By Russell Bentley

January 14, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -  There remain a lot of unanswered questions and implausible explanations in the story of the Ukrainian airliner shot down near Tehran on January 8th, 2020. And while the Iranians have publicly and officially taken responsibility, there may be other reasons for them taking responsibility besides their actually having done it. I can think of several, and I will propose a few. But one thing I am certain of, with good reason – the “accident” story is bullshit, no matter who is telling it, and no matter why. They may have a good reason for telling it, but it’s a lie. There may be a good reason for telling it, but there’s no good reason for believing it, at all.

The first thing to understand about the SA-15 system is that it DOES have an IFF interrogator built into its radar system. The interrogator sends out a pulse that detects and interprets the IFF civilian airliner transponder signal automatically, every few seconds. Boeing 737 aircraft are equipped with two IFF transponders, which are set and activated prior to take off. Planes can be allowed to take off with only one operational transponder, and it is possible that the single transponder can fail or a pilot (and co-pilot, and even ATC) can forget to make sure it’s on before take off. My friend, a professional airline pilot, explains that if the plane is preparing for take off and the ATC does not see the transponder on his radar screen, he will remind the pilot, who will turn it on before take off. My friend has also told me that it does happen that the pilot, co-pilot and ATC can and sometimes do all forget and/or fail to notice the transponder is not on before take off. So, it could be possible for a plane to take off without an IFF transponder operating. On a flight across several international borders, into combat skies, where the IFF would be THE most important single safety system on the plane on this flight. Even flight PS-752.