Comment by wafflemaker
7 hours ago
Or Girkin not ordering the civilian plane full of people to be shot down. It was a civilian plane at 10km altitude with a transponder on. Really doesn't look like a jet on a radar.
And up to that point Russia wasn't known to supply the separatists with an anti air system and the crew to run it.
Doesn’t look like a F14 either but a US warship, rather than some guys in a field, still managed to pull that off and send 290 people to their graves.
But it did look like an F-14. There really was an F-14, just on the ground at an Iranian airbase. And the Vincennes was under armed attack at the time--Iran let a civilian jetliner overfly their own attack. Plenty of blame for them, also.
> But it did look like an F-14
It absolutely did not. The RCS of an F-14 v/s an Airbus A300 is an order of magnitude different (probably 2 or 3 orders).
> There really was an F-14, just on the ground at an Iranian airbase
There was, but that’s a red herring for the root cause. Each ship’s radar independently and correctly identified and tracked the Airbus separate from the Mode 2 targets, but when communicating the track information between ships, the tracks were mixed up.
Source: The US Navy’s own account: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about-us/l...
> There was a combat camera team aboard the Vincennes, and the footage depicts considerable confusion and even ill-discipline amongst the crew (cheering, shouting, football game atmosphere) that contributed to one of the most tragic events in U.S. Navy history
It would seem the air defense systems used could not reliably determine what you imply they should [1][2]. I’m not sure where you’re coming from, or why it would matter what one country was known or not known to do.
[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/07/18/12951/how-can-a-...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/07/18...
> why it would matter what one country was known or not known to do.
It absolutely matters.
Flying over a war zone with known anti aircraft missiles is quite different to flying over a low level conflict that is using small arms only.