Photographs of debris from the downed Malaysian jet show what seem to be telltale holes left by a missile strike on the Boeing Co. 777, defense experts said.

One image of a heavily perforated piece of fuselage that appears to come from the plane's cockpit suggests damage from a ground-fired warhead, analysts at research group IHS Jane's said Tuesday.

"The punctures seen in the photograph are relatively uniform in size," said Reed Foster, manager of military capabilities at IHS Jane's. " This would potentially be consistent with a fragmentation-type warhead employed upon a number of modern and legacy surface-to-air missile systems."