The Wire - December 27, 2024

//The Wire//2300Z December 27, 2024//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: COMMERCIAL AIRLINER CRASHES IN KAZAKHSTAN AS A RESULT OF PROBABLE MISSILE STRIKE. MORE DETAILS EMERGE REGARDING USS GETTYSBURG FRIENDLY FIRE INCIDENTS.//
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-International Events-
Red Sea/HOA: Over the holiday, additional information has come to light regarding the recent shootdown of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 by the USS Gettysburg (CG-64). Follow on information from crewmembers indicates that the shootdown was not the only friendly fire incident that day. Another aircraft narrowly avoided being engaged and was forced to take actions to evade an incoming missile from the USS Gettysburg. The pilot in the second aircraft was able to successfully evade the missile shot at them, unlike the first. AC: So far, virtually nothing is confirmable via independent sources; all of the information pertaining to these two friendly-fire incidents is coming from word-of-mouth sources within the Strike Group itself.
Continuing the trend of escalating tensions in the region, Houthi targeting has increased once again over the past week following Israeli strikes in Yemen. Houthi forces have retaliated in kind, carrying out ballistic missile strikes on targets in Israel.
Northern Europe: Another undersea cable cutting incident allegedly occurred on Christmas Day. This time, an electrical power cable spanning the Baltic Sea between Estonia and Finland was disrupted under unclear circumstances. NATO has pledged to increase their military naval presence in the Baltic as a result of the suspected Russian and/or Chinese merchant vessels which are being investigated by NATO for being involved in anchor-dragging incidents.
Kazakhstan: Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crashed in Aktau on Wednesday. The circumstances leading up to the disaster are as follows:
The aircraft took off from Baku, and transited north along the western bank of the Caspian Sea to complete a routine flight to Grozny. Once in Russian airspace, the crew reported navigational issues likely due to Russian military jamming of GPS systems, as has been extremely common throughout the region for several years. While attempting to land in Grozny under extremely thick fog, and with the added complexities of navigational issues, the aircraft experienced a catastrophic event that involved some loss of control over the aircraft. Initial reports suggested that the aircraft experienced a bird strike, as this is what the pilots reported over the radio. However, it is possible that what was perceived as a bird strike, really was the result of a missile striking the aircraft over Grozny. AC: Russian missile defense forces in Grozny had reportedly engaged Ukrainian drones earlier that day, lending weight to this theory.
Following the catastrophic incident (either the bird strike or a surface-to-air missile strike) the pilots made the decision to abort landing in Grozny due to the emergency situation and thick fog, making the judgement call that landing a compromised aircraft in Grozny was not a viable option as they had already unsuccessfully tried to do so with an undamaged aircraft.
The details of what happened next remain more uncertain with regards to timing and the sequence of events. The pilots attempted to gain clearance to land in Dagestan, but was also unable to do so due to conflicting reports. Some claim the same weather problems experienced in Grozny were to blame, other claims have been made that Russia forbade the aircraft to land for some unexplained reason. Reports also differ as to when this request was made; some claim prior to the catastrophic incident, others claim afterward.
At some point the pilots conducted a radical change of course, heading from west to east over the Caspian Sea toward an unidentified airport that possibly had better weather conditions. During the transit over the Caspian Sea, an emergency was declared and the aircraft began squawking mode 7700 on its transponder, openly signaling an emergency due to the previously mentioned damage becoming worse. AC: It is not clear as to the exact timing of this emergency declaration.
Likewise, at some point during this crisis, surviving passengers reportedly heard an explosion to the rear of the aircraft, immediately followed by shrapnel entering the fuselage. It is unclear as to where the aircraft was located when this happened; some reports suggest this occurred shortly before the uncontrolled landing in Aktau, while other reports suggest it happened as the pilots were attempting to land in Grozny. AC: This is an important detail that remains unconfirmed; important for the causation that can be inferred due to geography. As is common with many survivor testimonies, the concept of elapsed time is often skewed due to various adrenal stress responses; what seemed like a few minutes to one person may have indeed been almost an hour in reality.
Eventually, the pilots were able to make a largely uncontrolled landing outside of Aktau at grid coordinate 39T WJ 01256 59052. Despite the pilots’ best efforts, 38 passengers were killed during the landing, including both pilots and one flight attendant. However, as of this report 29 people (roughly half of the aircraft’s complement) miraculously survived the incident.
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Analyst Comments: Though very few official statements have been released regarding the circumstances leading up to the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, many indicators are present suggesting that this aircraft was shot down by a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM). Shrapnel holes were found peppered throughout the fuselage and inside the passenger cabin, along with footage from the ground indicating that the pilots had limited ability to operate the aircraft’s control surfaces.
Consequently, if the aircraft was indeed shot down (either deliberately or accidentally), the grand question remains…who did it? So far, the highly uncoordinated and very non-forensic data that has been presented on social media has strongly indicated that a missile struck the aircraft at some point in its journey. As one might expect due to geography, most fingers point to Russia. However, a shoulder-fired MANPAD is just as likely a culprit as a Russian SAM system is at this point, until more data becomes available. However, the ADS-B flight data transmitted by the aircraft strongly indicates that something struck the aircraft before it began transiting over the Caspian Sea.
Whatever the case, the efforts by the pilots to maintain some level of control over the aircraft are nothing short of remarkable. Considering the shrapnel damage that was observed on the debris (that did not come from crashing into the ground), it is a sheer miracle that the pilots were able to salvage the situation as best as they did. Flying roughly 300 miles after a bird strike takes exceptional skill, but flying a commercial airliner 300 miles (over water) after being struck by a Surface-to-Air missile is miraculous. If this aircraft was indeed struck by a SAM, this is a data point that will be analyzed in much greater depth by experts in the field, for many years.
In a larger sense, for those wondering why the concept of “international law” (or perhaps more accurately, international norms and mores) matter, this is why. Many people around the world have grown weary with the horror of war in Ukraine, or at bare-minimum have become desensitized to it. However, one might find that due to a war a thousand miles away, a commercial airliner that had nothing to do with the conflict gets shot down. Russian Air Defense Artillery (ADA) units are notorious for (and have a long history of) not monitoring the activities of commercial aircraft, or understanding the flexibility sometimes undertaken by commercial airlines, or aircraft in distress. An ADA unit commander is not going to have the knowledge of radio communications between a random airliner and an Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower in Grozny (even though he absolutely should be monitoring these communications). Likewise, Russia’s own signal jamming might have resulted in any radio/transponder messages not being intercepted by Russian defense forces in the region, or at least complicating such.
These are the first few links in the infamous chain of causation that results in disaster.
The Ukrainian War has resulted in extreme levels of danger for any commercial aircraft in the region that has to deviate from known flight paths (or at non-standard altitude) within range of ADA units which have recently engaged hostile aircraft. The final links in the chain are the context that Russian military forces were operating under, the use of large drones (and retrofitted civilian aircraft) by Ukraine to conduct strikes in the vicinity of civilian centers in southern Russia.
As one might expect, the Russia/Ukraine hysteria will attempt to spin this incident in one way or another, depending on which side the reader supports in the war. The bitter tragedy lies with the details that everyone has a hand in the pie…the only thing up for debate is how much. Russia is largely to blame for starting the kinetic phase of the war in the first place, and also probably to blame for shooting down this aircraft. Ukraine is also partly to blame for carrying out insurgent-style, long-range drone attacks on Russian civilian centers, just as Russia is to blame for jamming the continent and increasing the potential for their own errors to strike innocent victims. The United States is also to blame for urging to continuation of this war to the point that Russia (a superpower) does not feel secure on her borders, and encouraging terror attacks inside Russia to the point that a superpower becomes destabilized…a sharp distinction from destabilizing other nations over the years.
Rightly or wrongly, none of these details justify anything at all…this is merely an explanation of how we have arrived at the ugly part of war. Now, citizens around the world are finding out that this ugly side of war, is the nature of war itself. In the many conflicts that are now underway around the world, finger pointing largely does no good as by the time a tragedy strikes, there are many links in the chain of events that would have never arisen under a state of peace. The most palpable observation of the horrors of war is how atrocity is shared by all, to some degree. From President Putin himself, down to the lowest ranking Russian soldier with the ADS-B Exchange website loaded on his smartphone…at any point in between, the slightest change could have broken the chain of tragedy. Unfortunately, this chain is shared by the other side too. If the United States had forbade the use of American munitions on Russian targets (or helped Ukraine retrofit civilian planes to carry out long-range “drone” attacks), the paranoia among Russian ADA defenses in southern Russia might not have been intense enough to result in shooting down another commercial aircraft. Again, all of this is speculation, and playing a game of “what if” isn’t that helpful. However, sometimes this is all we have to lean on to prevent disaster from striking again.
These unfortunate (and to some, offensive) ideas must be considered in the context of the most nefarious and tragic possibility…that Russian ADA defenses did know that it was a commercial airliner and chose to target it anyway due to the odd behavior displayed while the pilots were trying to navigate the weather conditions. To be blunt, this is what happens when insurgent-style attacks become normalized in a conflict between superpowers.
Another theory pertains to the aircraft not being deliberately engaged, but rather that a missile launched at a different target missed, and acquired a lock on the airliner. What goes up, must come down, and this would not be the first time that a Surface-to-Air missile missed its intended target, and struck a different aircraft entirely.
All in all, this event largely reignites the need for diligence and discernment. And more importantly, for the realization that every action has a reply, and every decision has a consequence. Most of the time, we think of the term “consequence” with negative connotations, as in some sort of punishment for a certain behavior. However a more helpful understanding is to simply think of consequence as a form of result. Good or bad, positive or negative, there are always consequences (results) for every decision that is made. Most of the time, when the stakes are low in a normal, civilized society, making a less-than-perfect decision is of little consequence. When the stakes are high, however, a different result must be considered as a possibility. In this case, the pilots were probably not operating with a wartime mentality, which is understandable. After all, for the vast majority of people, it is a rather sobering existence to become aware of the level of thinking required to keep civilization moving forward with the knowledge that the kinetic conflicts underway around the world are very much in danger of becoming more interconnected on a global scale. The pilots making the choice to linger about over Grozny while sorting out weather problems is one of those decisions that, in peacetime is perfectly fine, but in wartime had a tragic outcome. It doesn’t make it right, moral, or just, but this is the way it is. Pilots should not have to consider if their actions in an emergency will be perceived as being a threat to a military force on the ground, but this is the way it is in some parts of the world at the present time. We now live in an era where innocent people can’t fall asleep on the subway, and pilots have to consider international politics as their plane is crashing.
As the new year arrives, this rather nuanced (and surely to be hotly debated) concept would be wise to explore, especially as events unfold that are perceived to be “unprovoked actions”, but in reality (from the other side of the wire) are a response to an action that wasn’t even given the slightest thought in the first place. Acting and operating with deliberation and intent is already crucial, but will become even more important as these traits are not exhibited at the higher echelons of governance around the world. Fingers can be pointed at specific incidents, and accusations can accurately be made even during the opening phases of a war. However, only by the end of a conflict do most people realize the futility of engaging in the war in the first place, as only the clarity of hindsight grants the ability to see how the entire conflict could have been avoided.
Analyst: S2A1
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