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An Su-25 military jet aircraft which exploded March 20 in the Russian Far East while performing a training flight might have been accidentally hit by a missile fired from another plane, investigators said.

Prosecutors of the Far Eastern Military Prosecutor’s Office said that the second plane following the Su-25 possibly fired a missile which unintentionally hit the wrong target. The jet crashed killing its 39-year-old pilot Sergei Yakovenko. Yakovenko had nearly 18 years of experience but did not have time to eject and died on the spot.

The jets were performing training flights at the Novoselskoye testing center at the aviation garrison of Chernigovka, Spassky County, 143 kilometers from Vladivostok, at 10:33 a.m. local time.

On Wednesday Interfax news agency cited a source from the military prosecution office saying that, “The jet was hit by a missile fired by a following plane. The version that the equipment had failed was not proven,” the unnamed source said.

The Su-25 jets are designed to hit ground targets and the C-8 missiles can not possibly hit other planes. The investigators said the first jet could have been flying at a lower altitude than the one which was following it. In this case the missile could have accidentally hit the leading jet.

Earlier reports said that the accident might have resulted from the failure of the plane’s aviation equipment or detonation of a shell on board the aircraft.

Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky announced that, “the official version of the jet’s explosion can be revealed only by the representative of the Defense Ministry commission.” However, the earlier restriction on Su-25 flights introduced after the incident was lifted and 32 jets will participate in the parade at Red Square in Moscow on Victory Day in May.

The Su-25, a single-seat, twin-engine attack jet aircraft, was developed in the Soviet Union by the Sukhoi Design Bureau intended to provide close air support for the Soviet Ground Forces. After successful test flights, the plane became part of the Forces aircraft in 1981.