This report examines the circumstances surrounding the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). The report considers several factors that lead investigators to believe that the plane may have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from a Buk road-mobile missile erector-launcher, including the type of damage directly sustained by the plane, the large debris field, the crash's proximity to an active conflict zone in which military aircraft had recently been shot down and U.S. intelligence that detected a missile launch from the area around the time the plane was overhead.

On 17 July 2014, at 13.20 a Boeing 777-200 with the Malaysia Airlines nationality and registration mark 9M-MRD disappeared to the west of the TAMAK air navigation waypoint in Ukraine. The aeroplane impacted the ground in the eastern part of Ukraine, near the villages of Hrabove, Rozsypne and Petropavlivka. All 298 persons on board lost their lives. The in-flight disintegration of the aeroplane near the Ukrainian/ Russian border was the result of the detonation of a warhead. The weapon used was a 9N314M-model warhead carried on the 9M38-series of missiles, as installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system. But was MH17 really hit by a 9N314M model war head mounted on a 9M38 series missile? Careful examination of the available facts show that the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) are questionable to say the least. The report is a mixture of an air crash investigation and a criminal investigation.

Having always been in love with all things related to aviation since childhood, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman's dream came true when he was given a chance to enter the field of aircraft engineering. Serving as Director-General for eleven years with the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), he had had many valuable experiences.However, the two biggest tragedies that occurred in 2014, that of MH370 and MH17, had the greatest impact on his life, and affected not just the victims and their families, but the entire Malaysian aviation industry.Azharuddin was directly involved in leading the search missions of the tragic disappearance of MH370 on 8 March 2014, and in a series of investigations concerning the downing of MH17 in eastern Ukraine on 17 July of the same year.As Director-General, Azharuddin faced a heavy burden in the aftermath of the twin disasters, of which MH370 remains unsolved to the present day. No one was prepared for the MH370 tragedy despite all the training they had received. As for MH17, Azharuddin laments that the tragedy may have been prevented had full information on the level of conflict in Ukraine been made available during that time. In both cases, all passengers and crew on board were killed.Both tragic events marked a new history in the aviation industry, both in Malaysia and in the international arena, causing new reforms to burst into action to ensure similar incidents will not happen again.In writing this book, Azharuddin draws from personal experience, conducting his research with and around aviation industry professionals, and drawing insights from others involved in both incidents to present a full and raw take on the twin disasters of the Malaysian aviation industry in 2014.

The first full telling of what happened to MH17 and the stories of those who were killed on that tragic day. On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot out of the sky above Ukraine. Aboard were 298 people, 38 of whom were Australians. No one survived. Subsequently it was shown that the airliner was almost certainly hit by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired by Ukrainian separatists aided by the Russian military. The debris from the plane's disintegration mid-air was spread over 50 square kilometres, but for weeks rescue teams and investigators were denied access. The Russians have refused to take any responsibility for the deaths. This is the story of some of the people who boarded that fatal flight and the conflict below them that was doomed to destroy their lives and the happiness of the people they left behind. The fullest account yet published, it is also the story of a continuing clamour for justice. Unsettling, compelling and revealing, Shot Down will provoke both outrage that this criminal act could have happened and deep sadness for the lives lost. 'A compelling account of one of the most appalling aviation atrocities of our time.' JIM EAMES, author of Courage in the Skies

This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.

An insider's account of Romania's emergence from communism control In the 1970s American attorney Alfred H. Moses was approached on the streets of Bucharest by young Jews seeking help to emigrate to Israel. This became the author's mission until the communist regime fell in 1989. Before that Moses had met periodically with Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, to persuade him to allow increased Jewish emigration. This experience deepened Moses's interest in Romania—an interest that culminated in his serving as U.S. ambassador to the country from 1994 to 1997 during the Clinton administration. The ambassador's time of service in Romania came just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. During this period Romania faced economic paralysis and was still buried in the rubble of communism. Over the next three years Moses helped nurture Romania's nascent democratic institutions, promoted privatization of Romania's economy, and shepherded Romania on the path toward full integration with Western institutions. Through frequent press conferences, speeches, and writings in the Romanian and Western press and in his meetings with Romanian officials at the highest level, he stated in plain language the steps Romania needed to take before it could be accepted in the West as a free and democratic country. Bucharest Diary: An American Ambassador's Journey is filled with firsthand stories, including colorful anecdotes, of the diplomacy, both public and private, that helped Romania recover from four decades of communist rule and, eventually, become a member of both NATO and the European Union. Romania still struggles today with the consequences of its history, but it has reached many of its post-communist goals, which Ambassador Moses championed at a crucial time. This book will be of special interest to readers of history and public affairs—in particular those interested in Jewish life under communist rule in Eastern Europe and how the United States and its Western partners helped rebuild an important country devastated by communism.

This book demonstrates how nonlinear/non-Gaussian Bayesian time series estimation methods were used to produce a probability distribution of potential MH370 flight paths. It provides details of how the probabilistic models of aircraft flight dynamics, satellite communication system measurements, environmental effects and radar data were constructed and calibrated. The probability distribution was used to define the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. The book describes particle-filter based numerical calculation of the aircraft flight-path probability distribution and validates the method using data from several of the involved aircraft’s previous flights. Finally it is shown how the Reunion Island flaperon debris find affects the search probability distribution.