Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
There are likely hundreds of flights taking off from this airport everyday. Why would an automated system take out this one? The crash also happened very close to the airport. It would seem like a very bad idea to have automated missile systems firing in that area. Also most US drones would fly far higher in the sky that the level this plane was shot down at.
One strange thing is that Iran was definitely making statements about mechanical failures and the plane turning around, before the more damning evidence came out. This suggests they may have been covering something up.
|
An automated system doesn't really work like that, the radar system can individually target multiple planes at a time, I believe its 4 for this system, but there's still a commander and a operator that identifies the targets and releases the battery. You don't want a fully automated system that doesn't have human over sight or even a IFF over site unless you want to start shooting down your own planes.
The Tor is modern enough that its radar would pick up the transponder code of the plane and identify it as a civilian air liner.
The Tor is also a low to medium range system, if the Plane was at I read about 6000 ft, that's about the range of the missile.
Again I'm not saying that this was some kind of nefarious intentional shoot down, but Iran has to come fully clean on how this incident happened, and fully open up the investigation, allow questioning of the battery crew and however commanded the air defense in that region and turn over the black boxes and voice recorders without apparent damage.