Why can't I stop myself from shooting the President?

I've started playing Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown and I'm still pretty early in the game. I'm stuck on Mission 04: Rescue, where you need to discretely fly to a space elevator to assist with the breakout of President Harland.

I've gotten pretty capable at evading the radar signals surrounding the structure, and I seem to be able to protect the president's escape vehicle for most of the mission, but once the escape pilot is killed and President Harland takes over flying the Osprey VTOL I can't seem to avoid shooting him.

Once he's in control of the vehicle, is he accidentally turning off it's identifier and accidentally marking it as a target? It's really hectic when defending and as a new pilot I usually lock on targets and fire without checking too thoroughly. Despite this, I've tried retrying the (thankfully short) mission three times, yet I keep accidentally launching missile at him.

I don't have this friendly fire issue with other allied planes. What's making it so easy to shoot at the President?

It's intentional, and how the game's story goes.