After initially denying they were at fault, Iran quickly backtracked saying the shot down the passenger jet by mistake?

But with modern sophisticated systems how could a large, slow moving, and climbing jetliner be mistaken for a “hostile” fighter jet or cruise missile?

James McKay (PhD) is a professor of political science at the Royal Military College in Kingston Ontario.

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There should have been several clear indications that PS752 was not hostile and was in fact a large passenger jet.

James McKay, political science professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. (supplied)

Strategists say a hostile craft would have been smaller, faster and travelling towards a potentially identifiable target on a probable level course with no identification. In this case, PS752 would have been on a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) had its identifying transponder on, ‘squawking’ an allocated IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) transponder code as a non-threat. As a radar passes over a plane the transponder is triggered to respond with a 4-digit code, while an additional selection on the radar unit can read altitude.

A TOR M1 Surface to air missile launcher, front radar folded down during movement. The missiles are launched out of the top of the vehicle (AP photo)

PS752 was relatively slow, and climbing away from the city -outbound- not inbound- on a known regular flight path..

So what went wrong?

So many possibilities.

Communications breakdown is likely along a system involving civilian aviation authorities, the regime leadership, the regular military, and the separate Revolutionary Guards military command which operates the missile system and going down through the lower levels of the Guards down to the missile battery and the crew of the particular launcher.

Iran had launched a missile attack on military bases in Iraq just hours before and McKay notes the Iranians were fearing American reprisal attacks. He says the crew of the launcher may have been shutting down their radar and communications periodically to prevent their location from being identified and becoming a target for anti-radiation missiles which seek and track radar emissions. This meant they may have missed critical information about passenger flights from the still operating airfield.

Radar track shows flights from Tehran airport showing PS 752 was on a standard flight path and climbing when  communication suddenly ended, two minutes after leaving the runway ( Flight24)

McKay also says the system “Identification friend or foe” (IFF) system may have had a malfunction but the direction of flight he says casts doubt on that.

He also says it may be a question of training of the Revolutionary Guards operating these deadly missiles. Also playing into the tragic equation may be an issue of crew fatigue affecting judgement, the force having been on high alert for up to several days.

While McKay says the case will be studied by military analysts in Iran and elsewhere in efforts to avoid such mistakes, and the civil aviation body may also rethink policy about operations in hostile or potentially hostile airspace, will this tragedy prevent anything like it in the future?

The TOR M1 is fitted with 9m330 missiles 2.4m tall. The missile contains about 15kg of explosive designed to spray metal shrapnel into the target aircraft. (Allocet-wiki commons)

There have already been previous cases .

On September 1, 1983, a Korean Airlines 747 accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace. Thinking it was a similar looking American spy-plane it was ordered shot down even though the jet interceptors closing in on it said it appeared not to be a spy-plane. Some 269 people died