Originally Posted by
Auxtank
Good point G-d and one I had thought about. It was CAVOK so lights would have been easily visible. Can't believe a bloke on a SAM vehicle hasn't got a pair of binos in his equipment.
The other consideration is that it would have been at 250 KIAS or less until 10,000' (not sure of transition Alt) - hardly a fast moving hostile coming in for it's run.
Consider the conditions under which the AA missiles were launched. The Iranian ballistic missiles were fired on the Iraqi bases around 3AM local time. The people manning the Tor-M1 would be hunkered down inside the vehicle waiting for an American counterstrike at any moment, especially since they were in the vicinity (and probably guarding) a ballistic missile research centre. It was 6:18AM local when they fired on PS752. Any American response would come before daybreak (sunrise in Tehran is around 7:15AM right now). The Tor-M1 would have it's search radar on, which would be a massive beacon screaming out "blow me up!" to any SEAD aircraft.
PS752 was over an hour late taking off, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that they thought that perhaps an American fighter was mimicking an airliner by flying slow with its transponder on. It was on a course that would take it right over that ballistic missile facility, which would be a logical target after the Iranian missile strike.
With all of those contributing factors and the stress of knowing that they'd probably be a prime first target, I could see how someone would be scared enough to fire at that blip on the screen.