It's good to get your informed opinion on this, Pat.
Two things though; this whole 'fog of war' thing strikes me as being just as 'video-gamey' as someone thinking that a radar system literally tells you what the aircraft is. Doesn't the navy have lots of checks to go through before engaging, even in a situation that could be described as 'fog of war'?
Of course not. Go make an omlet ans see how you do. Then try making three at the same time and see how you do. Then try make three at the same time but all with wildly differing ingredients. Then try and make three omelets at the same time with wildly different ingredients and bake a cake at the same time and so on and so on.
Any watchstander is traking multiple tracks, and while individuals can do it better than other individuals everyone no matter who you are is going to have a harder time understanding and reacting to situations as the enviroment becomes more intense.
This happens to you in rush hour traffic, I am sure you can understand it happening to someone in a war zone.
Now, most assuredly we train to cope with that, and to know when we can't cope and thus recognize our degraded capability when that happens. But when that happens that doesn't mean you can stand up and punch out of the situation. The war is still going on. You just modify your decision making based on your reduced capability. You do, however, still make those decisions. Again, its not a 100% confidence game.
The watch stander who reported a descending target most definitely made a mistake, but like anyone in any profession doing anything mistakes happen. I assure you every surgeon you ever met has made a mistake, but you let him perform surgery on you anyway. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it understandable.
In a situation like this which was 1.) unexpected 2.) involved multiple warfare areas 3.) involved an ongoing engagement and 4.) had some technical challenges that are described in the wiki I really can't say I would make that same mistake 1 time out of 100.
As for the Captain and the OP, the fog of war magnifies as you go up the chain of command like a telephone game. The Captain was told he had a contact taking off from the local military air base headed right for him while he is engaging surface contacts (coincidence?) AND it is now descending in attack profile. Did he just say "FIRE ALL MISSLES!?" No, he had the contact hailed on seven times on military and civilian frequencies with no answer. We can monday morning quarterback him all day, but given those details is it really inconceivable to think it was indeed an Iranian military aircraft?
Isn't 'fog of war' a bit of a catch all excuse for negligence?
No.
The second question leading from this would be; if this is not the case, isn't that quite an indictment of the naval checks that are in place to prevent this type of thing, and what, if anything, has been done as an upshot of this to rectify any errors in the system?
The only thing I can think of is the track merge thing. The way link 11 works is that all the ships share a picture using all of their sensors. What the USS Sides saw the USS Vincennes saw and visa versa. We can go into the specifics later, but basically one ship (the most advances ship) is selected to lead and coordinate the picture. This is for the most part done automatically based on preset parameters and there are thousands to choose from. The lead ship when having targets held by multiple vessels will evaluate each track and then decide which ship has the best hold on that track and then suppress the others and use that one to push to everybody else. In this case the Vincennes had a track with an assigned number, but then the Sides picked it up with a better quality, so Link 11 canceled the Vincennes track and replaced with that of Sides which was using a different track number.
That can be confusing in and of itself, because with fifty track numbers on the screen a sudden switch might bet missed in a really intense situation and you lose awareness of the track. Its hard, again not like video games.
It gets harder though. Totally unrelated to this situation but still inside the link picture (this can cover hundreds of thousands of square miles) there was an American A-6, who was picked up by a vessel in the link picture and thus assigned a track number. In an EXTREME case of coincidence and bad luck this A-6 was assigned the same track number that the Iranian airliner originally had.
Now, on a combat display you can view things in two ways. First, you can just look at the top down geographic display to see where everything is on a map, with track numbers tagged to them. However, if that picture is cluttered or you want to focus on something else like surface contacts without the air contacts you can manage your tracks by simple list on a different display. So if you are tracking that Iranian aircraft by its track number alone, in list format, turn you head for two seconds and come back and still see that same track number you don't think anything has changed. But what happens if in those two seconds LINK merges that track and the reassigns that same number to a different track? You might notice it, but I think any honest person can see the difficulty. And this is just an inherent disadvantage of operating in a complex environment that demands so much information about every single thing.
Patroklos, is this a totally different situation to the USSR shooting down the Korean airliner?
Not totally, but there are some very serious divergences off the top of my head.
1.) The Soviets in question were not engaged in any hostilities whatsoever at the time, which means there is no logical reason to think a single air target of any sort military or civilian was any eminent threat. There are other reasons to shoot things down, but they are not as imperative as self defense.
2.) The Soviets were never concerned about their safety, but were only concerned about losing face with their superiors. That's why they shot it down. That motivation is not as easily used to justify their actions.
3.) Their decision was made over a matter of hours, not minutes, there were no time constraints and the stresses that brings on.
4.) Even if the Korean airline had been identified as military, it had already passed over Soviet territory twice and was back over open ocean exiting Soviet territory when they shot it down. There was never any question or eminent threat.
