Report: Russian intelligence suspects US hand in SuperJet crash
(Read article summary)Although aviation experts dismissed Russian intelligence's suspicions of a US hand in the May 9 plane crash in Indonesia, the many unanswered questions about the crash fuel conspiracy theories.
Moscow
Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, suspects that US-inspired industrial espionage may have caused the May 9 crash in Indonesia of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 – Russia's only hopeful entry in the civilian aviation market – according to Moscow's leading tabloid newspaper, the usually reliable and officially connected Komsomolskaya Pravda.
While most Russian aviation experts contacted today dismissed the sabotage theory, they say there is a deepening mystery about how Russia's most modern civil aircraft, with all its systems apparently functioning perfectly, came to slam into the side of a mile-high volcano during a routine demonstration flight.
"All the theories put forward so far are badly flawed, there is a shortage of hard information and there are a lot of irresponsible rumors," says Roman Gusarov, editor of Avia.ru, an online aviation journal. "I am afraid that Russia is not going to emerge from this story without taking a black eye."
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Citing an unnamed GRU general, Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that electronic jamming of the plane's on board equipment is the most plausible explanation for how the jet, which was making a demonstration flight out of Jakarta airport with 45 people aboard, smashed into a mountainside even though an initial investigation has found that its terrain and collision avoidance systems were all functioning properly.
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