Originally Posted by vapilot2004
Actually all airliners carry an IFF responder - it's called a transponder and upon interrogation, will reply with it's squawk code. The difference between a military aircraft and a civilian airliner is that the military transponder response is encrypted and allows for secure ID of friendly craft.
Apologies, Cap Airclues, I did not mean to cloud the issue by referrring to the A300's transponder as an IFF per se, but it is an IFF compatible device - sans encryption.
The Iran Air's transponder did fail to reply to the Vincennes IFF interrogations.There are records on this.
While I don't have the report in front of me at the moment, I would bet a dollar to a donut that the Vincennes RIO would have certainly mentioned speed and bearing in his calls.
Please enlighten me to any data to the contrary if you have a spare moment.
He did mention speed but that was the ground speed of the aircraft and he did mention heading... however that's it...