'Warhead hit plane'

A piece of wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines jet downed over eastern Ukraine last week shows damage, including shrapnel holes and blistered paint, that is consistent with a hit from a fragmenting warhead, according to consultants with defence consultancy IHS-Jane's.

The wreckage from the Boeing 777-200 bears telltale marks of small pieces of high-velocity shrapnel that allegedly crippled the jet in flight.

Riddled with these perforations and buffeted by a blast wave as it flew high above the conflict zone, the plane then probably sheared apart.

The wreckage, photographed by two reporters for The New York Times in a field several kilometres from where the largest concentration of the Boeing's debris settled, suggests that the destruction of the aircraft was caused by a supersonic missile that exploded near the jet as it flew 10000m above the ground, according to an analysis of the photographs by IHS Jane's.

The experts said the damage was consistent with the effects of a fragmenting warhead carried by an SA-11 missile, known in Russian as a Buk - the type of missile that US officials have said was the probable culprit in the downing of the plane.

It is impossible from the photographs of the damaged plane to determine what specific model of missile was used.

But the SA-11 is a member of a class of weapon that carries a fragmenting warhead with a proximity fuse.

If a missile like that functioned as designed, it would cause damage very like that evident in the debris of Flight 17.

Reed Foster, an analyst at IHS Jane's, said: "The perforation holes that are visible indicate that they are consistent with a foreign object entering from the exterior of the aircraft to the interior of the aircraft, given the contour of the aluminium around a majority of the perforations as well as the visible blistering of the paint around some of the holes themselves."

He added: "Most of the smaller holes look to be caused by a high-velocity projectile, as opposed to simple shearing or tearing caused by the forceful separation of the panel from the airframe."

Foster also noted that the shrapnel damage was different from what he would expect after an aircraft engine explosion, which could cause "longer, thinner, oblique tears across the aircraft skin".

His observations were consistent with the profile of surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles designed to destroy fast-moving military aircraft at high elevations.

© 2014 New York Times News Service