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A missle travels at tremendous speeds and require automated defence systems to neutralize the target at a safe explosion distance in the sky, which often does n

A missle travels at tremendous speeds and require automated defence systems to neutralize the target at a safe explosion distance in the sky, which often does not afford humans to make “phone calls” and “meetings” and “discussion” to down the threat, before it potentially blasts a population centre or a military installation with thousands of soldiers and civilians at the base. Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles.

diggan 2y ago
> Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles. With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? At a glance, just looking at the trajectory of this UFO for half a minute would be enough to determine if it's an airline with stable flight path, VS a missile that has some sort of trajectory that doesn't look at all like a airline. Not to mention the radar signature has to be different in at least some ways. But again, I don't know the capability or process of the Russian military, in a high-tension environment sometimes shit just goes wrong even though it shouldn't.
- teitoklien 2y ago
  > With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile If they exclude radar signature of commercial airliners, and let them fly, it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. There is a reason why a lot of military and sci-fi movies have the phrase “aircraft with radar signature of a bird” , anything that the military excludes or allows to pass off, just becomes the cloning target of missile makers under the tag of “camouflage”.
  - simoncion 2y ago
    > ... it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. Well, the problem with that is that airliners are (relatively speaking) slow as fuck. A "high-speed missile" with the radar cross section of an airliner would be mind-meltingly obvious as a threat even to automated defense robots.
    - perihelions 2y ago
      Iran mistook PS752 for a cruise missile [0]. It's not an impossible mistake; a cruise missile is (often) a subsonic, jet-powered object. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...
      - simoncion 2y ago
        Point of order: A cruise missile isn't a high-speed missile. It's (almost?) always a big, slow, lumbering bastard, as far as missiles go.
        mapt 2y ago
        There are cruise missiles powered by ramjets that go significantly supersonic, but for the most part ballistic missiles are easier to use, longer range, and harder to intercept. The prospect of anti-air systems effective enough to pose ballistic missiles trouble in a "near-peer" non-nuclear conflict is recent. Both maneuvering-capable ramjet/scramjet cruise missiles and (the significantly easier) maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicles that launch ballistically, are the subject of recently fielded early models, active development & active testing because of that prospect.
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Hence the term "cruise", which in every other context means not traveling especially fast.
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
- perihelions 2y ago
  Ukraine uses (among other things) fixed-wing drones with similar characteristics to civilian aircraft. Some of them are *actual* civilian aircraft, retrofitted into unmanned suicide drones, https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/ukraine-appears-to-deploy-modified-a-22-ultralights-as-suicide-uavs/157633.article https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/ukraine-appears-t... ("Ukraine appears to deploy modified A-22 ultralights as suicide UAVs")
  - colejohnson66 2y ago
    Unmanned kamikazes?
    - jandrese 2y ago
      They are just DIY cruise missiles really.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    None of them remotely resemble an E190 though, which is about 50x the size of a cruise missile, communicates effectively with air traffic control and broadcasts ADS-B signals telling you what it is (at least when you're not jamming it...)
    - joha4270 2y ago
      Radar doesn't exactly tell you the size of of a contact. Sure, you can measure the power of the return signal, correct for distance and get something that loosely correlates with size. But it correlates much more strongly with other things. You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system. This wasn't exactly close to the current fighting, its entirely possible this radar was manufactured in the Soviet Union. I don't think those receive a lot (or any) civilian broadcasts.
      - justsomehnguy 2y ago
        > You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system People do like to provide their very important opinion completely oblivious what Grozny is farther away from eg Crimea than Kiev.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Wait a minute. I thought they hit some angry birds? All of these decisions are made by soldiers. Russian air defense troops are no doubt overworked, poorly treated, under intense pressure and probably motivated by avoiding going to the front. Chances are, an operator or officer made a bad call. They are cogs in a killing machine.
- nativeit 2y ago
  I would have thought the aircraft’s transponder would have been the first clue. I can identify nearly every aircraft over my house right now using a $30 USB dongle, including callsign, airline, flight number, altitude, speed, and bearing.
- alxlaz 2y ago
  > With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? It depends a lot on the context (weather, altitude) and equipment (Russia has a lot of equipment, some of it new, some of it old, some of it ancient). Without minimizing the personal contribution to this disaster of every serviceman, IMHO the blame, first and foremost, rests firmly with whoever the bloody hell decided to keep the airspace open nearly three years into a war. Civilian airspace is open above Chechnya and Dagestan while the VKS is lobing missiles from/from above the Caspian Sea, and planes are landing at Sochi while Novorossiysk gets hit by drones. This is nuts even by post-Soviet standards. There's a very good reason why Ukraine closed their airspace almost right away and continue to keep it closed. To pre-emptively address the "but that would be too costly" angle: well, maybe that should've been factored in before greenlighting the invasion. Boo-hoo. Does keeping it open look cheap now?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? In a quick decision, in a high-stress scenario during an actual attack, possibly. Even if they have the capacity to make that decision correctly otherwise, every system—including the human element—is fallible, and procedures in those circumstances are likely to err on the side of safety-from-attack, rather than safety-for-potential-attacker. (OTOH, the rerouting of the plane afterward was clearly intentional murder with the hope it would help cover up the shooting incident, whether or not the shooting itself was an accident.)
H8crilA 2y ago
Different types of missiles exist. A cruise missile (for which the Russians have a much better name - winged missile) can be confused with an airplane, as it is essentially a drone with a turbojet engine. A ballistic missile travelling at supersonic/hypersonic speeds is much easier to discriminate based on velocity alone. Also, those are usually tracked all the way from a launch site using infrared cameras on satellites. The European incursions were mostly cruise missiles and the Iranian mopeds (and at least one ballistic incident that was likely a Ukrainian air defense S-300 missile that the Ukrainians lost control of; this is another problem that happens every now and then to everyone).
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
  Completely irrelevant if there are missiles that fit the profile of something else because some fit the profile of an airliner end of story
  - smegger001 2y ago
    Then you are comfortable making a decision that could cost thousands of lives over one with a few hundred without taking in any other information other than a radar bounce that is approximately the same size/speed.
  - H8crilA 2y ago
    I mean you're largely correct. What I'm saying is that there may be a standing order to destroy all ballistic threats, and to exercise a very high degree of caution (high level approvals for each engagement) with any potential air breathing / subsonic threats. I imagine this is a common order given to Patriot batteries in hot, but not war, areas. BTW, this is a bit similar to why the US very clearly advertises the Tomahawk as not nuclear capable - so that a few subsonic blips do not trigger a strategic exchange. The Russians do not do that, many of their commonly used missiles are dual purpose.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
wat10000 2y ago
I can think of at least two incidents where the military was deciding between downing and not downing an airliner, and decided on the former. Oddly, they both involve Korean Air and the Soviet military. One hopes the modern Russian military is less enthusiastic about such things, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.
- ben_w 2y ago
  This also occurred at least once with Canada/US military (but still Korean aircraft) during the panic on September 11, 2001 — an aircraft that was actually just doing normal stuff, very nearly got shot down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085
  - cperciva 2y ago
    I don't know about "nearly got shot down". They were escorted to a different airport and ordered to land, but despite several miscommunications they followed instructions and landed safely.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > One hopes the modern Russian military is less enthusiastic about such things Given that they have just done it again, I’d bet they have plenty of enthusiasm.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    The past couple of times look likely to be legitimate confusion, probably coupled with a lack of care. In the KAL shootdowns, the Soviets intercepted, saw that they were airliners, and shot them down anyway.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
jjtheblunt 2y ago
The heat signature from multiple big turbofan engines and the radar signatures for the same could look similar to a bomber or cargo military plane, so here again a human needs to discriminate somehow.
deadbabe 2y ago
Humans can’t but maybe AIs can coordinate at light speed to determine at the last minute if a plane should be shot down or not.
buildsjets 2y ago
Thats not true at all, and I have the receipts to prove it. When the Russians shot down KAL007, it was preceeded by numerous phone calls and meetings. Russian pilots cannot fire missiles without remote authorization from central command. The chain of communications is well documented. KAL007 was first radar identified and fighters were scrambled at 16:33. They obtained visual contact at or around 18:05 and reported it to be a potential civilian airliner. After much discussion, an order to shoot it down was given, which they did, 21 minutes later at as 18:26, nearly 2 hours after it was detected on air defence radar. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-the-untold-story-of-korean-air-lines-flight-007-a4ae6a4ef734 https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-the-u...
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  KAL 007 was shot down as a suspected spy plane in peacetime, not as a suspected attack weapon in war time.

diggan 2y ago

> Military doesnt decide between downing an airliner and not downing it, But rather a risk between downing an missile that can “potentially” be an airliner that god knows why is in a restricted airspace, and letting it fly and risk getting killed those thousands or even millions of people (if a population centre/city) get exploded with bombs and missiles. With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? At a glance, just looking at the trajectory of this UFO for half a minute would be enough to determine if it's an airline with stable flight path, VS a missile that has some sort of trajectory that doesn't look at all like a airline. Not to mention the radar signature has to be different in at least some ways. But again, I don't know the capability or process of the Russian military, in a high-tension environment sometimes shit just goes wrong even though it shouldn't.

teitoklien 2y ago
> With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile If they exclude radar signature of commercial airliners, and let them fly, it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. There is a reason why a lot of military and sci-fi movies have the phrase “aircraft with radar signature of a bird” , anything that the military excludes or allows to pass off, just becomes the cloning target of missile makers under the tag of “camouflage”.
- simoncion 2y ago
  > ... it will just make weapon makers start designing high-speed missiles with the radar signature of an airliner lol. Well, the problem with that is that airliners are (relatively speaking) slow as fuck. A "high-speed missile" with the radar cross section of an airliner would be mind-meltingly obvious as a threat even to automated defense robots.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    Iran mistook PS752 for a cruise missile [0]. It's not an impossible mistake; a cruise missile is (often) a subsonic, jet-powered object. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines_Flight_752 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...
    - simoncion 2y ago
      Point of order: A cruise missile isn't a high-speed missile. It's (almost?) always a big, slow, lumbering bastard, as far as missiles go.
      - mapt 2y ago
        There are cruise missiles powered by ramjets that go significantly supersonic, but for the most part ballistic missiles are easier to use, longer range, and harder to intercept. The prospect of anti-air systems effective enough to pose ballistic missiles trouble in a "near-peer" non-nuclear conflict is recent. Both maneuvering-capable ramjet/scramjet cruise missiles and (the significantly easier) maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicles that launch ballistically, are the subject of recently fielded early models, active development & active testing because of that prospect.
      - BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Hence the term "cruise", which in every other context means not traveling especially fast.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
perihelions 2y ago
Ukraine uses (among other things) fixed-wing drones with similar characteristics to civilian aircraft. Some of them are *actual* civilian aircraft, retrofitted into unmanned suicide drones, https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/ukraine-appears-to-deploy-modified-a-22-ultralights-as-suicide-uavs/157633.article https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/ukraine-appears-t... ("Ukraine appears to deploy modified A-22 ultralights as suicide UAVs")
- colejohnson66 2y ago
  Unmanned kamikazes?
  - jandrese 2y ago
    They are just DIY cruise missiles really.
- notahacker 2y ago
  None of them remotely resemble an E190 though, which is about 50x the size of a cruise missile, communicates effectively with air traffic control and broadcasts ADS-B signals telling you what it is (at least when you're not jamming it...)
  - joha4270 2y ago
    Radar doesn't exactly tell you the size of of a contact. Sure, you can measure the power of the return signal, correct for distance and get something that loosely correlates with size. But it correlates much more strongly with other things. You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system. This wasn't exactly close to the current fighting, its entirely possible this radar was manufactured in the Soviet Union. I don't think those receive a lot (or any) civilian broadcasts.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      > You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system People do like to provide their very important opinion completely oblivious what Grozny is farther away from eg Crimea than Kiev.
Spooky23 2y ago
Wait a minute. I thought they hit some angry birds? All of these decisions are made by soldiers. Russian air defense troops are no doubt overworked, poorly treated, under intense pressure and probably motivated by avoiding going to the front. Chances are, an operator or officer made a bad call. They are cogs in a killing machine.
nativeit 2y ago
I would have thought the aircraft’s transponder would have been the first clue. I can identify nearly every aircraft over my house right now using a $30 USB dongle, including callsign, airline, flight number, altitude, speed, and bearing.
alxlaz 2y ago
> With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? It depends a lot on the context (weather, altitude) and equipment (Russia has a lot of equipment, some of it new, some of it old, some of it ancient). Without minimizing the personal contribution to this disaster of every serviceman, IMHO the blame, first and foremost, rests firmly with whoever the bloody hell decided to keep the airspace open nearly three years into a war. Civilian airspace is open above Chechnya and Dagestan while the VKS is lobing missiles from/from above the Caspian Sea, and planes are landing at Sochi while Novorossiysk gets hit by drones. This is nuts even by post-Soviet standards. There's a very good reason why Ukraine closed their airspace almost right away and continue to keep it closed. To pre-emptively address the "but that would be too costly" angle: well, maybe that should've been factored in before greenlighting the invasion. Boo-hoo. Does keeping it open look cheap now?
dragonwriter 2y ago
> With zero knowledge of how well-equipped the Russian military is, could they really be so far behind that they're unable to determine the difference between an commercial airlines and a high-speed missile? In a quick decision, in a high-stress scenario during an actual attack, possibly. Even if they have the capacity to make that decision correctly otherwise, every system—including the human element—is fallible, and procedures in those circumstances are likely to err on the side of safety-from-attack, rather than safety-for-potential-attacker. (OTOH, the rerouting of the plane afterward was clearly intentional murder with the hope it would help cover up the shooting incident, whether or not the shooting itself was an accident.)

H8crilA 2y ago

Different types of missiles exist. A cruise missile (for which the Russians have a much better name - winged missile) can be confused with an airplane, as it is essentially a drone with a turbojet engine. A ballistic missile travelling at supersonic/hypersonic speeds is much easier to discriminate based on velocity alone. Also, those are usually tracked all the way from a launch site using infrared cameras on satellites. The European incursions were mostly cruise missiles and the Iranian mopeds (and at least one ballistic incident that was likely a Ukrainian air defense S-300 missile that the Ukrainians lost control of; this is another problem that happens every now and then to everyone).

idunnoman1222 2y ago
Completely irrelevant if there are missiles that fit the profile of something else because some fit the profile of an airliner end of story
- smegger001 2y ago
  Then you are comfortable making a decision that could cost thousands of lives over one with a few hundred without taking in any other information other than a radar bounce that is approximately the same size/speed.
- H8crilA 2y ago
  I mean you're largely correct. What I'm saying is that there may be a standing order to destroy all ballistic threats, and to exercise a very high degree of caution (high level approvals for each engagement) with any potential air breathing / subsonic threats. I imagine this is a common order given to Patriot batteries in hot, but not war, areas. BTW, this is a bit similar to why the US very clearly advertises the Tomahawk as not nuclear capable - so that a few subsonic blips do not trigger a strategic exchange. The Russians do not do that, many of their commonly used missiles are dual purpose.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

wat10000 2y ago

I can think of at least two incidents where the military was deciding between downing and not downing an airliner, and decided on the former. Oddly, they both involve Korean Air and the Soviet military. One hopes the modern Russian military is less enthusiastic about such things, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.

ben_w 2y ago
This also occurred at least once with Canada/US military (but still Korean aircraft) during the panic on September 11, 2001 — an aircraft that was actually just doing normal stuff, very nearly got shot down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085
- cperciva 2y ago
  I don't know about "nearly got shot down". They were escorted to a different airport and ordered to land, but despite several miscommunications they followed instructions and landed safely.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lostlogin 2y ago
> One hopes the modern Russian military is less enthusiastic about such things Given that they have just done it again, I’d bet they have plenty of enthusiasm.
- wat10000 2y ago
  The past couple of times look likely to be legitimate confusion, probably coupled with a lack of care. In the KAL shootdowns, the Soviets intercepted, saw that they were airliners, and shot them down anyway.
  - lostlogin 2y ago

jjtheblunt 2y ago

The heat signature from multiple big turbofan engines and the radar signatures for the same could look similar to a bomber or cargo military plane, so here again a human needs to discriminate somehow.

deadbabe 2y ago

Humans can’t but maybe AIs can coordinate at light speed to determine at the last minute if a plane should be shot down or not.

buildsjets 2y ago

Thats not true at all, and I have the receipts to prove it. When the Russians shot down KAL007, it was preceeded by numerous phone calls and meetings. Russian pilots cannot fire missiles without remote authorization from central command. The chain of communications is well documented. KAL007 was first radar identified and fighters were scrambled at 16:33. They obtained visual contact at or around 18:05 and reported it to be a potential civilian airliner. After much discussion, an order to shoot it down was given, which they did, 21 minutes later at as 18:26, nearly 2 hours after it was detected on air defence radar. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-the-untold-story-of-korean-air-lines-flight-007-a4ae6a4ef734 https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-the-u...

dragonwriter 2y ago
KAL 007 was shot down as a suspected spy plane in peacetime, not as a suspected attack weapon in war time.