How The New York Times Verified the Iran Missile-Strike Footage | Hacker News Reader

How The New York Times Verified the Iran Missile-Strike Footage

cjr.org

245 pointsdanso166 comments

Very cool.

For fun, I once verified the actual speed of a motorbike in a youtube video.

The video was a first person POV which also showed the speedometer clocking at 300km/h on a German autobahn. There were various comments on the video claiming it was fake. So I decided to verify it myself.

I went on Google satellite imagery and looked at a few autobahns to see how far apart the line markings were. I then measured how many lines the bike passed by going through the video frame by frame. Did the math and it turned out that the bike was actually moving at about 290 km/h. It was either measurement error on my part, measurement error on the bike's part, or that the bike's wheels were slipping at that speed (which was something I didn't know before this). I didn't look into it any further.

It was a fun experience.

For the next time: the line markings "Leitlinie" on the Autobahn are 6m long and spaced 12 meters apart [1]. The poles to the side "Leitpfosten" are spaced 50m apart.

And by law [2] all speedometers for ~German~ European cars + and bikes usually shows a too high speed:

> The indicated speed must never be less than the actual speed, i.e. it should not be possible to inadvertently speed because of an incorrect speedometer reading.

> The indicated speed must not be more than 110 percent of the true speed plus 4 km/h at specified test speeds. For example, at 80 km/h, the indicated speed must be no more than 92 km/h.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenmarkierung

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer#International_agre...

IIRC there’s a script written in the RC model aircraft community that verifies claimed speed of models by assessing the doppler shift from the video sound track as the plane passes.

/me googles

https://youtu.be/DZZWtT32ymY

But to the point of faking it seems like it'd be even easier to generate a fake audio "shift" of your claimed speed.

Most motorbikes overstate speed for whatever reason. Usually by 2-5%. I would agine your estimate was more accurate. There is a whole industry for correcting motorcycle speedometers.

Its speedo error. Most cars and motorbikes slightly overestimate speed, and the effect is more pronounced at higher speeds. This is just to be on the safe side with regards to speed, as tire tread, tire size, temperature, etc. can all have positive or negative effects on speed. Its usually around 5%. You can test this by driving at a constant speed near those radar speed detectors and observing the speed on the board vs. your speedometer. My speedometer is usually about 4 mph faster at 50 mph.

Note that those road side systems are usually only used as a road sign and the vast majority (at least in California) use a cheaper and less accurate/repeatable sensor than the ones used by police for speed infractions. This is especially pronounced on highways where the same sensor can give you several different readings at 1-10 mph less than actual speed.

Or use the gps speed from google maps. That should be pretty accurate.

What if the video was just sped up?

I guess you could use the speeds of the other vehicles as a reference point assuming they are going around the speed limit. It would be harder to show that the video wasn't sped up if there were no other vehicles on the road.

They mention Bellingcat in the article but what they don't mention is that their "verification" essentially piggy-backed on top of identical Bellingcat verification of a the same video that got released 14 hours prior [1]. This seems strange to me.

[1]. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/09/video-appare...

Exactly. Glad someone else mentioned them.

I was reading through the article, thinking "Erm... I'm pretty sure Bellingcat did all this."

https://www.nytimes.com/by/christiaan-triebert

> Prior to joining The Times in 2019, Mr. Triebert worked as a senior investigator and lead trainer at the investigative group Bellingcat.

If you've not listened to it yet, the Bellingcat podcast is absolutely fantastic.

Just an ancillary point: this highlights that free access to group messaging apps makes it much harder than before to suppress facts about what has happened somewhere. Especially if there's video. The Iran regime of 1990 would have had a much easier time keeping this mistake under wraps.

I think the whole "fake news" and related propaganda strategies we see in the West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality, by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.

Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we'd see a lot of conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts, questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.

The US never did admit liability for shooting down an Iranian jet in similar circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

There's a gap, between admitting to downing a plane and "admitting liability" for it, in which the US places its downing of Flight 655.

But the parallel you would need to draw here is of the former: admitting to downing the plane.

For flight 655, while they never admitted guilt, they did settle paying the victim's families "ex-gratia" a non-negligible sum. While it is not the same as directly admitting you are responible, espcecially to the victims, for most intents and purposes that counts as an admition in my books.

After the US commander of the ship murdered 290 people on flight 655, he was given a Legion of Merit.

Two sets of rules.

Throwing the word "murder" about like this is an abuse of language. Nobody, not even the Iranians, ever suggested that the crew of the USS Vincennes intended to kill civilians. The crew appears to have exercised piss-poor diligence, but it's universally recognized that they thought they were firing on a military aircraft.

There is a great observation in one of the Bellingcat podcasts on MH17.

Russia no longer denies facts. Instead they go all postmodern:

“what are facts anyway? What is truth?”

I guess Trump does this too to an extent. Except he has the press in his neck to call him out.

Russia still denies facts. Period.

This topic is about Iran.

#funfact: Currently, I am looking for a property to buy myself. Most of the realtors do not publish the exact address of their listed properties. I have gotten very good in spotting the properties and finding out the exact address by basically applying the same techniques.

Aren’t they all visible on Redfin/trulia/Zillow anyway if they’re in the MLS data?

Not all properties are in MLS, and even when they are intended to go in it, there will be some lag time.

How much lag depends on your area. MLS isn’t well coordinated.

You assume this person is in the US.

Why do they not publish the address?

To claim commission I suppose.

They have a non-exclusive deal with the owner?

There are properties that get listed by an agency and it's totally free game for who sells it. I've had a realtor tell me that I should "use her exclusively" because she would get me better deals.

Don't do that, it's incredibly stupid.

In some countries realtors can claim that because you contacted them first about the property, that they get the comission on the property regardless if you continued to use their services or not. I guess this is to avoid situation where realtor connects the buyer with the seller only for them to decide to cut the realtor out and sell without the comission. This gives a big incentive to realtor to hide the location so you cannot contact the seller yourself, and they usually ask you to sign documents where you agree to this practice before they take you to see the property.

They want to force you to interact with them. It gives them the chance to sell you even if the property isn't what you want--they'll always offer to help you find another property, or they "have another listing that'll be just perfect" for you. Its a sales tactic.

Or the OP is looking at unimproved land/lots which don't have addresses. I'm currently looking at properties for a future vacation home and at least here the electric company assigns addresses--so if the lot doesn't have electrical service it won't have a real street address. You're lucky if the realtor lists the tax ID so you can look it up in the county database.

If it's door 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=bait+and+switch

It is the first reason. It is Germany. By law, the realtor is required to be paid, if you got first contact through them. With that they want you to require to sign the required paperwork, that they work for you.

But as another poster pointed out, it costs everybody time when you need to make an appointment and then at first sight you see that this will not work out.

I would have presumed privacy

Edit:

With detached houses the obfuscation is harder/less valuable, but ideally I'd rather not have images and price and exact location of my property be linked online essentially forever.

Price is one thing, but internal layout and floorplan coupled with exact address is ropey.

Isn't all of that public record anyway?

Actually not in Germany. Because of privacy the register is not allowed to tell anybody who is the owner of the property. The register is only allowed to give out this information for valid reasons. Buying is not such a reason. A broken pipe would be a valid reason. Any of such request needs to be recorded and the owner needs to be informed.

In the US, internal layout is not generally available (may vary by locale) and may not even exist on paper. Square footage/location/owner is--although, speaking for my own case, details about the house in the public record aren't necessarily accurate.

Makes it harder for competing realtors to contact the actual owners to also start promoting/selling the property?

At least in my country avoiding squatters is also a reason to not show the exact address.

In London this also happens frequently.

Often the "location" of the property is shown on a map. A lot of the time, this is often quite inaccurate.

The cynical might observe that this often happens to suggest that the property is not immediately next to a train station/sewage works/night club etc.

I don't know why the bother - I am going to find out that the property is not actually in the much-more-desirable location 250 metres away when I go see it. I'll immediately see it is next to the crematorium or whatever and immediately nope-out. It just wastes everyone's time.

It's the exact same reason people post misleading pictures on their dating profiles. Because it works some of the time, due to the sunk cost fallacy (people have already invested in something so they stick with it even after the deception is revealed).

I've found that people lookup sites use that sunk time technique. Try going on one that's a little more shady like been verified. Once you put in a name and place, it "scans" through their databases, and it "scans" through social media, it also "scans" through criminal history, etc. It takes 10 minutes easily (I left it running out of curiosity). Then it tells you, voila! We have that info! But it'll be $19.99 to access it. You've already sat through so much, might as well go all in.

Meanwhile, if you use the opt-out link, it instantly shows at least the name, location, age, etc.

"Also, there’s the sound. There was a delay from seeing the explosion to the sound reaching the camera. We knew the approximate altitude that the plane was flying at from the flight information. We knew the location from the flight path. So we were able to calculate the distance and the altitude—and, therefore, the hypotenuse between them and the camera—and calculate how long the sound of an explosion would take to travel that distance. And it was roughly what we were seeing and hearing in the video, about 10 or 10.5 seconds."

Neat!

Actually the sound analysis doesn't prove it's a real video, it just cannot prove it is fake. One could totally make up a video keeping sound propagation times in mind. The most important thing is tracking the footage real location and checking that the plane or missile weren't edited in.

No one is faking footage.

They are just re-posting old footage of different incidents. IE in the Australian fires atm.

It's to hard to fake footage.

You are just checking it's the right location, right time. It's entropy. Real leaks are way easier than fake leaks.

>> Real leaks are way easier than fake leaks.

Maybe for the private person. For a certain three letter agency looking to start a war with Iran it is quite easy to produce fake.

I don’t think anyone wants a war with Iran, buddy. Not even the Saudis.

Faking footage will only get cheaper and easier. But yeah, right now probably the most used fake sources are simply different, older incidents.

Getting real footage from some location is kind of trivial.

If you try to edit a person into a scene, you have to do a lot of work to carefully fix up the lighting and shadows, which is difficult to do perfectly. That's not the case with a tiny distant object against a dark sky. There aren't many editing artifacts to look for.

It's worth pointing out that since the incident Iran has arrested those responsible for downing the jet - in an attempt to place blame on to individuals - who I'm certain are devastated at accidentally killing their countryman. I suspect they will be labelled traitors and never seen again.

They have also arrested the person who filmed this video [2]. Whilst we might celebrate this investigative journalism, this video changed the course of the narrative and forced Iran to come clean, we should also be aware of the consequences of it.

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51114945

> we should also be aware of the consequences of it.

which is that an authoritarian regime is never a good thing.

Society requires that bad actors be publicly visible and called out, as this creates a pressure for them to act sensibly. The first thing an authoritarian regime implements is censorship and apply any chilling effect they can, because they know this is the only way they can hide their acts from the public at large.

The West is just better at obfuscating via softer power.

What's happening with Epstien's case now? Who in the press will continue to follow that up? Some guy might try to keep on it, and then get told at the end of the year that he's been cut due to a profit warning or whatever. Who's going to keep on writing about Prince Andrew not being arrested?

Different methods but pretty-much the same lack of visibility.

bad timing on this one lol:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2...

Let's see. Nobody went to jail for 2008, they just stonewalled it.

Genuine question: what laws were broken in 2008 (assuming you are referencing the ‘Great Recession’)?

In fact, people did go to jail.

Here's just one example, but there are others...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/seven-defendants-mortgage-ori...

Also, the CEOs and employees of the banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch in question large portions of their life savings.

The CEO of Lehman, for example, lost 50% of his net worth - over 4 Billion dollars. ...and obviously destroyed his reputation. Well deserved, of course, but it's hardly "no punishment".

...the same was true with most if not all senior employees. All of them had large portions of their compensation in equity stock options. I'm, unfortunately, speaking from experience.

It's one thing to say the people "responsible" didn't get punished enough - that's true. But most people at these banks definitely suffered, materially.

when people argue that they didn't go to jail, i take it to mean that those who were "responsible" didn't suffer "enough". Where enough is taken to mean an eye for an eye.

Whether you subscribe to this sort of thinking is up to you - i don't, but the result is that the people who suffered don't feel they've been vindicated nor made whole, and the world has moved on since.

Next time please link to your actual content instead of a parasitic ad company skimming off the top.

if anyone is the parasite it is me, aggressively adblocking on all devices

> Who in the press will continue to follow that up?

Dr. Oz, today at 1300 hours.

"Jeffrey Epstein had burst capillaries in his eyeballs after he died which pathologist tells Dr. Oz suggests he was STRANGLED and did not hang himself"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7894685/The-burst-c...

How does that contradict what I said? Until it's put to trial successfully, with full information and prosecutions of some very, very well known people, they all got away with it.

Come on, you know you're moving the goalposts here. There's a big difference between "no visibility, nobody in the media will talk about it" and "in the media constantly but Epstein's friends don't get prosecuted".

The difference is much more stark than that. Iran has murdered perhaps a thousand protestors in the last year. [1]

> "Verified video footage indicates severe violence was used against protesters, including armed members of security forces shooting from the roof of a justice department building in one city, and from helicopters in another," Bachelet said in a statement. "We have also received footage which appears to show security forces shooting unarmed demonstrators from behind while they were running away, and shooting others directly in the face and vital organs – in other words shooting to kill."

There is no equivalency here at all. Iran is a failed and murderous regime.

Here’s hoping that Iran’s disastrous response and capitulation in the face of the US killing Suleimani will weaken the Ayatollah enough in the eyes of the people and provoke further rebellion. The Iranian people have incredible potential but they have been choked under the boot of Khamenei for so long.

[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-says-iran-may-have-ki...

That's the soft power part. We are "free" in the West!

I also like that you quoted me with

> "no visibility, nobody in the media will talk about it"

And I didn't write that.

> Who in the press will continue to follow that up?

You said this, which is pretty much the same.

In the West there's a heck of a lot better chance / freedom to actually continue looking into cases.

Not much different from a Senate willfully ignoring witnesses to a crime.

> which is that an authoritarian regime is never a good thing.

Yes, it is better for a superpower to fabricate evidence for a war [1] resulting in an estimated six hundred thousand dead [2] (and a few corporate-friendly laws [3]), than letting an authoritarian regime stand. But I'm sure this time, things will work out better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders

This really strikes me as analogous to a blame-the-programmer situation, when what is really needed is a process improvement or change.

Programmers are no less responsible than architects and craftsmen when building bad things, or even indeterminate things for bad people.

Why did BBC put quotes around the word arrested in the title?

Probably because there's a dispute over whether anyone was actually arrested, or if they arrested the wrong person, because the journalist who received the video says his source has not been arrested.

Generally when newspapers put quotes around a word like that it means they are using a word quoted directly from a source.

BBC's style guide puts quotes around any part of a headline that is reporting on what others have said.

Add Saudi Arabia to that list... who knows how much the folks they're going to execute after the Khashoggi events had anything to do with it / what happens to anyone else approving it.

The end result is that particularly with oppressive governments the truth has costs.... but I"m not sure of any other alternative.

If someone shot a missile at a plane in America they would unquestionably be arrested. You don't need a political motive for this arrest.

Additionally, videotaping military actions deemed vital to national security is a crime in the US.

I agree that all those arrested are unlikely to get a fair trial, but arresting these people is standard action.

>Additionally, videotaping military actions deemed vital to national security is a crime in the US.

Interesting, I'm curious which law says filming in a public location the downing of an airliner by the military would be a crime? Can you please give me a link or citation so I can read more about this?

In addition, the Grand Parent comment didn't mention that in the article the BBC is saying that the person who filmed the video is SAFE, and that is taking the blame.

So Iran has arrested an innocent person in order to shift public anger onto them, for something that shouldn't have been a crime in the first place.

>So Iran has arrested an innocent person in order to shift public anger onto them,

Or they mistakenly arrested the wrong person to ensure the cameraman was not filming the missile at the command of an enemy nation. Arresting an innocent person is a necessary evil worldwide, convicting them would be forcing them to take the blame.

You can't "ensure they aren't working for an enemy nation" if it's the wrong person. Your presuming it was an accident they got the wrong person. I'm presuming it wasn't.

Both are presumptions, but based on the the rest of their actions it seems like my presumption is more likely.

So you think they took the public relations hit of arresting the journalist but intentionally arrested some random person? Why?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-37

Several ordinance's in this chapter could certainly be used to arrest the individual. Whether the case would see a conviction is not certain, hopefully not, but more than enough to file charges.

I don't think you are familiar with the law. It's not espionage for a US citizen to photograph something from a public area that is out in public. Such a charge would not withstand a 1st amendment challenge IMO.

It can be barred for reasons of national security if it is nt espionage. And first amendment challenges would only matter at conviction. A person in the US having filmed a missile shot at a plane could be arrested like may have happened in Iran.

Many people have filmed terrorist attacks in the USA.

They may be compelled to turn over the footage to law enforcement, but they would not be arrested merely for taping.

People get arrested for filming cops on a regular basis, why do you find it inconceivable that someone would be arrested for filming a military operation?

The Americans who shot down the Iran's plane in 1988 didn't see a trial.

They were in Iran at the time, and I'm sure Iran would have tried them if allowed.

Chelsea Manning probably takes comfort that this does not happen in the US

The first link in that article has a lot of video of the incident I haven't seen before, including the missle launch, detonation, and a close-up of parts flying through the air after the plane impacts the ground:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/1000000069116...

It's interesting to me that it seems mostly only a very recent trend that these sorts of basic techniques (which fall under the category of intelligence known as OSINT -- Open Source INTelligence) of identification and verification are being talked about by mainstream mass media content producers like the NYT. Interesting because it must follow at least partly from the intrinsic network that exists between those people fighting wars and those reporting on them. Also interesting because these are old techniques that have been public for decades. Preceding and coincident to this, there has also been a push in Western militaries to train members in OSINT techniques -- and not just members in traditional intelligence job specialties -- following recent doctrinal themes of much more decentralized, individual "generalist" warfighters (think traditional special forces) than big blocks of maneuver elements on a sand table. This is a side effect of the messy, multilayered future of cyberpunk combat.

They actually didnt verify anything. Plenty of Twitter accounts verified the story some 10-ish hours before NYT reported this ground breaking information. These reporters are sitting behind their desks (like you and me) and are sifting through Twitter feed and they stumbled upon what was already geolocated video+ several images of missiles. But this became a story only when a big media (in this case NYT) published it.

Are you saying they didn't do the analysis they said they did, but copied it from someone else? I agree the analysis doesn't "verify", but it did lend more credibility to the (then) suspected root cause. It had value.

They weren't claiming they were the source of the posted videos.

Yes the flight path + sound analysis and all these things were already on Twitter. So, NYT article should be more "how we copied Twitter users without crediting them"

> Plenty of Twitter accounts verified the story some 10-ish hours before NYT

the point is people trust NYT more than a group of twitter accounts.

>they actually didnt verify anything

The article clearly points out how they verified the footage. Including how they geolocated it.

No, in addition to verifying one telegram video* the NYT paid for satellite imagery to verify other parts of the story and I believe they were given the CCTV footage showing both launches independently. After the reported arrest of an earlier videographer they are understandably vague in the provenance of the later video.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22066346

Same thing with Theranos. It was people on the internet who discovered theranos was shady and WSJ was the one that "broke the story". At least the WSJ acknowledged and credited the people on the internet who first pointed out the shadiness at theranos.

Iran then appparently arrested the person who they thought filmed this video: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51114945

"But an Iranian journalist based in London who initially posted the footage has insisted that his source is safe, and that the Iranian authorities have arrested the wrong person."

Ugh. Even worse.

Unless your point is to send a message. But yes, still even worse.

or the actual source is the one being arrested and the journalist is trying to trick the government to release the person.

I thought about that too but media have a lot to lose in terms of credibility if it gets exposed. I'd bet you there was a NYT lawyer in touch with that journalist ASAP when they published that tweet if the journalist hadn't been in touch with legal beforehand.

The Times kept saying they "obtained" the video, as if it was leaked to them by a confidential source. That's not the case. They found it, like many others, including Bellingcat, on a Telegram group. I'm glad they reported the video, but to make it seem like _they_ were the ones to find it first is misleading and grandstanding.

No NYT was able to track down the person that posted that video on telegram and that individual got them in contact with the original videographer and the NYT verified those people.

https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1215397996545835010

I don’t read “obtain” to imply anything more than getting the video through some means.

obtain = get = acquire

It sounds fancier but it means the same.

I did not realise how close the impact was to the airport. It looks like the plane took a normal flight path. I thought Iran said the plane entered a restricted area. Does anyone know if that was true?

I think it's simply an accident due to the ground crews being very nervous and expecting an attack at any moment, followed by the inevitable attempts to cover it up by those most directly responsible.

Entering a restricted area might simply mean entering the airspace visible to a particular AA battery.

Ground crew is on a mobile SAM vehicle and was posted to reinforce Tehran area. Probably reason why they did not know it is a regular flight path from an airport.

Everything else is smoke and mirrors by Iran trying to find excuses for the shootdown.

This is most likely to be the correct answer.

I'm not sure people realize what it's like to be living in the expectation that your country might get bombed by the USAF any moment.

The plane did not deviate from its flight plan.

FlightRadar24 published[0] the track of the plane vs the other commercial planes taking off from IKA around the same time and vs previous flights of PS752. The plane made no movements that would lead an observer to believe it was anything other than a civilian passenger jet following its flight plan.

[0] - https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/ukrainian-flight-ps752-cr... (under 'Other relevant flight information')

Later Iranian gov official statement corrected an earlier one that claimed the plane turned toward a restricted military installation. Also that correction stated that the crew thought the 737 was a cruise missile.

A cruise missile approaching a target is not climbing to 8000ft but with how poor the export market Tor mk1 RADAR is I guess it's plausible the crew was spooked https://gfycat.com/pastelcourageouseeve

There was an NPR story that mentioned US has satellites which can detect RADAR and I wondered about that, so I asked on twitter. Here are two nice threads of explanations I got in response:

https://twitter.com/M_R_Thomp/status/1217510002723893250

https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1217506180303663104

I highly recommend following Malachy Browne on Twitter[0] for more investigations like this. He's also the narrator on other NYT video investigations[1]

[0] https://twitter.com/malachybrowne [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krr4u6uGdzc

The headline is deceptive or perhaps poorly worded. The NYT evidently verified the plane was shot down by a missile fired within Iran's borders. That's it. Whether Iran itself was an active participant iss not something the NYT could have verified.

I'm being selective because this involves journalism, and words matter.

Somewhat offtopic, but I'd be interested in an answer.

Do non-military planes have some kind of missile detection capabilites?

Like: Did the pilots know what was about to happen or that something was approaching them with high speed and whatnot or were they just blown out of the sky without the slightest idea?

No - and in any case there isn't anything they can do if they are targeted, they don't have active countermeasures, the airframe can't handle evasive maneuvers, and they have a huge heat/radar signature.

It's .. not a problem the civilian manufacturers should be attempting to solve.

Thanks for your answer!

> It's .. not a problem the civilian manufacturers should be attempting to solve.

No, absolutely not. I was just wondering if they had at least the slightest idea what was about to happen.

Kind of gruesome to pass away like this, if you think about it. On the other hand: You can just as surprisingly be killed by a speeding car. Really bad in any way.

In 2006 two air planes collided (almost) head-on over the Amazonas, by virtue of the impressive accuracy autopilots can maintain. Flying things move too fast for you to have much chance to notice anything after they've become close enough to see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_Aéreos_Flight_...

William Langewiesche has an excellent article on Gol 1907: 'The Devil at 37,000ft'.

Goes into a bit more depth on your point. Our expectation is that increasing use of tech in planes should make us safer, but in this case it _increased_ the chance of a mid-air collision. Of course planes have TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) to stop this happening, but it's no magic bullet ... particularly when it's turned off.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/01/air_crash200901

I'm sure they had in mind the specific tensions and in their head that a missile can strike them.

About a similar situation (in Ukraine): "It was not possible to ascertain at which moment the occupants died"

"Victims Could Have Remained Conscious During Fall"

https://time.com/3028548/mh17-malaysia-airlines-victims-ukra...

It was likely horrible here too.

Air Force One is based on a civilian airframe. Of course the Hollywood movie was full of exaggerations, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual Air Force One was reinforced in some ways to afford a certain level of protection for its precious cargo.

How much could Boeing, for example, modify one of their civilian airframes to support active countermeasures and make it capable of withstanding more stressful maneuvers without altering the outside too much? Quite a lot, I would think.

air force one and some El Al planes were/are fitted with countermeasures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al#Onboard_missile_defense_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_VC-25

>All wiring is covered with heavy shielding for protection from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse in the event of a nuclear attack. The aircraft also has electronic countermeasures (ECMs) to jam enemy radar, flares to avoid heat-seeking missiles, and chaff to avoid radar-guided missiles

I think the best countermeasure in Israel is the heavy interrogation you get when leaving the airport

People on the ground with missile launchers don't go through airport security.

Probably not much can be realistically done actually.

Airlines are hypersensitive to weight since that affects range and fuel costs. The action that American Airlines took to remove complementary magazines from their flights saved millions a year in fuel costs.

In Air Force One's case - they probably have some active countermeasures (flares) and some electronic countermeasures (jamming) built in, but that's about it. Probably useless against a foreign state's advanced SAM capabilities. Much of the extra weight capabilities are most likely taken up by communications equipment to provide the President and staff command authority. Minus some rudimentary capabilities for low-end SAMs, Air Force One is probably just as vulnerable to being shot down as your average cargo airliner.

The P-8 [1] is based on a civilian airframe too, doesn't look very different to a 737 from the outside.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon

> the airframe can't handle evasive maneuver

That's not exactly true for +ve g's:

"from -1 to +2.5 (or up to +3.8 depending on design takeoff weight)"

If you were at 10,000' and you saw a radar-guided SA-2, diving downwards toward it would likely make it miss.

How does a pilot see something obscured by the nose and rest of the plane coming up?

I always find it funny in sci-fi: "their missiles have locked on to us!"

Granted this works only for active radar-guided missiles, but those can easily be detected by their radar shining right at you. Maybe all the missiles in sci-fi are radar-guided?

They "lock on" before the missile if fired.

How would the target know it was locked upon?

That's my point. Maybe a notification protocol? Seems to be used as a warning sometimes..

Ah sorry I misunderstood your comment. I thought you wanted to say it was obvious for the target to know. Haha yes a notification protocol would be a weird thing to have. It would be gamed the millisecond things went beyond friendly warnings.

Others have already commented, but normal surveillance radar is like a spotlight from the tower. It goes around and scans the area. If they determine that you are important, the radar can "lock on" to you which means that it will no longer scan around but would shine the light on you constantly.

If they want to shoot at you, they turn on another even stronger more focused light to improve accuracy.

Military today have ability to detect enemy targetting radars and when they lock on so having such a thing in SciFi does not seem strange to me.

The same way they do now: by detecting whatever the attacker is using to sense and target them. Today, that's usually radar. In sci-fi, maybe it's tachyon beams or something.

Aside from detecting any guidance signal the trajectory changing towards them is a giveaway that it is homing and not just a dumb projectile that they are in the path of.

By seeing a constant high-energy radar signal, which would distinguish it from surveillance radar.

Or they have behavioral analysis AI that can tell when a missile is "locked" on target.

even if the missile isn't using active guidance (ie laser/radar), it's pretty easy to detect anything with an engine in space. there aren't a lot of other explanations for a small object on an intercept course for your ship at high acceleration.

Obligatory link to the "There Ain't No Stealth In Space" article at Project Rho[0].

[0]http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect....

I'm not sure if this is true, if the missile is coming head on. If it is made in a stealthy way, the "head" of the missile could obscure the engine area and make the plume invisible to the target. Having low RCS alongside with hidden plume could make a passively targetted missile relatively stealthy to the target.

Ofcourse, anyone with enough offset to the target would be able to easily detect the engine and thermal release but the target could be unaware.

Another method to hide it is if missile uses some kind of obstacle in order to accelerate behind, for example you fire your missiles and they accelerate when a moon or a planet break line of sight from the target to the missiles. This would make their acceleration burn invisible to the target and could get them very close without being noticed.

if you're curious about this topic, I highly recommend checking out the webpage linked in the sibling comment, "There Ain't No Stealth in Space" if you're curious about this topic.

tl;dr: it's exceedingly difficult to hide anything that consumes power in space. the rcs thrusters would either be too weak to achieve the delta v to hit the target, or the friction from the thrust against the nozzle would unstealth the missile. even the radiation from the onboard computer would likely stand out against the cosmic background. a missile like you describe could potentially evade current detection systems, but would almost certainly be detected by any civilization where ship-to-ship space combat is feasible. and not in a handwavy future tech way, but just from extrapolating current tech. I highly recommend checking out that page. it makes for a great read.

I've read it and mostly agree. The article even talks about the "solution" I mentioned (they call it cold plate). Stealth in space is impossible if you use constraints they used (solar system coverage with sensors and need to hide a ship with life support).

What I've talked more is about a missile. Missile can fly "cold", it could even be multistage so that after it's acceleration burn it can drop of a hot lower stage and continue to the target completely cold. If you add a cold plate and "terrain masking" you could effectively use a missile stealthily. Ofcourse if there is a full system sensor coverage this is not possible, but I've said that in my initial comment as well. You may be able to hide the heat from your target, but not from everyone.

El-Al planes do.

"Since the early 2000s, El Al has been the only commercial airline to fit its planes with systems to defend against anti-aircraft missiles."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al#Onboard_missile_defense_...

And how difficult it is to identify a civilian plane vs a weapon?

Few months back India shot down its own Helicopter and now Iran shot a whole air plane. And they spend gigantic amount of money on defense. How lacking is the technology!

> And how difficult it is to identify a civilian plane vs a weapon?

if there is such a way, then your enemy planes can just as easily masquerade as a civilian craft and evade the missile!

> easily masquerade as a civilian craft

How does one do that easily?

Well, if it's only some "signature" that is broadcasted (or not), one could flip a switch and appear as a civilian aircraft.

The way to make do it work is that a civilian profile would utterly suck as a missle - pbviously 9-11 demonstrated limitations of it.

Air traffic control messages and flight paths could help with that but there are complications - especially when sending out radio communication could light themselves up as a target.

Theoretically fiber optics and dedicated communication towers could separate the functions but there would be considerable logistical implications to that and well - even first world nations with a large military budget don't put that high of a priority on avoiding collateral damage.

Anybody who is in the unfortunate position of deciding whether the target they’re aiming at is a missile or passenger plane needs to do the following simple calculus: if you are even slightly unsure, don’t do anything (especially if the object is not even threatening your life). If it turned out to be a hostile missile, your country then goes on the offensive against whoever fired it and it’s just another attack. No one is going to come after you for being cautious (maybe you get dishonorably discharged but that’s it). But if you go the other way and accidentally take down a passenger jet, not only do you kill a bunch of innocent people, the international community will be out for your blood.

I think the international community generally recognizes that this is the fault of conflict escalation and scapegoating. I doubt anyone outside Iran directly blames the person who fired the AA strike at this point.

Moreover, if you are the one manning it, remember that _not_ firing the missile could mean not just your countrymen but your colleagues may be getting killed (by the bombs). War is ugly and there's no good choices. People die by definition.

The thing is, the probable first set of targets in a war with Iran would be air defense targets. “If it turned out to be a hostile missile” that could mean imminent death. It’s very possible the air defense operator panicked and acted out of perceived self preservation.

Two missiles. Fired approximately 30 seconds apart. Hitting a 737. Which was ascending. On a registered flight path.

They are supposed to be a trained military employing lethal force. What they are in fact is a failed regime playing with Russian hardware.

This wasn’t panic, or an accident. This was pure utter incompetence compounded by total apathy for the civilian population.

This was verified by online communities within 3 hours of the footage being known to western forums. NYT just copied the math or they did it themselves much later.

I guess the page is taking time to load due to hug of death.

https://archive.ph/TXyXV

Why was someone shooting video of the sky at that exact moment, unless they were somehow connected to the strike?

I assumed it was the second strike. So after the first missile, an observer would have started recording and managed to catch the second.

No need to assume it. There is a surveillance video that shows both launches and hits. When you cross reference it with the other video you can confirm that the video with the dog was filmed after first missile already hit the aircraft (and knocked out the transponder).

Apparently there were two missiles fired, this video could have been of the second one with the person starting to film after having seen or heard the launch or impact from the first one.

>in the video, you can see a person standing beside what looks like a small cabin. And there’s a little metal tower with sort of cross sections, almost like a ladder, with a light on top. It looks like a security light illuminating the area. And there’s very distinctive rows of buildings that are all identical in the distance.

Sounds like an average security camera setup to me. Was probably recording 24/7 with rotating files.

While some of the other responses to your post are more likely right (they saw the first explosion, and caught the second one), I will add that my house is close to a handful of flight paths for a near-by airport. I have plenty of pictures and videos of planes flying in.

Also, why was the guy filming the video in contact with an iranian "journalist" in britain? The right with the right tools at the right time with the right connections. Very convenient.

The entire trump-iran situation is very odd. Trump supposedly takes out a very important iranian leader whose only identification is a ring? They respond with attacks that apparently kill nobody. And then this downed plane? It feels like theater, but that's geopolitics I guess.

I didn't think anything could be stranger than the Trump-Kim on-again-off-again romance, but here we are.

Would love to see the behind the scene truth, but all we get are the media lies.

The video was unnecessary, just looking at the crash photos of the wings —- and the holes in them, were indicative of a shoot down. The video was icing on the cake and helps sell the story’s truth to those who don’t know much about airplane damage.

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