(1)
I apologize in advance for is a long post; however, I’d like to bring forward some points for your consideration, ladies and gentlemen. I will break up my thoughts into several posts. A few pages ago, I stated that it looks like that plane was hit, or words to that effect and I even asked if there was an itchy trigger finger. I still lean in that general direction but, being cynical, I’m not prepared to accept as fact what US/Western Intelligence “sources” tell me via the media.
Let’s start with TOR M-1, or SA-15, or GAUNTLET or whatever you wish to call it. It is a short range area-defense system. The TOR does not operate as a stand-alone system; therefore, the system/the crews would not have been 'on alert' in the sense people are led to believe. The TOR crews and Battery Commanders do
not get to decide anything.
A TOR crew would have
zero authority on their own to target anything they thought was a threat within the TOR 15 km surveillance range. That is just not the way it works in an integrated, layered defense of fixed sites. The integrated system consists of long-range BAVAR 373 or S-300. The medium range is covered by BUK. The medium and long range systems are operated at higher levels – Brigade or above. Someone way above the TOR crew's pay grade would have properly identified any threatening target much further away with multiple other radars and handled it appropriately.
Even in an unlikely, hypothetical case, I can't imagine Iran (or any AD forces) clearing a TOR as the sole responder in this scenario, especially for a target 'suddenly appearing' but moving
away from Tehran and the airport. What, exactly, would have been the threat to let a point-defense unit to start blasting away?
The air defense systems are operated by IRGC. The TOR isn’t operated by some schlub conscripts who show up for their night shift a few days a month. Thus, the operators are well aware of the flights coming in/out of Tehran. This flight wasn't the only air traffic at the time was it?
EDIT:
"There were 10 departures from Tehran-IKA from midnight local time 8 Jan through the departure of PS752 at 06:12 LT. Prior to PS752, the last flight movement at IKA was the departure of QR8408 at 05:39 local time."
I just can't imagine a TOR being the first/only one to detect a threatening aircraft even if it was moving directly
towards Tehran. Nobody has cloaking devices, and the TOR's little engagement radar has no magical sensitivity that they could have seen anything that all the longer-range radars would have missed. The crews understand this. They're not supposed to make command decisions to destroy aircraft like they're playing a video game, and their commanders would not simply have used the closest TOR to blast an unidentified target near a Tehran's airport when they had plenty of time to figure out what was going on and opportunity to blast it if it ever was identified as a threat.
With all of that said, that doesn’t mean that some trigger happy guy down at the launcher doesn’t press ‘fire’ anyway, but I doubt it.