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

Post by metanoia » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #33

serf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Post by mthoms » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #55

mthoms wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I agree. I'm just saying there never seemed to be an organized or vigorous campaign of denial. The government was denying it while at the same time, the aviation authority seemed to be signalling that it welcomed international assistance. >They would be left alone against the US. They had to. That didn't deter the Russians in Ukraine. They still tried to cover it up. Badly.

Europe depends on Russian gas or they freeze so not really an equal comparison.

Post by originldirgibl » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #67

aaomidi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this isn't well done. It took them three days to say this. How did it take them three days to realize they shot a missile? Especially since they had a denial campaign going on for three goddamn days. This was just external pressure on Iran forcing them to do this. If this flight wasn't an international one it would've been swept under the rug.

A possible explanation might be that the guys who actually fired the missile have spent three days trying to avoid blame, and that it's taken that long for the truth t make it's way up the leadership ladder. I suspect if I was an army grunt who'd fired of a shoulder launched missile only to realise just too late that it was a civilian airliner, I'd be AWOL and in hiding for _way_ longer than three days...

Post by cma » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #59

arthurcolle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't have an appreciation of the devastation that modern thermonuclear warheads are capable of, as well as the sophisticated delivery systems that the United States has concocted and refined over many, many years.

I think the B83 (1.2 megatons) is the highest yield weapon currently in the US arsenal. Which, while terrible (9 megatons ~= pressure wave that levels most structures in a largish city), pales in comparison to something like the B41 (25 megatons) or the B53 (9 megatons). Generally speaking, the US and Russia both realized (~70s) that building excessively large bombs was inflexible and a waste of resources. The actual…

Post by t0mas88 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 6:42 AM UTC

thelittleone wrote: post #27

api wrote: 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.

Possibly. Though surely someone (or some algorithm) in the decision chain finds it odd that the enemy bomber takes off from their own countries airfield.