But you said yourself that by going straight to the AIB, they were calling it an accident.
No, you just said that. Why? You choose to remain ignorant, despite my, and beachnuts more detailed, best efforts in explaing the process that is used to investigate aircraft mishaps by the US military. Your "fingers in ears" lalalala BS is no longer entertaining.
A mishap. An aircraft mishap. That is a doctrinal term. CFIT is generally accidental. Crashes are not normally intentional.
The assumption, in April 1996, that a convoluted murder plot would be the primary reason to inform an investigating team would require information, EVIDENCE, to be available to the convening authority that a murder or intentional downing of the aircraft (for example, someone seeing a missile trail rising from the ground near the crash site) that warrants a change from SOP. Why is that? Because the experience over some decades gleaned from aircraft mishaps, non combat losses, has been used to establish very effective SOP's.
It really is that simple. (You do not seem to know how to use the word "presumption" versus "assumption" but at this point, who cares?)
Pilot error is one of the only reasons they could have come up as cause of an "accident", given that they found no mechanical problems. So they were assuming, as I think you are, they made a mistake.
No, you miss the point made multiple times. Pilot error is a causal factor, and 70-80 percent of military aviation mishaps (crashes) include pilot error as a causal factor. You don't even know how to use the word "only" correctly. Typically, if you take pilot error out of the links in the chain, mishaps are prevented. That again is the acquired wisdom of the Naval Safety Center (and for that matter the Army Safety Center, FAA, USAF, etc.)
Or maybe it would prove your assumption about pilot error needs another look.
No. That you willfully ignore the information provided to you means that you have long since chosen to remain willfully ignorant.
The finding by the AIB was that pilot error was a causal factor, and I am content with that finding based on my own experiences in investigating aircraft mishaps.
Since you cannot even get the simple stuff right, and are being willfully stupid, you are welcomed to live in the Land of Deluded, population you.
ETA: Note on assumptions.
In order for your CT to formulate, the following assumptions must be in operation:
General Fogleman follows unlawful orders, and issues them
Each member of the AIB did not pursue with vigor finding out what happened: carelessness was commonplace, thus evidence overlooked or ignored, and in some cases deliberatey suppressed
An assassin was willing to risk dying in a crash, or, if the weather cleared before arrival in Dubrovnik, risk being found out when the plane lands and Brown is dead, and everyone else alive
The assassin has control of the weather, or is a superb forecaster who can ensure his mission is a success so that an NDB spoofs the plane into a mountain
and the pilots can't see the ground.
And more. If you can't build a sound theory of your case, as a detective or lawyer does when trying to solve a crime, you have no case. Your theory does not stand up. Your preconditions are necessary, but not valid. What is necessary when a theory does not fit the evidence available is to . . . come up with a new theory. The theory the AIB came up with fit the evidence with sufficient fidelity to arrive at a reasonable conclusion.
Yours does not.
Cheers.
DR
ETA:
Parsimony: Go back to the approach plate, and re read beachnuts points about the MDA. The margin for error is less than 500' vertically. To further understand, draw a point on a piece of paper, and then draw six lines radiating out from the center. Those represent bearing lines, generated by AC current and transmitted like AM radio signals, that ADF receivers interpret on the compass card/HSI/RMI in a cockpit. These are depicted by a needle on the compass card that tell the pilot on which beam of the beacon he is riding. Notice how farther from the beacon, the radials get farther apart from one another. If you are off by one degree, you get further off desired course over the ground, left or right, the further you get from the beacon. Note also that if you have a single ADF receiver, you would have to switch between them to determine when the MAP has been reached.
(That is why the pilot had begun timing, IMO, as a back up means of estimating when he should switch to the second beacon to know to commence the missed approach, or to determine that his copilot has the field in sight and to proceed visually to a landing.) If you switch frequencies back and forth, any drift you may have, left or right, on a radial will take a moment to show itself in the RMI card. So it looks the same on the card, one degree or another, irrespective of range, but the beams for any given direction (say 147 deg magnetic, or 148 degress magnetic) are geographically further apart.
As beachnut pointed out, it wasn't much of an error, but it was enough to hit a mountain.