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LA Times: U.S. radar installations and other assets in the region would assist in tracking any surface-to-air missile, which Ukrainian officials have said probably came from a Russian-made Buk system. The information would be relayed to U.S. European Command, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.

The combination of unique signals over a period of seconds or minutes would allow a U.S. satellite to triangulate the point of launch and track the trajectory of the missile.

"They would have known exactly where it was launched, where it was headed, and the rate at which it was traveling," Ellison said.