“Claimed it was “human error.” Nice try, but you’re hardly human.”
Dimes to donuts, there was some kid manning the missile launcher who panicked and punched the button. And he probably lost his head shortly afterwards.
I think the Iranians purposely shot down an airliner which they knew had no Americans aboard. They knew Trump would stomp them into oblivion if another American was killed.
So they took the cowards’ way out: they mass murdered non-Americans, believing Trump would not retaliate—no Americans killed.
And then on the other hand, I may be giving the goat humpers far too much credit.
There were other flights that had left successfully. From flightradar24: "There were 10 departures from Tehran-IKA from midnight local time 8 Jan through the departure of PS752 at 06:12 LT. Prior to PS752, the last flight movement at IKA was the departure of QR8408 at 05:39 local time." And other aircraft (e.g., a Luftansa flight) were on their way to the Tehran airport when the plane was shot down.I'm surprised that so many airlines allowed their aircraft to operate in such a tense situation.
The Ukranian flight took off an hour late. It's possible that if this information wasn't conveyed to the people manning the missile launchers that they checked the schedule and saw no plane was leaving at that time. It's also possible the plane's transponder was malfunctioning. But the fact that the plane was ascending should have clued them in that whatever the object was, it was wasn't attacking.
A Patriot battery maint/adv operator told me that these types of systems including the Ruskie made ones will not fire on something gaining altitude in a commercial approach path. You got to override to shoot. Was intentional.
Lots of CIA travel as Canadians. Ukraine is tightly woven into the deep state. Makes one go Hmmmmmmmmm.
Many of the Russian systems they’ve purchased, especially the export versions, reportedly have an “automatic” setting, much like our CIWS does. This is intended for use when a significant portion of an enemy air force is coming at the S-300/400 network and human operators would be overwhelmed, or when there’s zero chance that anything flying overhead is friendly.
My guess is some idiot left it in automatic.