How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Vacillator]

55 minutes ago, Holien said:

I would hope America is having a private chat with a NATO Ally nearby to try and recover it, unless they can send in a non military recovery ship to enter the area?

There are reports (for example on the BBC) that Russian ships are already in the crash area.

[Thomm]

"Don't bring a propeller to a jet fight!"

[Thomm, 2023]

[panzermartin]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

The Black Sea Reaper incident. Looks to me they were exactly knowing what they were doing.

 

 

This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.000 USD missiles.

Team BRICS win this air circus round  

Edited March 16, 2023 by panzermartin

[Bearstronaut]

12 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.000 USD missiles.

Team BRICS win this air circus round  

It was completely reckless. The SU-27 could just have easily crashed alongside the Reaper.

[Aragorn2002]

12 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.000 USD missiles.

Team BRICS win this air circus round  

Not reckless? Reward them by sending F-16s to the Ukraine. 

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.00 USD missiles.

Team BRICS won this air circus round  

Did they really?  They directly attacked a US assets in international waters.  The US is now justified in all sorts of escalation and likely can generate the internal support to do it.  The US has over 300 MQ-9s, a dozen or so with Stingers and Hellfires handed over to the UA would be appropriate right now.  Maybe finally green lighting ATACMS to hit the airfields those MiG flew from.  Oh and let’s not forget the fact that the US can do offensive cyber too.

Said it before, will say it again - the west has escalation dominance here, not Russia.

[panzermartin]

1 minute ago, Bearstronaut said:

It was completely reckless. The SU-27 could just have easily crashed alongside the Reaper.

I dont think the camera can give us an accurate sense of distance between the two. Plus the Sukhoi is regarded as an exceptionally agile plane. And the footage confirms this.

[Tux]

15 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

This isnt reckless, its a perfectly executed soft kill of a 32million USD unit with almost zero cost. On the other hand the US shot down chinese balloons wasting multiple 400.000 USD missiles.

Team BRICS win this air circus round  

I assume this is a joke?  One bit of turbulence and we have an ‘American drone purposefully rammed our peace-loving fighter jet’ international crisis on our hands…

[akd]

2 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

I dont think the camera can give us an accurate sense of distance between the two. Plus the Sukhoi is regarded as an exceptionally agile plane. And the footage confirms this.

The bent prop on the MQ-9 is a pretty good indication of the distance.

[Tux]

1 minute ago, panzermartin said:

I dont think the camera can give us an accurate sense of distance between the two. Plus the Sukhoi is regarded as an exceptionally agile plane. And the footage confirms this.

So you don’t think the two aircraft collided?  If they did that tells us all we need to know about the distance between the two…

 

The whole point is that when you get that close at that speed, the ‘agility’ of your aircraft becomes irrelevant. Whether you crash or not is largely down to chance (see my previous post re: turbulence).  When you purposefully cede control of the situation like that, that’s reckless. 

[Seminole]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Did they really?  They directly attacked a US assets in international waters.  The US is now justified in all sorts of escalation and likely can generate the internal support to do it.  The US has over 300 MQ-9s, a dozen or so with Stingers and Hellfires handed over to the UA would be appropriate right now.  Maybe finally green lighting ATACMS to hit the airfields those MiG flew from.  Oh and let’s not forget the fact that the US can do offensive cyber too.

Said it before, will say it again - the west has escalation dominance here, not Russia.

If WW3 is the goal, then we definitely have escalation dominance.

Not sure the 'internal support' for WW3 though.

1987 That time a Soviet Su-27 Flanker Collided with a Norwegian P-3 Orion over the Barents Sea

The P-3B serialled 602 and named ‘Gunnar lsachsen’ (ex-US Navy BuNo 156602, c/n 185C-5304) was shadowing a group of Soviet Navy ships in the Barents Sea; another account of the story says it was chasing an A-50 AWACS over international waters and trying to prevent it from fulfilling its mission. Lt. (SG) Vasiliy Tsymbal flying Su-27 ’36 Red’ (c/n 36911016816) was ordered to make a practice intercept. Trying to ‘squeeze’ the Flanker out as the fighter moved in close, the Orion's captain 1st Lt. Jan Salvesen reduced speed by extending the undercarriage and moved to position his aircraft directly above the Su-27. However, he was unaware of the Flanker's low-speed handling capabilities, and as the Su-27 slowed down as well to keep formation the Norwegian crew briefly lost sight of it.

Tsymbal manoeuvred the fighter dangerously close to the Orion and the port fin struck the No. 4 propeller. The dielectric fin cap shattered immediately, but so did the propeller and the debris punctured the fuselage skin, causing decompression; the damaged propeller caused violent vibration, forcing the crew to shut down the engine. Some accounts say that Tsymbal was not content and positioned his Su-27 ahead of the P-3, dumping fuel on its fuselage! Anyway, both aircraft made for home, landing safely at their respective bases.

[panzermartin]

11 minutes ago, Tux said:

I assume this is a joke?  One bit of turbulence and we have an ‘American drone purposefully rammed our peace-loving fighter jet’ international crisis on our hands…

So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok... 

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, Seminole said:

If WW3 is the goal, then we definitely have escalation dominance.

Not sure the 'internal support' for WW3 though.

Good lord, here we go with WW3 again.  Well there is an argument to be made we are already in a global level conflict:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

Not sure how knocking down Reapers is going to make that situation any better for Russia, but hey it is a theory.  Or is it that time of the week to roll down the nuclear escalation rabbit hole?

[Endyamon]

5 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok... 

Well, Russia started the war, not the USA, plus it was in international waters...

[panzermartin]

1 minute ago, Endyamon said:

Well, Russia started the war, not the USA, plus it was in international waters...

One day we must reconsider what we consider "international waters". Its like a term from 17th century and the era of sails. Russia was firing missiles from international Belorussia, Awacs and drones are directly involved in coordinating actions against Russia in the international Black Sea. Seems only like a hole for militaries to exploit given today's tech.   

[Tux]

8 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok... 

Wow. Another joke?

I mean, yes it can.  It’s up to the Russians whether they want to cross the next line and attack said drone but I’m not even arguing that the attack was unwarranted, I’m arguing that it was done in a reckless and stupid way.  I feel like this isn’t a productive sub-thread though, so will probably leave things there.

Oh and I meant to say it would have been a major international crisis if the SU-27 pilot had misjudged and gone down too, which he could easily have done if he made contact with the drone any more heavily than he actually did. My apologies if I wasn’t clear. 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Offshoot said:

Whatever the loss ratio might be, it may have paid dividends given the ISW's latest report on the substantial reduction of Russian offensive operations over the past few days. Now this thread can debate how many soldiers Russia has for defense and how many Ukraine has for any upcoming counter-attack - https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-15-2023

 

The Igor Girkin Twitter account posted this chart of decreasing attacks.  It does seem to be trending downward and is presently 50% off the highest activities at the beginning of the month:

 

[chrisl]

26 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

I dont think the camera can give us an accurate sense of distance between the two. Plus the Sukhoi is regarded as an exceptionally agile plane. And the footage confirms this.

If we know even the approximate dimensions of both aircraft (and we do) then the camera can give us a very accurate sense of the distance between the two.  And given the bent propeller blade, we have more indication that the distance between the two was zero.

[cesmonkey]

https://www.eucom.mil/article/42318/media-advisory-camera-footage-release-from-us-air-force-mq-9-interaction-with-russian-su-2

Quote

00:29: A Russian Su-27 collides with the MQ-9 and the MQ-9's camera feed is lost for approximately 60 seconds. 

00:39: The MQ-9's camera feed has returned to working order. At this time the propeller can be seen again and one of the props can be seen damaged. 

 

[Peregrine]

14 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok... 

Drone was 100s of km from any sort of area with active combat so pretty much everything you said it was doing it was not doing.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

So a US drone can patrol next to Russian borders, coordinate artillery/troops to kill russian soldiers , coordinate missiles to sink russian warships or bomb russian bases, coordinate US citizens fighting russians on the ground but hey piss some fuel on a unmanned flying object and it is an international crisis. Ok... 

Well, yes. US is free to provide bilateral direct support to Ukraine especially from outside the conflict zone.  A Russian direct “soft-kill” on a US asset in international waters is technically an act of war.  By the logic you seem to be proposing, Russia can conduct attacks on US personnel who are flying these things in Italy, or Nevada.  So what would be an “international crisis” by your measuring stick then?  Because is we do not have legally defined limits of what is inside and outside this conflict then we are very likely to have a lot of them.  

For example, Russia is flying their version of AWACS within Russian airspace who are directly supporting the targeting of civilian housing.  Russia industry with links to defence outside of Russia? Russian military outside Russia? Tell me where the redline is then.  

(note: by military definitions this was not likely a “soft kill” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system. Looks more like a hard kill by ramming).

 

[Harmon Rabb]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Good lord, here we go with WW3 again.  Well there is an argument to be made we are already in a global level conflict:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

Not sure how knocking down Reapers is going to make that situation any better for Russia, but hey it is a theory.  Or is it that time of the week to roll down the nuclear escalation rabbit hole?

 

[MSBoxer]

Before seeing the video, I envisioned the SU flying alongside of the drone then sliding in front and releasing fuel.  The actual approach is much more dangerous as the pilot loses sight of the drone in the final moments.  Considering the closing speed this is far too risky, to my mind it would be far safer to approach from below where the pilot could keep the drone in view for the entire encounter.

 

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

One day we must reconsider what we consider "international waters". Its like a term from 17th century and the era of sails. Russia was firing missiles from international Belorussia, Awacs and drones are directly involved in coordinating actions against Russia in the international Black Sea. Seems only like a hole for militaries to exploit given today's tech.   

I really don't get you sometimes.  It's like you mostly understand a topic and then fail to grasp the central point of it.

Look, it's very simple.  The rules as they are today do not prohibit any form of military behavior in international waters or airspace.  Or do you think the US should just start sinking Russian subs and ships anywhere in the world's vast international waters just because they might be up to something?  Do you think the Chinese should destroy any ships or aircraft going anywhere near Taiwan because they are helping Taiwan?

Russia and China are equally capable of spying from international airspace and water.  The rules are you stay in the designated areas and do not violate sovereign territory.  This is why the US didn't kick up a fuss when the Soviet Union shot down Powers' U2 spy plane.  The US was doing something it should not have and it paid the price for that.  Similarly, China sending balloons over the US is also a no-no.

Rules are rules and they exist for a damned good reason.  Sure, Russia has a reason to be upset about what the US is doing, but that's not a legal pretext for what they did UNLESS they risking wanting to go to war with the United States.  Which is why it was either "reckless" behavior or worse... deliberately trying to provoke an armed conflict.   Nobody is suggesting the latter, so we are left with reckless. 

Steve

[panzermartin]

Just now, The_Capt said:

Well, yes. US is free to provide bilateral direct support to Ukraine especially from outside the conflict zone.  A Russian direct “soft-kill” on a US asset in international waters is technically an act of war.  By the logic you seem to be proposing, Russia can conduct attacks on US personnel who are flying these things in Italy, or Nevada.  So what would be an “international crisis” by your measuring stick then?  Because is we do not have legally defined limits of what is inside and outside this conflict then we are very likely to have a lot of them.  

For example, Russia is flying their version of AWACS within Russian airspace who are directly supporting the targeting of civilian housing.  Russia industry with links to defence outside of Russia? Russian military outside Russia? Tell me where the redline is then.  

(note: by military definitions this was not likely a “soft kill” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system. Looks more like a hard kill by ramming).

 

I think a NATO F16 shooting down that Su-24 and killing the pilot in the process over Syria was closest to an act of war. In comparison, no, this drone is not important.

US being the dominant as you say, will decide when its a good time to go WW3. Maybe when more banks will start collapsing? We'll see.