Ukrainian Aircraft down in Iran

[fdr]

Originally Posted by nonsense

There's a world of difference between unintended consequences and foreseeable outcomes. While missiles flying, even missiles flying with innocent victims, was foreseeable, this particular outcome was not.

True, but it should be within the risk analysis of a military to comprehend what is the extent of mayhem that is unleashed with the commencement of action. That goes for all sides.

1. That there would be retaliation of some form following the targeted assassination of a foreign government person is foreseeable.
2. That the retaliation response would incur a response was a stated and expected outcome, That resulted in the twitter storm on the matter from one side, discussing action including attacks on cultural sites.
3. That the missile crew are under stress, and probably fatigued will be highlighted in the investigation.
4. The missile crews themselves are probable targets for SEAD suppression attacks had the retaliatory response occurred in that area, they had a reason to be concerned.
5. The spin up time on the missile system is around 8 seconds, not much time to correct a failure in SA arising from any anomalous observation, or any observation that is erroneously assessed as anomalous. In this status, a simple hiccup of a power supply to the ADSB OUT signal would be enough to start off a disastrous response.

A B738 departing from a nearby airport, climbing out at a sedate speed and altitude by no means looks like a air strike, yet, the wreckage stands in mute testament to the failure of the human side of critical decisions made under uncertainty and under stress. It is not unique, it is not dependent on creed, race, religion, it happens because we have humans in the system, and as often as humans are remarkable in their adept handling of complex issues, we collectively fail, and bad stuff happens. The 3C is always frail and limited by the time available to intervene before an irreversible action is taken. The only two ways to avoid these issues is to remove civil traffic from regions of warfare at any level, (not going to happen, that covers more fo the world than not) or to stop wars, which was discounted by Plato, "only the dead have seen the end of war".

This time, it was Irans fearsome error, last time, it was Russia's, the time before, well that was Ukrainian. Going back, past the the USS Vincennes, there was the DC9 off the left coast of Italy, civil planes have been attacked all over the world, Cathay Pacific, KAL (twice) and almost countless others. On too many occasions, the civil aircraft is deliberately targets, as furtherance of some agenda. Many of these aircraft have had sophisticated SSR identifying their status, yet it continues to be disregarded, which remains the fundamental problem, the non combatant status gets lost in the noise.

Unless we quarantine the airspace around hot spots, these events will continue to happen all too often, breaking hearts all round.