Originally Posted by
Mozella
I'm not saying you're wrong, but based on my experience living in Iran for a number of years and flying with their military I would say a "reasoned decision" is far from certain. You may be right, but I wonder if you are projecting your previous personal experience onto a completely different set of circumstances.
Agree Mozella. Also, with your previous experience in their military I am guessing you are being more than tactfully polite!!
As I said in a previous post, without some facts, we have nothing to form a valid speculation on, only possible scenarios. To that end I was interested in a post by 'ele' that contained excerpts from
"two interviews with Andrey Gorbachevsky, a Russian engineer and developper of radar anti-aircraft missile systems who worked for the Russian State Scientific Research Institute of Aviation Systems (GosNIIAS). That is: a person familiar with the Tor system."
The Russian article contains some insights into what the systems operator might see on his radar scope regardless of what he might be expecting ie a large a blip for a commercial airliner a much smaller and more faint blip for a cruise missile or fighter aircraft. He also shed some light on the number of missiles that may have been fired suggesting only one would have been necessary since the target was big and non-maneuvering and firing a second missile would have wasted missiles while also unnecessarily exposing the crew to SEAD. Here is the link:
https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/01/11/83411-vse-taki-obezyana-s-granatoy. It can be translated to English.
Now this article cannot be verified as 'fact' as such but if we accept that the article probably does offer some insight into the modus operandi of this particular system, then it's title "Monkey with a Grenade", does suggest a less than 'reasoned decision'. Factors such as the search radar which would follow the flight from shortly after take off from a civilian airfeild and along a known passenger aircraft corridor, the accuracy of the acquisition radar which could determine if there was another object attempting to hide in the shadow of the Ukrainian B737, the transponder identification systems and even an assessment of why this would not have been an intentional shoot down. So, a fair amount of incompetency suggested here and not just leveled at Iran military. He also sniped at Russian missile instructors involved in an accidental shoot down of a Syrian aircraft!
In the article's summary, it suggests that Iran's delay in admitting this was a shoot down was "
to hide the degree of collapse of its air defense. Because I will not remember a more serious mistake in the history of air defense".