Ukrainian Airliner Crash

If our intel is to be believed,Iran did shoot down the liner, probably accidently. The incident was monitored by satellite. As for what was going through the mind of whoever pushed the button, we'll probably never know.

Don

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Iran admitted that it was military accident. And agreed to pay compensations.

For what it's worth, I'd almost guarantee that the SAM system that shot down the airliner has an "autoshoot" setting that's intended to automatically "shoot on detect" and takes the human out of the loop to speed up response time.

One article I read suggested that there were two missiles - which would be consistent with the common "shoot-shoot-look" doctrine.

I see this scenario - we already know that the Iranians stood up their air defense network BEFORE they started firing the SSMs - that's one way that the US knew that something was going to happen soon (through detection of the SAM radar emissions). So some knucklehead at one of the sites either inadvertently or intentionally sets his system for autoshoot and walks away for a cup of tea. The airliner takes off and - a few minutes later as it's passing through several thousand feet of altitude - is detected by the SAM search radar. The logic in the SAM system says "Hmmm. Detection? Yep. Autoshoot? Yep. Fire Control Radar - ON. Targeting - ACQUIRED. No IFF? Nope. Autoshoot - engaged. Shoot. Shoot. Did I kill the target? Yep. DONE.

"Human Error?" I don't know. You tell me.