These aren’t mutually exclusive. But I guess it’s important to emphasize that this isn’t Maverickski and his superior mad skillz, it’s just a dumb stick-jock playing stupid games and getting lucky enough to avoid winning stupid prizes right away.
I personally hope his crew chief tore him a new one when he landed, but I don’t think Russia has the tradition of an NCO corps that pilots should be rightfully afraid of. Another clear sign of the absolute benightedness of the Russian military culture.
I dare say, the real story here is that the Russian air force prefers playing footsie with unarmed surveillance drones in international air space over actual combat in a battle zone, where they are actually needed.
Denys explains Turkish Air Traffic Control would have been communicating with the remote drone pilot.
Honestly, given the choice, so would I. Drones don’t shoot back.
However, it doesn’t sound like Russia has the luxury of allowing pilots to dick around with expensive aircraft at a time when replacement parts may be in short supply.
What would have been great is if the drone operator had managed to recover and ram the Russian plane.
Iran captured a US drone and began making some that looked like it. Since then, I would have thought they would be booby trapped against monkeying with one.
Saw a two minute news video segment this morning where they explained how they’re able to ‘zero-ize’ the electronic info on this downed drone.
Retired col. explains how US can prevent Russia from gathering intel from drone | Watch (msn.com)
Thanks.
Russian bandits will attempt to grab ill-gotten loot:
Amusing to see them waste their effort to retrieve something that will have zero intelligence value, since without the electronics intact it’s just another large drone.
Well, it will keep them busy for a while.
I’m sure there is a lot of top secret stuff about our drones known only to our military and the Russians.
Ukrainian forces took down a Russian Su-24 supersonic bomber near Bakhmut, according to its officials.
Footage shared Wednesday by Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, showed a huge, flaming smoke plume and what appears to an ejected pilot floating to the ground.
Yarmik posted an edited version of the footage which magnified the parachute.
Later in the clip a number of missiles then appear to be shot from the pilot’s landing location.
Flares, surely. Not missiles.
That’s not really what I would worry about them getting. I was thinking more that the could salvage the drone and learn how it was built and operated. We could get the same data just by flying another drone over the same area. However, I think Russia’s drone recovery ability will be sorely lacking.
While I think the downing may well have been an accident, I don’t think his theory is the most likely. For the propeller to make contact while the jet was above it and allowing it to pass, the jet would have needed to lose altitude at just the right time to hit the prop because the tail sections of the drone are higher than the prop. If the idea was to disable the prop, coming from behind is better because there is nothing in the way.
Do pilots typically land so close to the crash site?
Depends on the altitude they ejected at and the wind speed.