With 60 seconds to decide whether the dot approaching at a rapid speed from 23,000ft was a friendly bomber returning from a mission over Baghdad or an incoming Iraqi missile, an American Patriot anti-aircraft battery opened fire.
The split-second decision led to one of the tragedies of the Iraq war last year: the dot was an RAF Tornado GR4, flown by Flight Lieutenants Kevin Main and David Williams who died instantly as their aircraft disintegrated in a ball of fire.
On the publication yesterday of the RAF's board of inquiry into the incident, a senior British defence source said the lives of the two men had been "cut short by a terrible accident", caused by "human intervention and technical failure".
After more than a year of investigation by the RAF and the US Army, it was revealed that several factors led to the disastrous "friendly-fire" incident on March 23 which was only the third day of coalition airstrikes on Iraq.
The American Patriot crew which had "misidentified" the approaching Tornado as an anti-radiation missile, was inexperienced, and had no direct communications with its battalion headquarters to seek advice about friendly aircraft in the area.
British defence sources said the American crew had not been trained specifically about the likely threat from Iraqi aircraft or missiles.
In fact, although the Iraqis launched a number of ballistic missiles at Kuwait, Iraq's air force never became engaged and there were no anti-radiation weapons fired at coalition ground systems throughout the war.
However, the fundamental flaw which played a key part in the destruction of the Tornado was that its "identification friend-or-foe" (IFF) system which was supposed to send coded signals to anti-aircraft batteries had failed.
Steps have now been taken to install a new IFF system to all Tornados.
In outlining the findings of the RAF board of inquiry, the senior defence official said that Flight Lieutenant Main, the pilot, and Flight Lieutenant Williams, the navigator, never knew that their IFF system had stopped working.
There should have been a warning light in the cockpit, but a power failure had scuppered what was supposed to be a crucial fail-safe system.
Believing that it was safe to start a descent from 23,000ft to return to the Kuwaiti air base at Ali al-Salem, the Tornado pilot reduced altitude rapidly.
The aircraft was about 16 miles from the Patriot missile location on the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border — one minute's flying time — when it received a direct hit. There was no time for either crew member to eject to safety. The defence official said that the Patriot missile crew followed a strict computerised procedure under which the signature of the approaching "target" was assessed to judge whether it was a coalition aircraft or a hostile missile.
But with no working IFF on board the Tornado, the Patriot computer deduced that it was an anti-radiation missile, and the target was attacked.
The board of inquiry said the criteria programmed into the Patriot computer were based on the many anti-radiation missiles available worldwide "and were, therefore, very broad".
The board considered that the criteria should have been "much tauter, based on the known threat from Iraq".
It also concluded that the US rules of engagement covering hostile anti-radiation missiles were "not robust enough to prevent a friendly aircraft being classified as an anti-radiation missile".