All of a sudden I get a TA with the TCAS display showing traffic at my altitude and converging from the left. Moments later ATC says traffic at two o'clock, descend immediately and nearly simultaneously, I get a RA saying to climb. There is no other traffic displayed on my TCAS display. I do the rational thing and follow the RA and everyone survives this conflict.
This rational action did not prevent the DHL Boeing from colliding.
For the Tupolev Crew: You forget, that they communicated with ATC for several seconds
before they got the TCAS RA. They initiated the descend
before TCAS issued its RA.
Your whole argumentation on rational action is biased by your western training. The Tupolev crew wasn't so "furtunate". In Russia the controlling of traffic is handled differently if you are an international flight that if you are a national flight. For national flights the controller has the authority to command the crew to take a certain action.
I know.......Maybe there is some military flight out there that has an emergency which just happens to be affecting his transponder at the very exact time that I am getting an RA. I'm sure there are all kinds of obscure scenarios that can be thought of. Conspiracy theorists do it all the time.
If you have followed this threat, you will see that a Ueberligen-like mid-air is still possible today, it sounds extremely simplicistic to present insufficiencies in the TCAS system as "obscure scenarios" of "conspiracy theorists".