First a refresher of the Vincennes incident via Wikipedia...
On 3 July 1988, Vincennes, under the command of Captain Will Rogers III, fired two radar-guided missiles and shot down an Iran Air Airbus A300civilian airliner over Iranian airspace in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 passengers and crew on board. According to Captain Rogers, they were being attacked by eight Iranian gun boats. Vincennes was defending itself from this attack when the plane was shot at with two Standard missiles. Crucially, the Vincennes misidentified the Iranian Airbus as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft. The Iran Air Flight 655 was climbing at the time and its radio transmitter was on the Mode III civilian code rather than on the purely military Mode II, as recorded by the USS Vincennes own shipboard Aegis Combat System.The above is a quick and dirty.
I highly recommend you read the official Navy history of the incident. My point? The USS Vincennes was hookin' and jabbin' against what we would call today a small boat swarm. Additionally they did not have the luxury of knowing that they would be engaged. Consider it an ambush at sea. Lastly, they picked up a radar contact that had an airplane heading there way.
Any reasonable person would assume that the Iranian Air Force was on the way to participate in the naval engagement.
Now fast forward to the events over Ukraine and I am getting a serious dose of anger over the main stream media's attempt to link the incidents.
Want a dose of cold reality?
Only an idiot would fly an airliner over an active war zone where aircraft...high performance aircraft at that...had been shot down.
Additionally one must ask why Malaysia Air Lines would be so stupid. The only thing I can come up with is to save money. More specifically to save on fuel costs.
Long story short, all these airliner shoot downs are not the same. Perhaps you could say that they were all accidental, but one thing is certain. Whoever did the shoot down in the Ukraine was not operating under the same stresses that Captain Rogers was when he gave the order to fire at the unknown bogey charging at his ship.
Of course it's not the same. The only common thing is that both were civilian airlines and that't it.
ReplyDeleteIt was not only a Malaysia Air but a lot more airlines, this is the standard air route to Asia and it was rather busy road with lot's of planes. They avoid air space above Crimea as Ukraine gov. declare it an occupation zone. But airspace above eastern Ukraine was safe to that moment. The airlines should change course of all planes when the Ukrainian An-26 was shoot down above 6km, but they did not.
It's just a bad luck really... the Malaysia Air was in wrong moment in wrong time. Terrible thing.
But hey, some of Russian medias already try to put a theory that it was the SAME plane that was lost couple of months ago. Because... the state of bodies was pretty "bad".
Fuck this.
Where is the big difference ,if (that is a big if)rebels shoot it down they are 'hookin' & 'jabin' against opponents air power in full on war.
ReplyDeleteAssumed rebel SAM operator was probably not on the same stress level but at the same time also didn't have anything aproaching sofistication and situational awarness of and Aegis system and fully trained crew manning it.
Mr.T: Anti aircraft ground forces must ID the target prior to engaging per SoP. By binoculars and silhouette comparison of military aircraft and civilian aircraft especially when an air corridor is known to have airliners crossing it. It would be used also to prevent fratricide of friendly aircraft. No matter what was going on stress wise or hooking and jabbing.
ReplyDeleteThe USS Vincennes used the IFF to interrogate the aircraft approaching them, the parrot squawked the code for an F-14 Tomcat which Iran had. It was treated as such and shot down by automated systems.
The reason was the airliner had been used to transport troops and war supplies to the front lines of the Iranian forces in their war with Iraq and used the IFF of an F-14 to prevent being shot down by their own forces.
By design or by accident this IFF was still squawking as an F-14 not a civilian airliner.
This aircraft could have been filled with volunteer or impressed suicide passengers for just such a response, or as a decoy for a kamikaze attack by airliner against the Ship such as the events of 9/11.
It was said at the time when pictures of the bodies of the passengers were shown that the victims sure were in good shape to have been hit by a missile and crashing in the sea. As in unburned, dressed and intact.
Propaganda or accident even a foiled attack.
Nobody knows but the Iranian's.
The ultimate blame falls on the pilot who knowingly flew into a war zone that had anti aircraft missile engagements and shoot downs at low and medium altitude.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, Didn't.
Yes and you believe that Airbus responded F14 IFF signal. The only IFF indication plane was a fighter was in someones head.
Delete''Petty Office Andrew Anderson saw the blip for an incoming bogey go up on one side of the big blue screens. Anderson's job in "Air Alley," the row of operators who handled air warfare, was to identify any air traffic within range of the ship. He told the Aegis system to query the incoming plane: Identify, Friend or Foe? By standard practice, all planes carry a transponder that automatically answers the IFF query with Mode 1 or 2 (military), or Mode 3 (civilian). Anderson got a Mode 3. "Commair" (commercial airliner) he figured. He reached beside his console for the navy's listing of commercial flights over the gulf. But as he scanned the schedule, he missed Flight 655. Apparently, in the darkness of the CIC, its arc lights flickered every time the Vincennes's five-inch gun fired off another round at the hapless Iranian gunboats, he was confused by the gulf's four different time zones. Anderson turned to the petty officer next to him in Air Alley, John Leach, and wondered aloud if the blip could be an Iranian warplane - an F-4 or F-14 perhaps? Their boss in Air Alley, Lt. Clay Zocher, overheard the two enlisted men talking, Zocher was already nervous. He had stood on this watch only twice before during General Quarters and he'd never mastered the computer routines for his console. He was worrying at the moment about an Iranian P-3 patrol plane that was making its way down the Iranian coastline. Could the P-3 be coordinating an attack on the Vincennes with the unidentified bogey? Zocher decided to pass the chatter in Air Alley up the chain of command to his boss, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Lustig, the Vincennes' tactical commander for air warfare.
you're actually looking to Wikipedia for exact details of this incident instead of using it as a broad brush of what occured in the CIC that day?
DeleteAMAZING!
stop being lazy and read a book. Captain Rogers put out an account of the incident and then tells about he and his family lived for years under FBI protection because a death sentence had been put out on him. read the official navy history of the event.
but have a care.
want to know the two incidents that changed the US Navy forever? Millenimum Challenge 2002 and the USS Vincennes! both involved small boat swarms and the reason is simple. because one of the US Navy's biggest baddest cruisers came close to getting its ass handed to it by a collection of craft that cost less than 100k. tossing in the threat of aircraft and that crew had good reason to be jumpy as hell.
but once again instead of blaming the idiot pilots for flying into a danger zone you decide to blame the US service personnel who are simply fighting to live another day.
i'm done. i am actually getting pissed at the weird concepts i see creeping into my blog.
its definitely time to take a holiday from this bullshit.
Text is not from the wilkipedia and like said, the diference if the rebels shot the plane down with their sole Kub/buk launcher ,its would be small semi operational unit of nonacive duty milita ( a full kub or buk air defense battery consists of over 20 men and radar ,c&c and missle launcher units (so far rebels don't seem to poses such unit), while Navy crew was fully opearational with latest and greatest Aegis .
DeleteAnd from what we see separatist rebels are in the fight of their lives .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNgv3KZ7xRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuJoy3dpqRM
If the aircraft had been an active F-14 and if that F-14 had weapons such as the Harpoon or similar at the range it was shot down it was at the range to engage and shoot at the Vicennes.
ReplyDeleteSo we have the other 3 cases:
ReplyDeletethe korean airliner downed by the Russian in 1983,
the siberian airline that was downed by Ukraina in 2001
the Ustica case of the italian airline downed while "Nato" was trying to kill Gadaffi (this is the conspiracy theory, the most affirmed in Italy)
It is similar when you take into account command-post confusion. Which happens. Vincennes, the U.S. Army Patriot shoot downs of the UK Tornado and USN F-18 in 2003 and this Ukrainian shoot-down with an SA-5 of a Tu-154 in 2002 bring up the quality and/or the human capacity to make sound decisions under stress (and with equipment that in some cases is wildly over-hyped on its alleged prowess). http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80485
ReplyDelete1. This is not a Terrorist act. The rebel perpetrators honestly believed they were shooting at a legitimate military target... Just like the USS Vincennes. Cargo planes are no different than merchant and/or troop ships during WWII
ReplyDelete2 The killing of innocent civilians unintentionally in an act of war is not usually considered a war crime.
3. Giving a sophisticated SAM to a bunch of dumb ass rebels is stupidity beyond belief. And this includes teaching them how to use a captured system. Maybe a smart lawyer can turn this into a war crime. I hope so. But I don't see it.
4. Fortunately Putin is using the "I had nothing to do with it" rather than "you gave that MORON running Vincennes a Medal" Defense.
5. Ukraine had the responsibility to close the airspace. They bear MINOR responsibility.