Being such a sophisticated system, it takes a lot of training to properly operate them, especially in terms of target recognition. It's possible if the separatists were operating them, they didn't know how to use the target recognition system fully, and as such when they fired a missile at what was supposedly another Ukrainian Air Force An-26 military transport, it ended up hitting a commercial jet airliner instead with tragic results.
(By the way, I've read that two Singapore Airlines jets were flying fairly close by at the time MH 17 was shot down. Just a few minutes' change in the time the missile was was and we could be right now trying to explain why a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380-800 carrying circa 455 passengers and flight crew was shot down in the second-worst single plane crash in aviation history.)
~Being such a sophisticated system, it takes a lot of training to properly operate them, especially in terms of target recognition. It’s possible if the separatists were operating them, they didn’t know how to use the target recognition system fully, and as such when they fired a missile at what was supposedly another Ukrainian Air Force An-26 military transport, it ended up hitting a commercial jet airliner instead with tragic results.~
It is a regimental level highly automated system. In Russia it is operated by tankmen, not air defence forces. Target recognition is not a strong point of this thing because main idea behing BUK is to deny airspace in warzone over certain area for safe deployment of ground troops it’s assigned to protect.
You can read only basic info on your target like radar signature, altitude, airspeed and course from interface in base model and it is extremely easy to use.
Of course, competent operator can distigtuish between small attacking fighter-bomber and airliner based on limited indicators above but it is not the case for a noob who are still able to lock on and hit target like it is a video game.