It’s increasingly clear that it was Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists mistook a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet for an enemy warplane and shot it down on July 17, killing nearly 300 people.

Don’t believe it’s possible for a bunch of poorly-trained insurgents to operate a powerful surface-to-air missile system? Robert Beckhusen explained how a bunch of Hungarian enthusiasts created a realistic missile simulator—pictured above—that can teach anybody to shoot down planes … but don’t necessarily help you to distinguish warplanes from passenger jets.

“Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine knew enough to acquire a target and fire, but did not bother or were unable to correctly identify their target as a civilian aircraft,” Beckhusen wrote.

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are having a hard time maintaining their social media accounts. Twitter blocked the group after it posted photos of its fighters executing Iraqi military prisoners.

Moving onto smaller, more open social sites including Friendica and RedMatrix, ISIS discovered that even radical libertarians are reluctant to give murderous terrorists a platform, as Adam Rawnsley reported.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters continue to hold the line against ISIS’ advance in northern Iraq. Photographer Matt Cetti-Roberts visited a pesh hospital and spoke to 30-year-old sergeant Hiwa Hussein Rassul, who was terribly wounded in a bomb blast but said he can’t wait to get back to the fighting.

“I am in my country,” Rassul said. “If I die, it will be as shahid.” That means “one who dies for Kurdistan.”

Israel’s bloody campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas has escalated, leaving hundreds dead. But the Jewish state’s air power alone can’t win the war, Beckhusen explained.

In late July, the U.S. inked an $11-billion arms deal with Qatar, a strong American ally in the Middle East that’s worried about Iran and its own domestic unrest. “Twenty-four Apache [helicopters] and hundreds of Patriot missiles is a Hell of a lot of firepower to protect such a tiny country,” Matthew Gault wrote.

And back at home, Winslow Wheeler described how American legislators tacked billions of dollars onto the Pentagon’s budget request in order to fund their favorite weapons programs. So much for fiscal discipline.

During the Cold War, CIA agents essentially stole a Soviet satellite from a Mexican exhibition, according to Michael Peck. Robert Farley recounted one U.S. Navy officer’s plan from the 1980s to abolish the Air Force. And Thomas Newdick revealed the world’s best air-to-air missile.

It’s in Sweden.

David Axe’s new book Shadow Wars is out. Sign up for a daily War is Boring email update here. Subscribe to WIB’s RSS feed here and follow the main page here.