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Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

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Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#31
I’m no fan of what Trump did. But after a lot of sabre rattling and threats against the US, Iran holds a state funeral where innocent Iranians get crushed to death, launches a token missile strike, then incinerates a bunch of innocent Iranians by accident. How many own goals can you kick in one week?

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#32
post #2

This is why my number 1 fear for the destruction of humanity is not climate change, plague, asteroids, or super volcanoes. It’s nuclear weapons. One wrong “Oops!” by the military and the entire world self-destructs in mutually assured annihilation. Absolutely depressing.

One oops and maybe something gets nuked, but I don't think it makes any sense to worry about the whole world being destroyed. Why would they? I mean, if the US was hit, it would be like 9/11 only bigger, and I'm sure people would be talking about glass parking lots, but why would all the missiles be launched towards everywhere? Who wants to destroy the world and why wouldn't they have done it already? Same goes for a…

> Who wants to destroy the world and why wouldn't they have done it already?

Who wants to shoot down a civilian airliner and why wouldn't they have done it already?

It's not about the desire to destroy humanity. It's about the catastrophic scenarios that can arise when nuclear armed countries think they're under nuclear attack and start getting jumpy about counter strikes or even pre-emptive strikes. The only sensible strategy is, basically, to Launch All The Things and wipe out your enemy before they can do the same.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#33
post #29
post #19

That seems very likely. They probably had anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile systems fully armed and something either automatically mis-categorized the aircraft as a bomber or missile and shot at it or someone got nervous and trigger happy.

you're probably right -- but the fact that a missile can fire automatically with either 1): inaccurate confidence in the target being what they think it is or 2) an improper confidence threshold allowing for the misclassification of an airliner as a missile, is pretty scary. One likes to think that automatic missiles should be fairly accurate and confident in their assessments. My question i've wondered : was the sen…

If a strike aircraft were that close to a sensitive military installation (by accounts: missile R&D facility) then it could launch weapons at any second.

There likely wasn't "human-scale" time to confirm identity. And specifically against a US adversary with stealth technology, it would make sense to have automated air defense systems on a hair trigger and human air defense systems with extremely liberal RoE.

What seems like it should have happened is that the international airport grounded all outbound traffic and parked all non-emergency inbound traffic in holding, until such time as Iranian air defenses could relax their posture to guarantee safety.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#35
post #16
post #2

This is why my number 1 fear for the destruction of humanity is not climate change, plague, asteroids, or super volcanoes. It’s nuclear weapons. One wrong “Oops!” by the military and the entire world self-destructs in mutually assured annihilation. Absolutely depressing.

Aka The Great Filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

This is what scares me. That life springs up all around us in our galaxy, and promptly 'F's it up before we even discover radio communications. So, if we ever find life, say on a Jovian moon, we've just increased the odds that there have been intelligent life... that just wasn't intelligent to not knock each other out.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#36
post #17
post #13

So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. It's good to see both sides walking back from war. Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around t…

> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was shot down they walked back their story.

They denied it at first, yes. But they were also surprisingly open to allowing foreign investigators on site. They even agreed to give the black boxes over to the Ukrainians.

If they were trying to hide something I feel like they would have handled it much differently. Like, for instance how the Russian-backed forces acted when they did the same thing in 2014. Deny, deflect, deny, repeat.

The truth would have come out eventually in Iran. Video or not. After all, this incident happened over a populated area with the worlds best intelligence apparatus laser focused on it.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#37
We live in a world where we punish for incorrectly jumping to conclusions.

But we don't punish for not stating correct conclusions when things happen.

Which seems to be a fault in the way things work.

People who go with cowardice, of lets not talk to soon, or don't speculate, or just tow official lines rule. It's why we had Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's why Science has the replication issues. It's not a small thing.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#39
post #17
post #13

So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. It's good to see both sides walking back from war. Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around t…

> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was shot down they walked back their story.

Everything in comparison. MH17 launch was geolocated, TEL videoed and photographed from ground and satellite. Russia is still denying it.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#40
post #29
post #19

That seems very likely. They probably had anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile systems fully armed and something either automatically mis-categorized the aircraft as a bomber or missile and shot at it or someone got nervous and trigger happy.

you're probably right -- but the fact that a missile can fire automatically with either 1): inaccurate confidence in the target being what they think it is or 2) an improper confidence threshold allowing for the misclassification of an airliner as a missile, is pretty scary. One likes to think that automatic missiles should be fairly accurate and confident in their assessments. My question i've wondered : was the sen…

Anti aircraft missiles are not automatically fired and any claims that they are are incorrect.

The warning system is automatic, but it is a human (in this case on heightened alert) that pulled the trigger.

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