Page:Iran Air Flight 655 investigation.djvu/14

 organization. Captain Rogers exercise of "command by negation" placed an even greater reliance on the information and recommendations received from as he did not as a practice deal with his CRO relying rather on the information from operators who, as he states, were trained better than he to read a CRO.

(2) (U) The first information given to Captain Rogers by was that there was an inbound F-14 on a closing course which was not responding to challenges. He apparently was also told that the aircraft had veered from its route and appeared to be moving to an attack position. Such a scenario would not have seemed unreasonable to the Captain as he was well aware of the F-I4 activity from Bandar Abbas, warning of possible Iranian attack over the holiday weekend, threat of suicide aircraft and the other background which is well described in the report. Based on the information he had received from, Captain Rogers came to the initial conclusion that the aircraft was displaying hostile intent and requested and received permission to engage at 20 miles if the air threat did not respond to warnings. Despite the request from to engage at 20 miles, Captain Rogers elected to hold off based on a lack of Electronic Warfare (EW) correlation.

(3) (U) During the three minutes remaining before the decision was made to fire, Captain Rogers was preoccupied with the ongoing small boat engagement and a foul bore in Mount 51. He believed the most immediate threat to the ship was the difficulty of USS VINCENNES to deal with dense, aggressive, high speed small craft attempting to press home an attack. His primary focus, Large Screen Display (LSD) and hook were on and remained on the small craft engagement. Thus, he continued to rely upon the verbal assessments from as to the extent and nature of the air threat.

(4) (U) As the aircraft entered the 10 mile range from USS VINCENNES, the Captain was forced to make a decision. He had been told that: The aircraft is not responding to warnings; not acting like a commercial aircraft; the IFF mode and code were indicative of an Iranian military aircraft; and, most importantly, that the aircraft was decreasing in altitude, increasing in speed and on a closing flight profile with USS VINCENNES. As Captain Rogers says in his testimony, "... my confidence in confirmed to me that the aircraft was, in fact, a threat." With these assessments and the aircraft now at nine miles from USS VINCENNES, the Captain believed he could no longer delay in defending his ship and made the decision to engage - a decision which had to be made in a minute or less.

(5) (U) One might criticize the Captain for not devoting more attention to the air picture, but this is judgmental. Captain Rogers believed the most immediate threat to his ship was