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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

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sitkack·

If we get so cavalier about shooting things down, sounds like a good way to make a mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

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It was an F-22 that could obviously tell whether or not it was shooting down a commercial airliner.

Are you relaying on the visual approach of the pilot, or claiming the F22 has better indent tech than ground / space based tech?

F22 (and the F35) are optimized for beyond visual range air-to-air combat, so I am not sure if the pilot visually sees the thing before firing.

> so I am not sure if the pilot visually sees the thing before firing.

In all three cases, the pilots have visually confirmed the objects were unmanned. The order to fire has come after that confirmation.

Unlikely to make such a mistake when using air-to-air missiles (not surface to air or sea to air).

You assume that all future shoot downs will use the same technique.

Well, they should have some sort of visual confirmation. A live satellite view would be equally good.

There's an entire category for this thing,

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

Also later episodes from 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...

and 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

Are you making a slippery slope argument, like if we keep shooting down things that aren’t commercial flights that’s a slippery slope to shooting down things that are commercial flights?

I am not, I am saying what I said, if we make the shoot downs routine, we run the risk of shooting something down that we don’t intend to.

If we start doing patrols with loaded fighters, it greatly increases the chance of an accident.

Perhaps we are unwittingly giving away SIGINT on the weapons used to shoot them down.

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