[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Hugh

To protect from air attacks from a civilian airliner, with the associated transponder?

Civilian airliners?

But the losses mounted. And as the war expanded to Ukraine’s east, Kiev’s pilots found themselves conducting air attacks against pro-Russian separatists armed with high-tech surface-to-air missiles—one of which destroyed a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in July, killing 298 people.

The Kyiv Post newspaper reported on 22 August 2014, that since the beginning of the aerial operations in the East, 18 Ukrainian air Force aircraft were lost, with 16 shot down or destroyed on the ground and 2 crashed for other reasons. Those lost due to hostile fire included: 10 helicopters (five Mi-8s and five Mi-24s), seven combat planes (one Su-24, four Su-25 and two MiG-29) and three transport planes (a An-26, a An-30 and an Il-76).[1]