Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
If Iranian radar misidentified a civilian airliner taking off from one of their own airports, and then shot it down, what does this say about the purportedly excellent Iranian air defense network?
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I'm no expert on anti-air warfare. But from my understanding on radar no matter how old that its really hard to mis-identify a civilian aircraft from a military aircaft. The transponder on the aircraft would be basically be shouting I'm a civilian aircraft on the radar operators screen.
If it was a shoulder launched, you still have to identify the aircraft visually.
Add to it that this plane was in a civilian air corridor that's usually identified by the countries anti-aircraft command.
Its pretty hard not to identify a civilian craft on a search scope or even visually.
I'm not saying this was an intentional shootdown, more of a confluence of incompetence and stupidity with whoever was responsible for the shootdown if it was a shootdown.
I mean lets look at military shooting down a civilian plane. I think there have been 7 incidences
KAL - 007 - Intentionally targeted.
Iran Air 644 - Mis-identified as a F-14 and shot down. This lead to advances in the IFF system that most planes have today
Itavia Flight 870 - Lots of theories on this, that the French shot it down, that it was mis-identified as Ghadaffi's plane and shot down. But it's theorized that it was intentionally targeted.
EI AI 402 - Intentionally targeted and shot down by Bulgaria.
Pacific Airways 1954 - Intentionally targeted by Chinese fighters, long before modern IFF, but its likely they had eyes on target
Libya Airlines 114 - Intentionally targetted by Israeli forces after it ignored warnings and warning shots to land
Siberia 1812 - Plane was shot down by the Ukrainian military after the S-200 that was fired during a missile ex missed the drone it was targeted and squired the airliner.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 - Shot down by a Russian Buk system. The investigation was hindered by The Russians as there were theories that the operators were Russians. But they intentionally targeted the aircraft and didn't it seems care about the Transponder signal or ignored it.