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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

> they saw this contact heading towards them labeled as an F-14 fighter.

What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship. Was there no moment where they thought "maybe there has been a mistake?" - like where Stanislav Petrov chose to interpret the Soviet early warning system telling him an ICBM was incoming as being a result of some faulty instruments.

Granted the stakes were slightly different - downing one airliner is less severe than risking starting a global nuclear annihilation.

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> What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship.

What is sudden about that? "Two months before the incident, the U.S. had engaged in Operation Praying Mantis, resulting in the sinkings of the Iranian frigate Sahand, the Iranian fast attack craft Joshan, and three Iranian speedboats. Also, the Iranian frigate Sabalan was crippled, two Iranian platforms were destroyed, and an Iranian fighter was damaged. A total of at least 56 Iranian crew were killed"

And on the very day their helicopter received small arm fire from an Iranian patrol vessel, which they were pursuing when the shoot-down happened.

In this situation the idea that Iran would launch a fighter against them is not that wild.

> In this situation the idea that Iran would launch a fighter against them is not that wild.

Why would they launch a single fighter to attack a warship?

Patrol ship sees and engages a foreign warship inside the patrol's territorial waters and radios for help. First fighter available launches and flies that way to investigate. Sees the warship engaged with the patrol boat and takes initiative, while other fighters are prepping for launch for follow on attacks in case the invading warship does not retreat or surrender.

The issue is "single". Does scrambling a single fighter ever happen, don't they always fly in pairs? A single attack or recognisance plane would make sense.

Of course they might have known that their ability to properly identify the threat was limited, but that raises even more questions...

> Does scrambling a single fighter ever happen, don't they always fly in pairs?

The USS Stark was hit by missiles from a single aircraft just a year before the incident in question. So no, they don’t always fly in pairs.

The USS Stark was attacked by an (Iraqi) Dassault Falcon 50, not by a fighter jet. Fighters operating solo is virtually unheard of, especially in a live offensive posture.

Even if you usually run in pairs, if your gunboat is engaging a foreign hostile, and only one fighter has a pilot immediately available, are you going to wait for a second pilot or just send what you have?

A single F-14 which only barely can even attack a surface vessel! It didn't have an anti-ship missile!

I looked into this "small arms fire" you mentioned. You're right that it wasn't out of nowhere, but the actual story seems to be somewhat more nuanced than your very carefully worded depiction suggests:

> All 290 on-board including 16 crew perished. At the time of the incident, Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters and engaged in small arms combat with several Iranian surface craft

Did you miss that bit?

I mean in that context, with the guy stumbling into Iranian waters and shooting at some of their boats it makes more sense that he'd be worried about an attack. But that just makes the situation even stupider and more avoidable in my opinion.

UI failings aside, a few points, mostly from the US Naval Institute's Proceedings[2] (which has references to the Official Investigation "Fogarty report"[3])

- it was standard practice to illuminate Iranian military aircraft with missile fire control radar as a warning for them to turn around. "When you put that radar on them, they went home. They were not interested in any missiles," Captain Carlson recalled.

- the captain of the Vincennes was known as trigger-happy and the Vincennes was nicknamed the Robo-Cruiser.

- the Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time of the shoot-down

- data from USS Vincennes' tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information corroborate the fact that TN 4131 was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile…squawking Mode III 6760, on a continuous ascent in altitude from take-off at Bandar Abbas to shoot down."

- "Capt. Rogers was a difficult student. He wasn’t interested in the expertise of the instructors and had the disconcerting habit of violating the Rules of Engagement in the wargames." [2]

- Commander Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, even won the navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement," his "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire," enabling him to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure.

- all hands aboard the Vincennes and the Elmer Montgomery received combat action ribbons."

...

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118

[2] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993/august/vince...

[3] https://archive.org/details/FormalInvestigationintotheCircum...

And, from your [2]:

> Then Vice President George Bush had gone before the United Nations on 14 July and declared, "One thing is clear, and that is that USS Vincennes acted in self-defense…It occurred in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels [...]

> As it came to pass, none of this was true.

> However, the truth of the matter would have given the Democratic candidate for President, Michael Dukakis, ammunition to embarrass George Bush.

> There were good reasons for spinning the story in a way that put the Iranians in the worst possible light.

And so the trigger happy captain got that ribbon instead

a US frigate (uss stark) was severely damaged by a single Iraqi plane in the previous year. the captain did not expect an Iraqi attack, so he tried to warn the plane off multiple times, ultimately allowing it to fire two missiles which hit his ship. the missiles would likely have been shot down if the Stark's countermeasures were working correctly. but they weren't, and 37 Americans died.

given that context, it doesn't seem wild to take an Iranian plane as a serious threat.

As far as I understand it, a single F14 could launch a single Exocet missile, and make a VERY large hole in an aircraft carrier, and if the conditions were right, putting it to the bottom of the sea. Or the same for a battleship. I seem to recall that being a large concern even then, if not especially then.

To my knowledge, the F-14 never carried any anti-ship missile, especially on the early-model Iranian Tomcats, as the F-14 only received an air-to-ground upgrade package in the 90’s.

Yup. Some quick googling shows F-14 had LANTIRN pods added and upgraded software to support smart bombs in the mid-90s.

All models appear to completely lack the necessary software and hardware to use self-guided ground-attack weapons.

A hefty unguided bomb would be possible, but a WW2 dive bomber would have better accuracy. You’re probably better off using the gun.

With a lot of luck, you could mission-kill a frigate. Radar arrays don’t like to be rapidly disassembled.

... which we can all discuss at leisure from our armchairs with zero of the stress associated with being in the command chair that day.

Just because commenters here may come up with some down-in-the-weeds detailed analysis that could have, if known then, changed the course of events, does not mean that it's reasonable to have come up with that in the heat of battle.

There is a reason that the practice is called "Monday Morning Quarterbacking".

If you are commander of an explicitly Anti-Air cruiser, and you are unaware that any F-14 tasked against you would not have an anti-ship missile and would be abusing some other weapon "off-label", then you should not be defending a carrier fleet from aircraft. You should be familiar with the airframes, weapons, and abilities of your adversary.

The F-14 is not an attack aircraft! It was designed to intercept incoming air threats and bombers!

"So... the fighter was in range of your missiles."

"Yep."

"And rapidly diving directly toward your fleet."

"Mmhmm."

"But you didn't fire on it? Why not?"

"Well, it was an F-14, you see. Doesn't possess anti-ship missiles."

"Yes... that's precisely the sort of tactical advantage you were put there to exploit."

"Wouldn't have been sporting."

Meanwhile in reality:

"So you got a radar track squaking civillian"

"Yup"

"And it never made any search or track radar emissions"

"Yup"

"And it was climbing out of the area, and despite all your instruments showing it continuing to climb, you all asserted it was diving for an attack run"

"Right"

"And instead of trying to further deconflict, or ask any of the other local navy vessels their interpretation, or just take a risk and accept that as a member of the military sometimes your job is to stand up in the line of fire, you decided that this was definitely an F-14 interceptor, being used to attack an AEGIS vessel whose intended design is to protect an american aircraft carrier from 20 simultaneous incoming Soviet antiship missiles, and was definitely a threat to said vessel"

"Yup"

"And now 290 innocent people are dead"

The captain of the Vincennes also claims they were in "hot pursuit" of a small Iranian gunboat in "self defense" at the time, and was noted by superiors as regularly going beyond his Rules of Engagement in training activities. He had a chip on his shoulder and clearly made up his mind about what he was going to do to that plane well before he had any indication it was a threat. A nearby vessel that was datalinked (ie, was hooked into the same battlefield map and signals) very quickly and clearly concluded it was a civilian flight. Capt Rogers convinced himself otherwise.

Not one iota of what you've written here is relevant to my point. Go back and re-read the conversation.

All I was saying was that the fact that an F-14 doesn't generally carry anti-ship missiles, is irrelevant to the mission of an anti-air cruiser.

I happen to agree with you. I was just speculating what could have been done.

I have had to make decisions under stress. If I had been in the captain’s chair, I absolutely would have fired.

A verified enemy plane diving towards my ship in an active war zone?

If I had been thinking at all, I’d be thinking about the British losing a ship in the Falklands just 6 years ago.

Probably I would as well.

Then again there is a reason I'm not a navy captain with copious amounts of missiles under my control.

Given the fact that Iran successfully jury-rigged MIM-23 Hawk SAMs onto their F-14s, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they could do something similar with Exocet.

During the Falklands war there were worries that the Argies were fitting Exocet to LearJets (turns out they were used for recce and communications), and Chile also had a project on the books to convert Falcon biz jets to carry Exocet. And, some say USS Stark was itself attacked by a Falcon carrying Exocets. Grafting missiles onto a warplane that already has hardpoints and the like seems like an easier task.

>What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship.

Limited hit and run attacks were typical Iranian behavior at the time.

The US tested to see if the F-14 could launch a Harpoon anti-ship missile just a couple of years prior to this because Iran had both F-14s and Harpoons. The test was successful.

It is highly unlikely that Iran ever equipped the F-14 with Harpoons but the thought that they would because it was a capability they possessed was a very real fear at the time.

Iraq attacked the USS Stark a year before. They used a business jet with an Exocet missile attached to it. This was by mistake but it still happened.

A single plane shooting down a ship is not unheard of but the US has done it in pairs to the whole Iran navy.

I thought it was an F-1 Mirage?

"Captain, why where you derelict in your duty to protect your ship and crew?"

"Well, I just thought a single F-14 was probably not that big of a deal."

Maybe (probably?) it did seem crazy, but the officers sought verification from the system and seemed to get it.

They were probably unaware that there was an airliner in their vicinity, as it had been incorrectly tagged as an F-14. I don't know where the actual F-14 was, but quite possibly nowhere in the vicinity of the ship.

In the moment, it's really hard to step back and ask yourself "Does this make any sense?" when you're primed to react in some particular way.

Especially with an element of "I might personally get blown up" involved.

Yet the Cuban missile crisis with the stake of the entire world didn't escalate.

1. More time to think. An incoming F-14 is a minutes/seconds scenario; the Cuban crisis lasted 10 days.

2. "X did not happen" does not mean "Y was not a factor in X". The "about to get blown up" factor was part of the reason the Cuban missile crisis happened; it's also probably part of the resolution.

There were some close calls during the Cold War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

For some reason I mixed this with the Cuban missile crisis, I thought it had something to do with it.

My favorite is https://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/the-moon-and-nuclear-wa...

We got _incredibly_ lucky. A Soviet submarine trying to get through the blockade believed that war had broken out and wanted to attack the US fleet with nuclear torpedoes [0]. Normally only two men aboard the sub had to approve the nuclear launch, and they both wanted to fire. This particular sub happened to have a third officer [1] on board who also needed to approve the launch, and he may have literally saved the world by disagreeing with the other two officers.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Averted_n...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov

And my understanding is the US military leadership was generally in favor of attacking Cuba not knowing there were already nuclear warheads there.

With proper training, that should be irrelevant.

They probably had second thoughts, but they got confirmation that contact 4474 was descending rapidly.

No amount of training is likely to completely remove human factors. It helps, sometimes a lot, but there's always going to be a bit of a difference thinking actual ordinance is currently headed directly at you.

It was a disgraceful dereliction of duty by the implementers of Aegis to recycle contact IDs so eagerly. With 4 digits it should have taken 10,000 subsequent contacts before that number came around again.

It was a lack of imagination. They didn't anticipate that case and probably just selected the contact IDs randomly. A bad RNG and an unlucky day is all it takes.

Sequential numbering would have been much less confusing to operators.

All evidence is that Captain Will Rogers was a very different kind of person than Stanislav Petrov. The US military is famous for preferring "forward leaning" types.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-shadow-of-war-t...

It sounds like the real pro strat for an attack would have been to launch a single F-14 with a commercial jet taking off right up close behind you.

"Sure that plane looks like it's moving fast and diving straight towards us, but it's just an Airbus A300."

Doesn't sound like the guy Will Rogers made that decision though. It sounds like he just blindly trusted his instruments, knowing he could act with impunity. He was right - after all is said and done he killed 290 innocent people and he ended up getting something called the "Legion of Merit" so it doesn't sound like it bothered too many people there.

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