U.S. intelligence picked up signals of a radar being turned on, sources told CBS News. U.S. satellites also detected two surface-to-air missile launches, which happened shortly before the plane exploded, CBS News was told.
We probably had additional insight into what Iranians knew, were saying to each other, and even the weapons status of the SAM battery, via SIGINT. There’s been a lot of publicity in recent years about Iran’s air defense upgrades, but much of their C2 network is old and subject to saturation/spoofing. There’s also the matter of operator quality and training, at a moment they were probably expecting waves of HARMs and JASSMs to come knocking.