On Feb 21, 12:18*pm, "Robert Green"
wrote:
"The Daring Dufas" wrote in ...

stuff snipped

Ever heard of friend or foe identification. I do believe the majority of
modern aircraft have radar transponders. If a fighter aircraft of
another country was approaching a warship, the prudent thing to do is
to make contact with that aircraft to warn them off.

You do realize there's almost no time to warn approaching jet aircraft in a
war zone? *This was just a tragic error. *Americans have been somehow
convinced wars can be fought with surgical precision and no unintended
consequences. *As long as they involve the use of high explosives, wars will
generate collateral damage.

Modern naval defense doctrine pretty much *demands* any unidentified
aircraft be "missile locked" immediately when its course is on intercept in
a war zone. *That one target could launch multiple air-to-ship weapons at
any time as its approaching and suddenly a single threat becomes five.
Operating guided missile frigates in areas where civilian aircraft are
flying is very, very risk business. *Back then, we did not have the
capability to account for every piloted aircraft in the sky with near 100%
precision.

Back then, we had far fewer satellites and target acquisition systems
operating. *Unless we got hit with some huge EMP, I don't see us shooting
down a passenger jet again any time soon. *Our capabilities regarding
tracking passenger planes has, as you might guess, improved quite
dramatically since 9/11 when we realized that we might even have to shoot
down one of our own passenger jets. *As for the Iranian Airbus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Three years after the incident, Admiral William J. Crowe admitted on
American television show Nightline that the Vincennes was inside Iranian
territorial waters when it launched the missiles. This contradicted earlier
Navy statements that were misleading if not incorrect. The International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report of December, 1988 placed the USS
Vincennes well inside Iran's territorial waters.

The airliner was transmitting a friend-or-foe identification code for a
civilian aircraft and maintained English-speaking radio contact with civil
flight control.

In 1996, the United States and Iran reached "an agreement in full and final
settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims" relating to
the incident at the International Court of Justice. As part of the
settlement, the United States agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of
$213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian
victims. However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor
apologized to Iran.

There are so many unclear facts, disputed allegations and top secrets
involved in the shootdown that we may never know what really went on.

If you recall, the Sovs blasted flight KAL007 out of the sky with a US
Congressman aboard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_...nes_Flight_007

I don't think our side ever dreamed that the Sovs would respond to an
overflight with a shoot down. That flight was probably a test of Russian
missile defense systems and their ability to discriminate between passenger
and military aircraft. *Too many very weird happened that night for it to
have been an accident. *The Congressman was there in all probability, to
secure quick release of the passengers if they were *forced* down. *Instead,
the Sovs *shot* them down. *We didn't understand the human factors of the
equation. *That Sov pilot would have been executed soon after landing had he
done anything but shoot the KAL passenger jet down. KAL007 was another sad
intelligence failure but one we learned from, I think.

We're getting better and better at trying to understand the mindsets of our
enemy. *We had great trouble, at first, understanding how the Japanese could
send kamikaze planes at us. *Our military leaders actually took quite a
while to understand what was happening and to failed to develop meaningful
defenses against them for quite some time. *The first kamikaze attacks
occurred in 1944 but in April of 1945 the US Navy was still being savaged
off Okinawa by hundreds of kamikaze attacks.

We culturally did not understand why they would deliberately destroy
reusable planes (mostly) and trained pilots. *A noble death by suicide in
service to your Emperor was not, as they say, "in our instruction set."
Ironically, those attacks turned out to be one of the underpinnings of the
shoot 'em as soon as you see 'em rules - the further away they were from the
ships when shot down, the less likely they were to steer even a crippled
plane into a flat top. *Did we learn everything we should have? *Probably
not. *The WTC was essentially a kamikaze attack. *Half a century after we
first saw the technique we still got clobbered by it.



There is a distinct possibility that the Islamofascist government of Iran
purposely
installed the radar transponder of a fighter jet into a civilian
airliner in order to sacrifice their own citizens to make themselves out
to be victims of The Great Satin.

The Great Satin? *(-:

Sounds very much like the KAL007 shootdown. *Fly a commercial jet in a
restricted area and very bad things can happen like it did to us and them..
It's what governments and spooks do.

I believe the policy of "The
ends justify the means." was invented centuries ago by Muslims long
before there were Communists or Democrats. ^_^

Arabs aren't particularly good soldiers

http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

At least not those of the past 50 years. *They were probably fooling around
with the lives of civilian passengers just like we did with KAL007. *It's
nothing new. *Remember the Lusitania? *Passengers ship carrying munitions.
Governments fooling around with the lives of civilian passengers.

The Wiki site has a prescient warning from 100 years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lus...s_and_exclusio...

Neutral vessels also will run a risk in the War Zone, because in view of
the hazards of sea warfare . . . it may not always be possible to prevent
attacks on enemy ships from harming neutral ships.

Hell, those damn nasty Brits used to tied Boer prisoners to their
locomotives to discourage the Boers from blowing up British trains. *All of
these events pale when compared to the Russians sinking the German refugee
ship the Wilhelm Gustloff, drowning almost 10,000 people and dwarfing the
Titanic's sinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff

It should be pointed out that the ship was loaded with military and Nazi
officials as well as refugees fleeing the terrible vengeance of the
approaching Red Army, eager to avenge the pillaging of Russia early in the
war.

--
Bobby G.

There was no US war with Iran. The warship was in Iranian waters. The
airliner was in Iranian airspace on a routine flight. The US ship had
no business being there.
It may have been an accident but why wasn't the captain relieved of
his duties, not given a medal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

If you had ever sat in the front of an aircraft, you would realise
that the squawk box transmits the aircraft ID every time it is "swept
" by the ATC radar. It "squawks it's ID. This is a vital part of
ATC. The airline captain would be aware it was working as a red light
flashes at every sweep.
There is no reason why the warship should not be fitted with the same
ATC equipment particularly as civilian air traffic is dense in the
region.