It might help to read the incident further. > The next aircraft taking off on that runway was an Iranian military F-14 fighter. The cursor was only left on the

It might help to read the incident further. > The next aircraft taking off on that runway was an Iranian military F-14 fighter. The cursor was only left on the runway for around 90 seconds, but that was long enough for the Vincennes to get an IFF response corresponding to a military fighter. So Flight 655 was reclassified from an unknown contact to a potentially hostile one. The default was that the automated system conflated two completely distinct aircraft. The IFF ("identification friend or foe") for a military aircraft was attributed to a civilian airliner