Iran investigators blame misaligned military radar & inept, trigger-happy operator for downing Ukrainian passenger plane
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down shortly after departing from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. An interim report by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization has outlined the chain of mistakes by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which resulted in the death of all 176 people on board the airliner.
An air defense unit deployed near Tehran was relocated shortly before the incident, the Iranian investigators said. Once in its new location, however, it failed to properly adjust its radar station – which ended up being 107 degrees off. This was due to human error, the first of several that led to the tragic outcome, the report said.
The unit detected Flight 752 after take-off, but due to the misalignment the operator believed it to be approaching Tehran from the southwest, while in reality the plane was moving northwest tangentially to the Iranian capital. A report containing the mistaken data for some reason was not communicated up the chain of command and to a coordination center, setting off a second key link in the chain of events.
The interim report stressed that if even one of the four key links in the chain of events hadn’t occurred, the passenger aircraft “would not have been targeted”. It added that its investigation was still underway and that more such mistakes may be identified before its conclusion.
The January 8 incident became a major point of dispute between Iran’s government and the Revolutionary Guards, who initially denied any involvement in the incident, and led senior civilian officials – including President Hassan Rouhani – to stand by them. Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, who commands the aerospace forces of the IRGC, later accepted full responsibility for the tragedy.
Six people have been arrested in Iran in connection with the downing of the Ukrainian plane, authorities said last month.
Source: rt.com
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