Interesting articles about the conditions under which an Iranian air defence system may target an civilian airliner forbes.com/sites/jeremybo… #IranPlaneCrash #IranPlaneShootdown #Iran
You should read it but in short, the Iranian defence unit that is said to have fired at #PS752 is a Russian system known as
9K330 Tor-M1 (Nato: SA-15 Gauntlet).
9K330 Tor-M1 (Nato: SA-15 Gauntlet).
This radar should be able to recognise the profile of an airliner, in terms of speed and signals emanating from it. Moreover, it should tell the operators that the plane was leaving Iran's airspace rather than coming in.
The military experts in the article reckon a human error could have produce a wrong identification. Under loose rules of engagement (following the Iranian ballistic strike on US bases in Iraq), the operators probably didn't have much time to think and decided to hit it.
However, the SA-15 Gauntlet uses a radar that operates on the K-band (IEEE: 18-26 GHz, Nato: 20-40 GHz). Part of the K-band (IEEE: Ku especially) is used for broadcasting purposes (satellite TV/radio, data), albeit on the lower end of the band.
It is no secret Iran's state actors regularly, and especially in crisis times, resort to rigorous jamming of satellite signals (to stop Iranian from consuming TV/radio content by opposition and independent Persian-language media (e.g. Iran Int'l, BBC, VoA..etc).
Therefore was it possible that this practice, which intensified during the crisis, caused the radars to misbehave and fail to distinguish between military and civilian aircraft?
We do know that Iran has a history of this. In June 2014, Iran's meteorological department, which uses radars for forecasting, failed miserably at predicting the intensity of an impending sand storm.
As a result, the sand storm turned out into a disaster: Four were killed and dozens injured. Around 50,000 homes were left without electricity in Tehran. theguardian.com/world/2014/jun…
And guess who was to blame? Iran's met department said their dishes failed because of the consistent jamming of TV/radio signals (and these met dishes work on the same frequency band as the satellite TV/radio) rferl.org/a/iran-jamming…
It could be far-fetched but the possibility of satellite TV jamming affecting radars should be considered by the experts. We can't tell abroad because the jamming targets home dishes and one has to be in #Iran for accurate measurements.
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