US kills Iran's General Soleimani

It sure was an own goal by Iran from the funeral deaths, to the lack of Americans killed in the missile strike to downing an airliner full of their own people. It is entirely possible that this airliner may have prevented further escalation and has made everyone rethink going forward.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the missile launch, if anything the US would have responded with cruise missiles, I can’t imagine them sending in planes at 8000ft at this stage. They certainly wouldn’t have launched from a commercial Iranian airport!
 
Got to wonder what's caused Iran to come clean after denying it for days when it looked pretty obvious ?

Also America kills an Iranian general in a precision strike, which ends up with Iranians killing 50 people at his funeral and seemingly 150+ dual national Iranians on a passenger jet, it really does make Iran look an utter joke on the world stage

Oh and


:D
 
That's two commercial airliners shot down in the past 6 years. It's just something you'd never, ever expect to hear of happening in the modern world. Crazy stuff.
 
Minusorange said:
Got to wonder what's caused Iran to come clean after denying it for days when it looked pretty obvious ?

Also America kills an Iranian general in a precision strike, which ends up with Iranians killing 50 people at his funeral and seemingly 150+ dual national Iranians on a passenger jet, it really does make Iran look an utter joke on the world stage

Oh and


:D
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I'm sure flying spinning kicks are totally useful in modern warfare.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
It sure was an own goal by Iran from the funeral deaths, to the lack of Americans killed in the missile strike to downing an airliner full of their own people. It is entirely possible that this airliner may have prevented further escalation and has made everyone rethink going forward.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the missile launch, if anything the US would have responded with cruise missiles, I can’t imagine them sending in planes at 8000ft at this stage. They certainly wouldn’t have launched from a commercial Iranian airport!
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Who knows what's going on behind the scenes, there's always manipulation of some sort.

I read that the Russians are fiddling around with signals in that area, jamming and spoofing signals etc.

So it could be more 4D chess in that they were tricked into thinking this was an enemy jet or it's more likely they were just inexperienced and made a schoolboy error.

As for the missile launch, did somebody not say the Americans knew where the missiles were going to land and hence saved their defences.
 
Minusorange said:
Got to wonder what's caused Iran to come clean after denying it for days when it looked pretty obvious ?

Also America kills an Iranian general in a precision strike, which ends up with Iranians killing 50 people at his funeral and seemingly 150+ dual national Iranians on a passenger jet, it really does make Iran look an utter joke on the world stage

Oh and


:D
Click to expand...
It would have only been a matter of time that investigators would have pieced this together to prove that it was an Iranian missile that struck the unfortunate plane. There was phone footage and there is the Black Box, though some information is 'missing.'
I also think blame needs to go to the airlines and airport. They should have postponed all flights.
 
Is there any chance they could have shot that plane down thinking it was a US passenger airliner for there revenge ?
 
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CaptainRAVE said:
It sure was an own goal by Iran from the funeral deaths, to the lack of Americans killed in the missile strike to downing an airliner full of their own people. It is entirely possible that this airliner may have prevented further escalation and has made everyone rethink going forward.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the missile launch, if anything the US would have responded with cruise missiles, I can’t imagine them sending in planes at 8000ft at this stage. They certainly wouldn’t have launched from a commercial Iranian airport!
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Something a lot of diagrams don't show but one way cruise missiles can be used is terrain following at <500 foot (sometimes as low as 100 foot) until they get close to their target at which point they "pop-up" to higher altitude in some cases ~5000 feet to acquire the target itself before coming in. So ignoring radar cross section (which is about 20x larger* for a 737 versus a typical older generation cruise missile as the US tends to use) an airline taking off from a nearby airport could look like a cruise missile on its final stage if it was aligned with a nearby military base. While other aircraft did take off from that airport around the same time and in theory any air-defence operators should be aware of its location this plane was bang in the middle of the window where they'd be expecting a US response to happen if it was a direct and immediate response so probably in the window where operators had the itchiest/nervous trigger fingers.

Throw in that these operators possibly don't have real combat experience and that the computers on a lot of AA stuff belong at best in the 80s often a couple of decades before that and it certainly isn't like in the movies when it comes to target acquisition they also probably had less of an idea of what was going on even than those of us who had access to the flow of information online even with the mix in veracity of what was being reported.

In theory Iran should have a command structure and not relying on operators at individual facilities to identify targets deep in their territory but cruise missiles are often designed to penetrate deep with as little warning as possible so they might have been running "hot" with the system at it's most ready to fire state and some degree of autonomy over shooting.

In tense situations like these organisation/communication tends to break down, this is when you tend to separate those with actual combat experience from those with just training and in the break down of communication some might start acting on their own initiative believing that an attack is underway and responsible for loss of effective communication, etc.


* It is bigger than that physically but not represented that way on older generation hardware.
 
As predicted by the tin-foil hat brigade, how is WWIII going?

Not much in the news about it and it's really not affecting where i live in the UK.

There is absolutely no panic buying in the supermarkets.

Very disappointing really!!!!
 
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Rroff said:
In theory Iran should have a command structure and not relying on operators at individual facilities to identify targets deep in their territory but cruise missiles are often designed to penetrate deep with as little warning as possible so they might have been running "hot" with the system at it's most ready to fire state and some degree of autonomy over shooting.

In tense situations like these organisation/communication tends to break down, this is when you tend to separate those with actual combat experience from those with just training and in the break down of communication some might start acting on their own initiative believing that an attack is underway and responsible for loss of effective communication, etc.
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My guess would be either some form of IFF/SSR failure on the airliner or the TOR itself and if I had to guess I could see the following sequence happening - The IRG operator saw an object not squawking any Mode 3A/C/S idents (the codes which say "hey I'm an airliner") and told his Battery Commander who, when unable to ask for higher clearance (am I being Jammed?) and under the immense pressure of thinking that this unknown object may have been part of a US retaliation, made the ultimate decision to shoot.

Again, pure guess work on my part but based on knowledge of the region and the types of equipment used etc.

Regardless of the "How?", the IRG would have known what really happened as soon as the Battery Commander was finally able to report what he did, and the Government would have known shortly afterwards, my guess would be at most it took 24hrs for everyone in a position of authority to be briefed.
 
ianh said:
My guess would be either some form of IFF/SSR failure on the airliner or the TOR itself and if I had to guess I could see the following sequence happening - The IRG operator saw an object not squawking any Mode 3A/C/S idents (the codes which say "hey I'm an airliner") and told his Battery Commander who, when unable to ask for higher clearance (am I being Jammed?) and under the immense pressure of thinking that this unknown object may have been part of a US retaliation, made the ultimate decision to shoot.

Again, pure guess work on my part but based on knowledge of the region and the types of equipment used etc.

Regardless of the "How?", the IRG would have known what really happened as soon as the Battery Commander was finally able to report what he did, and the Government would have known shortly afterwards, my guess would be at most it took 24hrs for everyone in a position of authority to be briefed.
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Yeh but they could clearly see where the airliner was taking off from. Do military planes not take off from military airfields?
 
Intentionally shooting down a passenger plane to hit back at another country is the correct way of not only having the entire world unite against you but to ensure the complete and utter annihilation of your own country.

Trump would go to town on Iran if they had specifically targeted a plane full of yanks. He would have no resistance from the US population and prob most of the world, it would be a bloodbath.
 
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