Why did the Navy shoot down 290 civilians? A naval officer who served in the Persian Gulf explains what really went wrong - and why it may happen again.

• Author: Shuger, Scott
• Position: Iran Air flight 655

A naval officer who served in the Persian Gulf explains what really went wrong-and why it may happen again.

The first time anyone in the operating area of the Vincennes took an interest in scheduled airline traffic was one minute after the detection of Iran Air flight 655 on radar and six minutes before it was shot down. That vital information wasn't posted in grease-pencil on any of the Combat Information Center's many status boards nor logged just a buttonpush away in its computers. Instead, a crew member had to resort to riffling desperately through the hundreds of pages of fine-print in the Official Airline Guide. Although flight 655 was in fact listed in the guide as a regularly scheduled flight, with such a lack of research it's not surprising that nobody could find it. Even the ticket agents at airline counters keep flight schedules stored in computers. It's incredible that the Navy, with much more at stake than the timeliness of the Eastern Shuttle, should be so ill-prepared.

With the loss of 290 civilians, the Vincennes tragedy offers an illustration of how the Navy's readiness problems stem from human, rather than mechanical, deficiencies. After all, the failure to take account of airline traffic didn't arise from a malfunctioning radar, radio, or computer. There's been a lot written-much of it gushing-about the Navy that suggests otherwise. (A line from the cover story, "Tough New Navy," in the August 4, 1986, issue of US. News & World Report is typical: "Bristling with high-tech gear and missiles, the fleet is easily the most muscular America has ever put to sea.") But no matter how many wonder weapons come on the scene, the chain of command will always go through people. And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Without proper planning and training, a multimillion dollar, antiair warfare system, like the Aegis radar, is no more reliable than a nervous index finger groping through an unread book.

The Defense Department flirted with this truth in its report on the shootdown. That 5 3-page document stated tha"stress, task fixation, and unconscious distortion of data may have played a major role [in the event]." But ultimately, the Pentagon missed the point. "Singly, the errors or mistakes were not crucial to the fateful decision," stated Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. "Even cumulatively, they do not appear to change the picture in a decisive way."

This sort of PR-speak keeps the military from learning from its mistakes. Contrary to what Admiral Crowe said, the Vincennes episode suggests that the Navy still hasn't adequately developed and channeled the crucial human qualities of knowledge, judgment, and decision-making skills.

Fly 'til you drop

During the past 20 years-from say, the Israeli assault on the Liberty in 1967 right through to last year's attack on the Stark, and now the Vincennes tragedy-the Navy's technical superiority has often been stymied by poor thinking. During my own experience in the Navy from 1978 to 1983, 1 repeatedly found defects in the Navy's planning and preparation, defects that were individually exasperating and, collectively, indicate that the mental confusion on the Vincennes was especially severe but not uncommon. These are the sorts of "software" problems that get overlooked because they have to do with values, role models, and psychology-topics neither contemporary military men nor strategic thinkers have much time for.

Promotion boards seem to overlook them, preferring instead to emphasize one easy-to-use criterion-raw time on the job. In the aviation world in which I served, this simplistic approach to advancement is mightily reinforced, what with all the flight jacket patches and wall plaques honoring pilots for getting a "thousand hours" (of night time) and making "centurion" (achieving 100 carrier landings). Spend enough time in enough ready rooms and you could forget that there'SS anything to being a naval aviator besides "cats" (carrier launches)...