KAL 007
Phil Ngai
>If I recall correctly, the KAL007 disaster is not the first time
>the Russians have fired on or forced down a civilian airliner or
>aircraft. In one of the cases, a civilian airliner was forced to land
>on an ice covered lake and the resulting crash killed several
>passengers. The Soviets do have a very large, classified facility in
>the area but, if the Soviets stated that they had confused KAL with
>an U.S. plane that was on a mission to test AIR DEFENSES.... These
>air defense games are played by both sides very often (* lemme see how
>close I can get before they come after me.... and how long does it
>take.... ). I can't see the point of actually firing at such a plane
>especially if you fighters are faster and you could possibly force the
>plane to land.... (scoring a major intelligence and propaganda victory...)
The accounts of the KAL007 incident I have read indicated the airliner
was leaving Soviet airspace and was not responding to the
interceptors' attempts to force it to land. Under such circumstances,
it is not surprising they shot it down.
In order to put the incident into perspective, I suggest you read
_The Puzzle Palace_ by James Bamford. I'll include a representative
paragraph.
"For close to a decade now, the NSA had been engaged in a secret and
bloody air war with the Soviet Union. In April 1950, a Navy patrol
bomber with a crew of ten was attacked and destroyed by Soviet
fighters while flying over the Baltic. A year and a half later another
Navy bomber on a reconnaissance mission off Siberia was shot down,
with the loss of all ten on board. That year an Air Force
Superfortress on another reconnaissance flight met the same fate over
the Sea of Japan. Neither the crew nor any wreckage was ever found.
... the ELINT missions, in which the aircraft would not only skirt the
Soviet borders but actually penetrate them in order to trigger
otherwise inactive radar equipment and thus capture their telltale
signals for later analysis by the Puzzle Palace."
Given this history, how would you react, as a Russian air defense
commander, to KAL007's intrusion and refusal to land when intercepted?
--
Rain follows the plow.
Phil Ngai +1 408 749 5720
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Richard A. Levin
The Atlantic has an excellent article on this (its the sept issue
I believe, in any case it is the cover article.) The theory seems
reasonable and combines navigational errors (bad input to the
inertial unit) and a soviet paranoia about letting the plane get
away. It is an excerpt from a forthcoming (probably out by now
book). Read it for yourself.
On another note from what I have heard (admittedly, not authoratative)
and my recollections of the bamford book the Elint planes don't do
penetration missons any more. Satelites (sp?) and better recievers allow
info to be picked up without as much risk. the one thing this method
does not give is info on the radars that are turned on only for short
range tracking (i.e. when a plane violates airspace).
Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX
to be the most comphrensive account of KAL007 flight to date. It is quite
critical of the Reagan administration's handling of the incident.
Some tidbits: The KAL captain revised the flight plan to save fuel.
The INS was programmed from keyboard. Keyboarding errors are common.
Human factors, especially prevalent in KAL crews, could have easily
prevented the error from being discovered in time. Visibility at the
shoot-down site was poor, and the KAL crew probabaly wasn't watching
outside the windows much anyway, remember these are long and boring
flights, not like penetrating LAX TAC. The author viewed NSA radar tapes,
the Russians never made any radar tapes available, probabaly don't have
any. The Russians have shot down some of their own airliners, with heavy
loss of life, such incidents are as well publicized as their 1957 nuke accident.
Go ahead and read the article.
Ron Schweikert
> On another note from what I have heard (admittedly, not authoratative)
> and my recollections of the bamford book the Elint planes don't do
> penetration missons any more. Satelites (sp?) and better recievers allow
> does not give is info on the radars that are turned on only for short
Some people have questioned the mission of the SR-71. This is one of the
primary ones. Also station output, frequency, location etc. etc.
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