The Dutch Safety Board released a video which shows how the MH17 flight was shot down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.
On Jul. 17, 2014 Boeing 777 (9M-MRD) with 280 passengers and 15 crew members, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed about 50NM to the northwest of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine.
The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) which conducted the technical investigation issued its final report on the crash on Oct. 13, 2015 and determined that the aircraft was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air 9M38-series missile with 9N314M warhead that hit the left hand side of the cockpit (as it appeared to be quite evident based on the puncture marks visible on the wreckage).
The shrapnel fired by the explosion killed the flight crew and torn off the cockpit. The DSB calculated the trajectory of the SAM and determined it was fired within a 320-square-kilometre (120 sq mi) area southeast of Torez.
The DSB, that did not say who operated the SAM launcher: whether the missile was fired by the pro-Russia separatist or not it is still subject to debate. For sure, the report highlighted there was sufficient reason to fully close the airspace over eastern Ukraine, where the MH17 was flying because of the reasons we explained in this post, as a precaution.
The Buk, known as SA-11 (or SA-17) is a self-propelled medium range, medium altitude anti-aircraft system with a maximum range of 13NM and a ceiling of 39,400 feet. With a semi-active radar homing guidance system and a 70 Kg warhead it may hit a large plane at FL330 and cause a catastrophic decompression.
