders.
The chopper was followed later on the same day (at 18.22 LT), by a Russian unspecified unmanned aerial vehicle nased in Abkhazia, intruded the Georgian airspace and flew over the village of Khurcha, near Zugdidi, on the country’s eastern side, near the Black Sea.
The reason of the airspace violations are unknown, but they are a sign of an intense activity by the Russian Armed Forces, not only in Ukraine, but in the whole Black Sea region.
A squadron of U.S. Air Force F-16s from Aviano deploying to Poland in response to Ukrainian crisis.
Twelve F-16s and 300 military will deploy next week to Lask air base in central Poland, for a combined exercise with the Polish Air Force.
According to the Polish Minister of Defense Tomasz Siemoniak, the exercise was initially scheduled on a much smaller scale, but it was enhanced following the crisis on Poland’s eastern border.
U.S. F-16 deploy quite regularly to Poland. In May 2013, six F-16s and 150 men from the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 176th Tactical Fighter Squadron from Truax Air Force Base deployed to Lask to train integration and interoperability with the Polish F-16s, Su-22s from 21 AFB in Świdwin and MiG-29s from 23 AFB in Minsk Mazowiecki.
