Originally Posted by
SAMXXV
That seemed a reasonable article -- Yes people who are all keyed up for incoming enemy air strikes might well make mistakes.
In a similar vein, one article I heard of mentions other Iranian SAM and AA control problems -- shooting at their own forces -- while all keyed up for war, although it seems to be talking more about the 2007-2008 era, just after Israel bombed their nuclear facility:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/w...n-strikes.html
And as has been pointed out 'the best trained & best equipped' may fail too, as in the USS Vincennes.
One still wonders why this particular flight got targeted, when airliners had already been taking off from the airport through the early hours of the morning, and the base has always been close to airline departure routes. That's where the Iranian government start blaming the airliner for 'coming close to' or 'turning towards' the military facilty, even though the flight path seems no different than of all the other airliners. New morning shift at the SAM battery? Some equipment malfunction there? There was also that speculation that the airliner actually had some problem and started turning back (= towards the military facility) before the shooting started, without contacting ATC first, but I guess that is unlikely and probably can be ruled out by better analysis of the tracks & other events.