Viktor Belenkos biography can be read in full here at the Archive: Mig Pilot : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
More on the F/A-18 shoot down here.
Summary - all preliminary, investigation just starting. Aircraft was on a refueling mission - buddy tanker. SM-2 missile was used. Salvage of the aircraft being considered for security purposes (it’s non-stealthy but has other components of interest to adversaries.
Quality comment from a tech regarding IFF (current Identification Friend or Foe) systems.
James Wallace
“I was a test pilot for the E2-C. Very capable system. IFF is critical and Mode 4 is a default setting on everybody’s Transponder. Now the pilots and the maintenance crew do not set the codes. The tweet, electronics tech gets codes which he loads into a gun that sets the codes in the IFF. The Mode 4 APX is actually owned by the NSA, not the Navy. The code setting guns and such are theirs as well (there are property stickers on them that say NSA). The system responds to an interrogation by pinging back with the code. If it does not match, then the system flags it. The systems also look at other aspects of what the aircraft emits, radar altimeter, transponder profile, radio output, all kinds of things that will match it up on intelligence profiles of makes and at times, even individual aircraft. Now if we have other aircraft in close proximity, like in formation with us. We would ask them to “strangle their parrot.” which means turn their transponder to standby. It wreaks havoc on the system if it is too close and the computer gets very un-happy with it. Other aircraft have the ability to ping the IFF for the code, so they don’t, perhaps, shoot it down. We don’t necessarily ask then to turn it back on. They may have been “strangling their parrot” and simply not brought the system back to full reporting. I did fly the F-18 a bit and the knobology or actual lack of knobs may contribute to a bit of confusion. There is also an issue of tracks being transferred to other active tracks.”
Added.
Richard Kane
They’re using Mode 5 IFF now which has some robust guardrails baked into its architecture to prevent fratricide.
“Mode 5 also includes lethal interrogations designed to prevent fratricide by providing a final challenge to a targeted platform prior to weapons engagement. Lethal interrogation formats elicit a Mode 5 response even when the platform is flying radio silent or “EMCOM,” short for emission control"
Preliminary information says the cause is a bird strike.
Whole lotta confusing semi-contradictory info in the article. Which is unsurprising in the early hours after a mishap.
That’s nice flat terrain they picked, and the condition of the aft fuselage suggests they more or less landed, rather than just plummeting. A ~50% survival rate also suggests a mostly controlled landing followed by some horizontal careening before everything came to a stop.
Unlikely to be a birdstrike into the cockpit; the noise with a holed windshield is such that radios are useless, and apparently the pilots did talk to somebody on the ground. Beyond that there’s not much more to be guessed at.
At least it wasn’t a MAX.
Lengthy pprune thread with videos and now photos of shrapnel–possibility of missle or drone attack:
It’s starting to look that way. Anything that was going to be a routine accident investigation is now going to include an international info/dis-info circus.
Latest speculation:
Some experts alleged that the holes seen in the plane’s tail section pictured after the crash possibly indicate that it could have come under fire from Russian air defense systems fending off a Ukrainian drone attack.
Mark Zee of OPSGroup, which monitors the world’s airspace and airports for risks, said that the analysis of the fragments of the crashed plane indicate with a 90-99% probability that it was hit by a surface-to-air missile
Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm based in the United Kingdom, warned its clients that the “Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system.”
One would think that after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 with hundreds dead that Russia would be very careful about shooting down civilian airplanes.
Russia’s high command seems to have a very difficult time getting most of its military to get the basics right.
This event was certainly not a deliberate attack planned from the Kremlin. Is it a statistically expectable outcome from a lax to negligent policy from on high being sloppily executed out in the field. Most likely.
As to this bit
Since Russia suffered almost exactly zero adverse consequences for that, why would we think that avoiding a repeat would be an idea that even occurred to them?
Whatever else we can say about their regime and their culture, it isn’t driven by notions of decency.
I’ve posted this elsewhere on the Dope but never in this thread - I present the doubly-entrendre-named 5 seconds before landing
Um… I’m probably just dumb, but what, exactly, does 5 seconds before landing show?
Looks like a time lapse photo taken at night of a plane flying directly overhead. The thin colored side streaks are the steady red & green wingtip lights with periodic white strobes blinking. The large central white stripes are the landing lights which appear to be one mounted on the nose (probably nose gear), and at the two wing roots.
@LSLGuy nailed it. I’m standing (outside the fence) with the runway directly behind me. The plane is going bottom to top over my head to land. The wingtip strobes blink 1x/second. It’s both a five second exposure & seconds before touching down.
lots of inward facing shrapnel impact …
The video shows the plane climbing and descending rapidly and then a relatively hard turn to the runway. if the plane had an up-elevator scenario then that might explain the maneuver. If it’s a stuck elevator then the pilots have to porpoise the plane with power to descend or do a series of S turns. The final turn to the runway is a one-shot guess that involves leveling off close to the ground and slamming in.
I suspect you’re right.
Also posted to the war thread:
Well, this one’s so obvious even The Big Boss has to issue an evasive apology…
Putin apologizes to Azerbaijani leader for ‘tragic’ plane crash | AP News
“A tragic incident in Russian airspace…” Do tell, Vlad.
A Boeing 737 has crashed in South Korea with 181 on board.
Attempted a belly landing, slid into a wall at the end of the runway and exploded.
There are reports of some survivors.
I see a report of 28 dead and 2 rescued.
It would seem to me than if people are going to get rescued from a burning plane, they will get out immediately–while most of the dead won’t be discovered until the flames are put out. So I would guess almost all are dead.
Pprune thread:
An article said, ‘Emergency officials in Muan said they were examining the cause of the fire.’
IANA aircraft crash investigator, but I have a hypothesis that running into a concrete wall while there is still fuel onboard may have been a factor.