Gilze-Rijen air force base: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed last year after it was hit by a Russian-made Buk surface to air missile, an air safety investigation has found.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The finding contradicts one theory pushed by Russia and its supporters, that the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet.
However the investigators did not directly confront another Russian theory: that the missile was fired by the Ukrainian army, rather than by Russian-backed separatists (or Russian soldiers working with the separatists).
The investigators' report, which was released on Tuesday by the Dutch Safety Board, found that the airline and air traffic bodies had not "adequately identified the risks to civil aviation brought about by the armed conflict in the eastern part of Ukraine".
Ukraine itself came in for strong criticism, for not closing the airspace over a region where scores of military aircraft had been shot down in the previous few months.
MH17 crashed in Ukraine's east on July 17, 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members aboard the Boeing 777 – including 39 people who called Australia home.
The report was presented at Gilze-Rijen air force base in the Netherlands, by Dutch Safety Board chairman Tjibbe Joustra, standing in front of a reconstruction of the front third of the plane, rebuilt from wreckage recovered from the fields of eastern Ukraine.
The reconstruction showed the cockpit area riddled with holes, punctured by shrapnel from the exploding missile.
Buk missiles are designed to explode next to their targets, rather than collide directly with them.
"Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane," Mr Joustra said. "None of the aviation parties involved recognised the risks posed to civil aviation by the conflict on ground."
There was sufficient reason to close airspace as a precaution, Mr Joustra said, as more than 60 military aircraft had been brought down in the months prior, and there was evidence of weapons systems that could reach civil aircraft cruising altitude.
The reason for the omission was "straightforward and disquieting", he said – "Nobody had thought that civil aviation was at risk (even though) there was undeniably an armed conflict taking place on the ground."
Ukraine, which was responsible for the safety of the airpace under international law, came in for strong criticism for not closing its airspace as a precaution.
However other states and airline operators were also at fault, and international rules needed to be changed, the investigators said.
Investigators forensically examined the wreckage of the plane, recovered from the fields of eastern Ukraine, and eliminated the possibilities that the plane was brought down by an internal explosion, by gunfire or air-to-air attack.
They even excluded one theory that it was hit by a meteor.
"We investigated and eliminated the possibilities one by one," Mr Joustra said.
Investigators found a Buk warhead detonated outside the aircraft, slightly in front and above the left side of the cockpit.
Thousands of pre-formed metal fragments penetrated the front of the plane with great force.
Computer simulations backed up this theory, and it was also corroborated by millisecond analysis of the cockpit voice recorder.
The front of the plane broke off, the rest of the plane broke up in mid air. The tail section crashed first, then the centre, with the engines, hit the ground upside down and caught fire.
Mr Joustra said the launch site of the missile could be narrowed to a 320 square km area in eastern Ukraine, but further work narrowing this area was beyond the investigators' mandate.
Before the Dutch report was released, Russia's state arms producer (and Buk missile manufacturer) Almaz-Antey announced the results of its own investigation.
The manufacturer said it had fired Buk missiles at a decommissioned jet plane, similar to a Boeing 777, so they could examine the pattern of impact.
They said the results demonstrated that MH17 was shot down by an old form of Buk missile – a 9M38 – which was not in use by the Russian army, and is a decade past the 'use-by date' intended by the manufacturer.
The last missile of this type was produced in the Soviet Union in 1986 and Russia decommissioned its remaining 9M38s in 2011, Russian state-sponsored Sputnik News reported.
"The results of the experiment completely contradict the results of the Dutch commission on the type of missile and the location of its launch," Almaz-Antey CEO Yan Novikov told journalists.
His company's report also said the missile was fired from near the village of Zaroschenskoye – an area reportedly under Ukrainian control at the time.
However they produced no eyewitness evidence of a Buk in that region at the time, in contrast to the significant amount of eyewitness, video and photographic evidence of a Buk in rebel-controlled territory on the day MH17 came down.
And Dutch TV reporter Rudy Bouma Tweeted that he had visited Zaroschenskoye recently and "villagers didn't witness (a) Buk launch previous to (the) crash", though the Ukrainian army was around 5km away at the time.
The Dutch report was not intended to address "questions of blame or liability", a DSB spokesman said.
However one DSB source told the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant the BUK missile is developed and made in Russia, and "It can be assumed that the rebels would not be able to operate such a device. I suspect the involvement of former Russian military officials".
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop released a joint statement welcoming the findings, saying their thoughts and prayers were with the families and loved ones of those killed on the flight.
Ms Bishop said the reports findings provided critical insight into the incident.
"It determines the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, consistent with the Australian government's initial assessment of the incident," she said.
The criminal investigation into who was responsible for the tragedy is run separately by an international 'Joint Investigation Team', including Australian federal police, who recently told Fairfax it may be another year before the case is ready for prosecution.
And in any case it is still unclear where the case could be tried. Russia vetoed a proposal for an international tribunal that was proposed by Australia and the Netherlands at the United Nations in July.
"We, and other partner governments of the Joint Investigation Team, remain absolutely committed to seeing justice done," said Ms Bishop.
More to come