Page 29 - Plane Down News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Tomorrow if -- again, with a big caveat, if this turns out to be what some signs suggest it is. >> and lieutenant colonel francona, obviously a lot we still don't know in terms of what sort of a device brought this plane down, but clearly the idea that separatists would have been able to do this without some sort of greater technology from russia or taken from the ukrainian military, it seems impossible. >> i think if it were -- if the separatists did get their hands on these systems, a lot of this is starting to make sense now because they would not be plugged into the air traffic control sys...

Other remarks is that ukraine has accepted the united states' offer of assistance. here's what the vice president said he said, quote, i offered president poroshenko the help of our expertise, our national transportation safety group and other experts in the community. he accepted that help and they will be on their way rapidly to see if we can get to the bottom of this. alex, that assistance is going to be focused on determining exactly what brought that plane down. i can tell you that the senate intelligence committee was just briefed on capitol hill by the intelligence community. senator di...

Before on the air. this is a truck-mounted missile system. they believe that this was a system used to take this plane down, that it occurred at 10,000 meters, about 33,000 feet. they also make the point that a couple of weeks ago, russian separatists claimed and bragged to have captured such a buk missile system inside eastern ukraine. in fact, at a ukrainian base and that there were pictures on russian television of this captured buk missile launcher. and officials also telling me there's a picture up on the screen right now. >> we're showing our viewers. this is the buk system that you're t...

Question now is whose missile. if it's a russian-backed missile was it from russia, ukrainian authorities with the missiles or, in fact, was it the russian separatists? >> mick, this is the question. will a black box be determinant here? the question is who shot the plane down -- whether russian or so separatists. would it tell us who? >> i would suspect not. particularly since as you were talking a minute ago the missiles move so quickly and the pilots didn't have a clue. once it hit, it was over. there will be telemetry they can use. maybe some discussion by the pilots in the last few second...

>> the notion that north korea would choose to exercise such authority and capacities as it has to hijack this plane, that seems in the realm of desperate speculation, too. >> reporter: of course, not all theories are as implausible as those, others are more believable. pilot suicide hasn't been ruled out, nor has rapid decompression, during which everyone on board passes out, allowing the airplane to fly for hours until it runs out of fuel. another reasonable theory, fire from lithium batteries in the cargo hold brought the plane down, or a real hijacking that ended with the plane crashing in...