[libstripper]

One of the questions I always had about flight 800 was what kind of missile could have been used to shoot it down, the aircraft being quite large and at enough of an altitude that it looked like such a shoot down wold be a bit of a stretch for a Stinger with its relatively small warhead. Then came the current downing of MH 17 with a BUK missile. Since the whole BUK system is self contained, relatively small, and highly mobile, the answer came to me. It would have been quite easy for the Iranians to mount one of those systems on a nondescript tramp freighter, sail the ship to the proper location, fire the missile, dump the evidence, and quietly sail away. As we've just seen, a BUK missile definitely has both the range and warhead power to down any civilian airliner, no matter how large.

[Madam Theophilus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system

Buk missile system has been in service since 1979.