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737 down in Iran


Gil Bang

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And 9 months after the USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airliner, Iran blew up a car driven by the wife of the ship's captain.

Source? Because as I recall, there was no claim of responsibility, and US authorities made no such finding. Wasn’t there even reasonable speculation that it was related to an affair the captain was having?
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Shotdown by a pair of SA-15 SAMs says Newsweek:
https://www.newsweek.com/iranians-shot-down-ukraine-flight-mistake-sources-1481313
The guy that pushed the button on this missile -- do you think he'll be promoted to Launch Commander for Iran's nuclear missile program?
This is a prime example of why Iran should not have nuclear bombs.

Then I guess you think America shouldn’t have them either
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4 hours ago, HouTex said:

There’s no way in my view they didn’t know this was a commercial jet. But if it was a mistake, we damn sure don’t want those dumb fucks to ever get a nuke.

What was their supposed motivation to blow a civilian plane with mostly Iranian passengers out of the sky? To prove they could take down a plane? Or did the Ayatollah find the pilot’s wadded up homework in the seat crack of his located stolen 1973 GranTorino?

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2 hours ago, Murfdogg21 said:

What was their supposed motivation to blow a civilian plane with mostly Iranian passengers out of the sky? To prove they could take down a plane? Or did the Ayatollah find the pilot’s wadded up homework in the seat crack of his located stolen 1973 GranTorino?

My guess is that it went something like this:  After we blew their general into a million pieces, they talk a lot of shit about how they're gonna destroy us.  Then after mourning the general long enough, they decide to shoot a bunch of missiles at bases populated at least in part by American troops, but in doing so, actually only destroy a couple of tool sheds with those efforts.  Us, expecting them to attack, are monitoring the situation, and when they do, we respond almost instantly using stealth and maybe other secret aircraft, proving that we already have air superiority over their airspace.  Perhaps even buzzing their presidential palace or other important Iranian government facilities, just to prove that we can be up your ass in an instant without you knowing it.  Then, after being freaked the fuck out by planes with USA painted on them almost giving them all free haircuts, they pop off a couple of SAMs at the next thing they see on the radar.  Boom, down comes a passenger jet with almost 180 people on it.

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1 hour ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Nah, more like they have shitty situational awareness software, the guy in charge was probably taking a smoke break, and whoever was monitoring the radar track either didn’t or couldn’t identify it and panicked.

Well, on the other hand maybe the Persian in charge didn’t forget the story of how alert the Oahu radar chain of command was in December, 1941.

Edited by Armybrat
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Interesting perspective. Do not know anything about the no planes scheduled to fly part. This is the first that I've heard about that.

https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/en2bxz/iran_says_it_unintentionally_shot_down_ukrainian/fduj3rk/

[–]AtomicBitchwax 5888 points 1 day agotrz28na8ajz31_Helpful.png?width=48&height=48&auto=webp&s=a414be7b8a7820efe5bd8909eb9d80a27a9a901e71rp03og8gi31_InsightfulComment.png?width=48&height=48&auto=webp&s=1c32f25ea1a98ffac9557a9dc9849264c848081d3wlxkqjq8gi31_ImportantContext.png?width=48&height=48&auto=webp&s=51460f4b48bcd43393352383ce946bdac117c127platinum_48.png& 16 more 

Wasn't this airplane taking off from Iran? If they suspected it to be a US military plane, why would it be taking off from an public international airport and reporting a commercial flight ID? Wouldn't they be looking for incoming aircraft? It sounds and awful like they are just shooting at anything that moves.

It is a fabulously egregious failure on the part of Iranian ADA no matter how you spin it.

In their defense (ugh) there are some things that could contribute towards how that missile got launched.

First, you need to understand what the profile of a 5th gen platform looks like to a Russian built radar system, and then incorporate the immediate context.

"Stealth" airplanes, even the best ones the United States can build, are still detectable from various angles and at a close enough distance. For instance, an F-35 relies on internal carriage to store its weapons, which greatly reduces its radar profile. When it's time to attack something, it has to kick its bay doors open long enough to drop or fire the ordnance it's carrying. When those doors are open, its signature increases substantially. This is a golden window for a competent air defense guy to lock and fire on the airplane. Unfortunately for them that window is very short, and by the time the missile is off the rail the airplane is likely back in an LO configuration, maneuvering, and not emitting. Given the system that supposedly launched on the airliner, that's about as far as you can get.

American doctrine and tech also rely heavily on EW. That is, the ability to play with the enemy's sensors. Jamming, spoofing, and manipulating their systems to influence where they're focused.

While the systems are classified, everybody has a decent idea about them, and incorporates that ability into their threat assessments.

Now, imagine you are a well trained weapons systems operator of a domestic SAM site briefed on adversary platforms and notional threat profiles. You are manning a missile site during the most heightened threat posture your nation has ever known since you were born, against the most capable adversary on the planet. You know that if you ever even have the chance to launch on an enemy airplane, it will be fleeting and transient.

You know you are subject to systems that can throw radar returns at you that do not exist, that are somewhere else, that look like one thing, but are another. Iran knows the US can do this. They train for it.

Now, a fresh return pops up already airborne, climbing out at ~6,000 feet, out of nowhere.

There's terrain between you and the airport (which could and did obscure the path the airliner took from the runway to ~6,000 feet), but you already have a flight schedule and you know nothing is scheduled to depart that airport in a one hour window (true.)

The Iranian military is somewhat competent. More so than the Arab militaries in the region. While it's not equivalent to the West, there is some expectation that initiative is a good thing.

So you have a radar return out of no where, with no civilian airplanes expected in the area, during a period of extreme threat, with the educated assumption that a sudden radar return headed straight for a strategic asset represents a plausible threat profile, and you fire.

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3 hours ago, Pibald said:

That’s a great narrative. 

So the most trained competent guy is the one that pulled the trigger?  Was it the guy holding the paper mache pot? or the one trying to kick it?

It's a great narrative if you assume that anyone there knows what the fuck they are doing.  I'm gonna go ahead and disagree, yeah.

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The Jews inserted bugs into the Iranian's most top secret facility to screw with their enrichment centrifuges. I don't doubt that someone could also leverage the air defenses into firing on one of their own civilian aircraft. Likely? No, but possible? I think yes.  That said, I think these guys were wound up tighter than an aggy freshman at his first log stacking and dropped the full jizz jar at the first hint of something moving.

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The Jews inserted bugs into the Iranian's most top secret facility to screw with their enrichment centrifuges. I don't doubt that someone could also leverage the air defenses into firing on one of their own civilian aircraft. Likely? No, but possible? I think yes.  That said, I think these guys were wound up tighter than an aggy freshman at his first log stacking and dropped the full jizz jar at the first hint of something moving.

The Jews? JFC.
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19 hours ago, Hairy Biped said:

My guess is that it went something like this:  After we blew their general into a million pieces, they talk a lot of shit about how they're gonna destroy us.  Then after mourning the general long enough, they decide to shoot a bunch of missiles at bases populated at least in part by American troops, but in doing so, actually only destroy a couple of tool sheds with those efforts.  Us, expecting them to attack, are monitoring the situation, and when they do, we respond almost instantly using stealth and maybe other secret aircraft, proving that we already have air superiority over their airspace.  Perhaps even buzzing their presidential palace or other important Iranian government facilities, just to prove that we can be up your ass in an instant without you knowing it.  Then, after being freaked the fuck out by planes with USA painted on them almost giving them all free haircuts, they pop off a couple of SAMs at the next thing they see on the radar.  Boom, down comes a passenger jet with almost 180 people on it.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

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2 hours ago, El Diablo said:

The Jews inserted bugs into the Iranian's most top secret facility to screw with their enrichment centrifuges. I don't doubt that someone could also leverage the air defenses into firing on one of their own civilian aircraft. Likely? No, but possible? I think yes.  That said, I think these guys were wound up tighter than an aggy freshman at his first log stacking and dropped the full jizz jar at the first hint of something moving.

So the dude shot off when he was no supposed to? no one hacked an individual SAM system. They shot, people died. 

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12 hours ago, El Diablo said:

The Jews inserted bugs into the Iranian's most top secret facility to screw with their enrichment centrifuges. I don't doubt that someone could also leverage the air defenses into firing on one of their own civilian aircraft. Likely? No, but possible? I think yes.  That said, I think these guys were wound up tighter than an aggy freshman at his first log stacking and dropped the full jizz jar at the first hint of something moving.

I still cant believe we fucked that up by increasing the rate of failure from Stuxnet (against what the Israeli's wanted evidently)

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First arrests made concerning the shoot down. Interesting who they focused on. 

Iran's judiciary announced the arrests of an unspecified number of suspects after the accidental shoot-down of a commercial passenger jet during a major confrontation with the United States last week.

In comments carried by state media, spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said on Tuesday "extensive investigations have taken place and some individuals are arrested". He did not offer additional details.

Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from the capital Tehran, said one person detained was the individual who posted video of the missile striking the airliner. 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/iran-announces-arrests-downing-ukrainian-airliner-200114071925923.html?__twitter_impression=true

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Quote

The date visible on the footage is “2019-10-17,” not Jan. 8, the day the plane was downed. We believe this is because the camera system is using a Persian calendar, not a Gregorian one. Jan. 8 converts to the 18th of Dey, the 10th month in the Persian calendar. Digitally that would display as 2019-10-18 in the video. One theory is that the discrepancy of one day can be explained by a difference between Persian and Gregorian leap years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/world/iran-plane-crash-video.html

 

a date can just be wrong, but that explanation doesn't make a lot of sense.

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12 hours ago, elfenix said:

i thought it was "discovered" by a russian "security firm"

evidently with how they were doing it initially it cycled on and off at "random" and did damage but the goal was to 1) keep them from figuring out what the issue was 2) have them get rid of scientists who knew what they were doing because they couldnt find/fix it

IIRC we made the change to have it be "more active" which led to them discovering it/the Kaspersky research?

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14 hours ago, elfenix said:

i thought it was "discovered" by a russian "security firm"

It was first put into the public knowledge by a Russian security firm Kaspersky, who are some of the best in the world in security research. And it only became known to them because whoever (us and israel) was controlling stuxnet modified the spreading mechanism to be more aggressive and it spread exactly like how a virus does. 

If you want to learn more, there's a great Darknet Diaries podcast episode on it from a technical and cyberwarfare perspective

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