If there were terrorists offshore with a MANPAD missile it could have been that. I just could not bring myself to believe a CIC full of 18-20 year old sailors manning the weapons systems on a cruiser could not know the implications that if they fired a missile on that day, and an airliner was destroyed...
Hard to believe. But perhaps they were threatened.
Is it possible a navy ship fired a missile in error?
I have no idea what fail safe measures were in place to prevent that.
Could it have been a Captain Queeg commander who “lost it”?
I don’t know.
On the navy ship possibility—if you do a web search under “navy missile fired in error” there are several stories of other countries having it happen to them.
That means it could have happened.
The secrecy angle is not an issue in my view—I have written long and detailed posts on government secrecy.
The government is good at it. The military takes secrecy oaths and has the threat of jail time for those who break those oaths.
In dire cases I have no doubt that .gov would and has executed folks to keep secrets.
Of course the executions are secret as well.
:-)