A properly functioning SA-15 missile battery would have had multiple means of identifying Ukraine International Airways Flight PS 752 as a civilian airliner. Here's what could have gone wrong.
Share to linkedin... [+]Updated Jan. 10, 11:40 a.m.One of the basic tasks of an air defense battery is to discriminate between friendly aircraft and foe. But amid a state of high alert after Iran had launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at U.S.
The SA-15 operators also would have considered the path and speed of the plane on radar. “Is it operating at low altitude, at high speed, headed toward a sensitive area”? Deptula asks. Flight PS 752 was rising toward 8,000 feet at a relatively sedate speed of 275 knots when flight tracking data from its transponder cut out, a normal profile for an airliner, he says. “It is departing the area, climbing through medium altitude, not trying to hide its signature, looking like a routine operation.
“Your incentive balance sways over to shoot first, ask questions later,” says Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In 2007 and 2008, Iranian air defense units mistakenly fired on two airliners amid fears that Israel was planning to attack its nuclear weapons development facilities, according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by. Iranian air defense forces believed enemy aircraft might mimic the flight profile of an airliner, the report said.
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