Experts say 'panic' and 'poor training' could have resulted in Iranian personnel accidentally shooting down Ukrainian Flight 752

The New York Times

Screengrabs from a video published by The New York Times, which purports to show a missile approaching a Ukrainian jet, exploding, and leaving a flaming wreck behind.

• US officials have said that an Iranian missile likely downed a Ukrainian passenger jet just after take-off from Tehran's main international airport on Wednesday morning.
• Experts said that the plane was travelling near a sensitive Iranian missile base outside the city of Malard when it was hit.
• The downing of the plane came with Iranian military poised for possible US retaliation after Iran targeted US personnel in Iraq in missile attacks earlier that night.
• Researchers told Business Insider that a combination of "poor training" and "panic" may have led to Iranian personnel firing a missile at the plane.
• But other experts say if the plane was hit by a missile it remains unclear why, as its flight path and data transmitted to radars would've indicated it was a passenger plane.
• While Western authorities say the plane was shot down by a missile, Iran denies that is the case, blaming a technical failure.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Video footage that emerged Thursday showed the moment western officials believe an Iranian surface-to-air missile detonated near a Ukrainian International Airlines jet carrying 176 people, puncturing the fuselage with thousands of shards of shrapnel and sending it crashing to the ground.

Iran has denied responsibility for bringing down the jet, accusing the US of spreading a "big lie" by claiming that a missile strike brought down the plane.

But Pentagon and intelligence officials told US media that radar data picked up the firing of a short-range Iranian interceptor. Officials told Newsweek the missile was likely a Russian-supplied Tor model.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said that intelligence pointed to an accidental missile strike.

Discussion is now focusing on the reasons why the Iranians may have brought down the plane. Most of the passengers on the aircraft were Iranian nationals, meaning the possibility it was deliberately targeted are remote.

Instead, human error is the most likely explanation, said Justin Bronk, a research fellow in combat airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute, London, writing in The Times.

Iran Press/Handout via REUTERS

Part of the wreckage from Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, a Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport.

He says that the crew operating the Tor system would likely have been on high alert since the assassination of Iran's top commander, Qassem Soleimani, by the US.

Exhausted, and braced for retaliation following the launch of Iranian missile attacks on US troops stationed in Iraq earlier that night, they most likely committed a tragic mistake, he argues.

"When the United States (or any air force) conducts strikes against a country that has air defence systems, those systems are often hit at the outset to clear the way.

"So the crew are likely to have been scared. Scared too of the consequences from their own regime and superiors if they missed a potential threat in the event of a US attack," writes Bronk.

Other experts say that data indicates that the plane was travelling near an area about 12 miles northwest of Tehran's international airport, where there is a sensitive Iranian missile site likely protected by anti-aircraft missile batteries.

Iran may have suspected the missile sites could be targets for a counter-strike by the US, Michael Elleman, director of the Non-proliferation and Nuclear Policy Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Washington Post.

Pieter van Huis, a senior researcher at open-source investigations organisation Bellingcat, told Business Insider that the Iranian missile base the plane flew close to was just outside the city of Malard on the fringes of Tehran.

"From what we know, the military base at Malard is of great importance for Iran's missile development," he said.

"On 12 November 2011 a big explosion there killed 17 Revolutionary Guard soldiers, including Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, [known as] the 'father of the Islamic Republics missile technology of Iran's missile programs'"

"Iran had just launched an attack on the US, so any soldiers stationed there may have been extra nervous about an imminent attack by the Americans."

However, questions still remain over how the jet could have been mistaken for a hostile aircraft. Bronk notes that the airliner would have been following a pre-filed flight plan, and emitting a transponder signal, which tells radar-receiving equipment the identity, position and flight path of the aircraft.

The plane had also just taken off from a major international airport, and several other aircraft had taken a similar flight-path from the airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning, in the wake of the Iranian strikes against the US, according to flight data tracking site Flightradar24.

The New York Times reported that Tor missile launchers are operated by teams of about three to four people, tracking flights using radar data, but distinguishing civilian from military flights can require skill, and mistakes can occur.

In an email to Business Insider, Bronk wrote that simple human error was likely a key factor in the tragedy.

"The SA-15 [Tor] crew would have had plenty of information available to them that would have told them this was a civilian airliner or at the very least, a very odd fit for an incoming threat," he wrote.

"A mix of oversights, poor training and confirmation bias in a tense situation is the best explanation I can see at this point.

Van Huis agreed, and said that "It normally is very easy for trained anti-aircraft units to distinguish civilian airliners from military jets. Panic among soldiers and/or miscommunication must have played a role."

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Just checked and Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was heading in the direction of the Malard Missile Launch Site that was previously also operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard #PS752 #AUI752

- Pieter van Huis (@hspvn) January 8, 2020

There were 10 departures from Tehran-IKA from midnight local time 8 Jan through the departure of #PS752 at 06:12 LT. These are their departure paths. Prior to PS752, the last flight movement at IKA was the departure of QR8408 at 05:39 local time. https://t.co/JMpj7igNHt pic.twitter.com/X1v2lrSVma

- Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 10, 2020

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