Russian plane crash may have collided with drone

US infrared surveillance satellites have detected no trace of any missile fired towards the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt, raising the possibility that the plane collided with a foreign object.

Egyptian soldiers load the victims' luggage onto a truck. Photo: Reuters

On November 3, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said that a total of 140 victims' bodies and more than 100 body parts had been transferred from the scene of the tragic plane crash in Egypt to St. Petersburg, in the context that authorities have not announced the cause of the Airbus A321 breaking apart in the sky over the Sinai desert.

US officials say military satellites detected two large sources of infrared energy, known as heat rays, flaring in the southern Sinai at the time the plane crashed, CBS News reported.

One heat source erupted as the plane broke apart and burned in the air, while the second heat source emerged as the plane crashed to the ground and continued to burn intensely, burning the main body and wings of the plane.

The military satellite is part of the US military's Space Infrared System, a network of satellites that continuously monitor hotspots around the globe to instantly detect traces of missile launches. According to NDTV, these satellites are usually equipped with two infrared sensors, one of which continuously scans the Earth's surface to detect traces of missile launches, while the other focuses on monitoring a fixed point.

In a 2013 congressional hearing, William Shelton, commander of the US Space Force, said that infrared sensors on satellites in the system can instantly detect the heat jets emitted from the tails of missiles and other large weapons launched from the Earth's surface.

"With this system, we can immediately know what type of missile it is, where it is going, and what its target is," Mr. Shelton emphasized.

According to CBS News commentator Allen Pizzey, the detection of the two heat rays by US military satellites has ruled out the possibility that the Metrojet airliner was hit by a missile in the sky over Sinai.

If Islamic militants or terrorists had launched a missile to shoot down the plane, US satellites would have certainly recorded the heat from the missile's tail and determined its trajectory. The fact that the satellites could not detect the missile's jet stream, combined with the fact that IS militants in Sinai do not have sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons that can reach an altitude of 10,000 meters, experts can be sure that the plane was not shot down by a missile.

"We do not have any direct evidence that terrorism was involved in this incident," said James Clapper, director of US National Intelligence. However, he did not rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack on the plane.

US surveillance satellites can detect missiles launched from the ground. Illustration photo: Wikimedia

Drone collision

According to analysts, the heat source that burst on the plane in mid-air could have been caused by a bomb exploding, but it is more likely that the fuel tank in the plane's wing or engine exploded and caught fire after a technical failure or due to a collision with a foreign object.

In addition to the possibility that the plane exploded due to a cracked pressure bulkhead or a bomb from the inside, aviation analyst Clive Irving of DailyBeast also hypothesized that the Airbus A321 collided with a drone that was monitoring the situation in the Sinai Peninsula, causing the plane's engine to fail and explode.

According to him, drones can reach altitudes of 10,000 meters, and they are often widely used in war zones or conflict zones to monitor and monitor the situation. A collision with a drone while flying at high speed would cause severe damage to the passenger plane, and the engine could explode immediately after.

Aviation experts emphasize that plane crashes are often not caused by a single cause, but can be the result of a series of consecutive events, starting with a technical malfunction or pilot error.

Preliminary black box research results show that before the tragedy occurred, the pilot on the plane was still communicating normally with air traffic control, until "abnormal" sounds appeared and were recorded by the black box.

Investigators are also said to have found "elements unrelated to the aircraft structure" among the debris scattered over a large area at the crash site.

Egyptian government spokesman Mohamed Rahmi said the pilot did not send any distress signal before the crash. "Air traffic control did not register any request from the pilot via communication channels," he said.

The plane's engine burned out after crashing to the ground. Photo: AP

The British Daily Star newspaper reported that the body of a three-year-old girl was found about 8 km from where the main cabin of the plane crashed, proving that passengers on the plane were sucked out through a large hole in the plane at an altitude of 9,500 meters.

According to Irving, a rupture of the rear pressure bulkhead or an explosion could cause the tail section of the plane to break off, creating a hole in the rear, and the enormous pressure inside the cabin would force nearly all of the passengers out.

The Telegraph quoted an Egyptian doctor who participated in the autopsy as saying that about 20% of the passengers on the plane suffered severe burns before they died. It is likely that these passengers were burned when a large fire broke out on the plane after it broke in two, analysts said.

The Russian news site LifeNews claimed to have obtained an autopsy report and said that some passengers were impaled by “pieces of metal, aircraft shells.” This information was quickly dismissed by Russian and Egyptian experts, and Egyptian officials said they were in no hurry to draw any conclusions before the investigation was complete, according to the TASS news agency.

According to VNE