How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

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.

 

Count me amongst the people who were surprised that this was a head on confrontation.  Beyond "reckless".  Damned close to "suicidal".

In fact, let's look at the Russian allegation.  They claimed that their aircraft were doing nothing bad, just monitoring, when suddenly the drone made a dramatic change of course and that's what led to it crashing.  We know this isn't true, but what if the drone HAD done an evasive maneuver at wound up getting in the flight path of the Russian pilot.

Reckless is the best I can come up with for this.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

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.

Sorry, legally and technically you are 100% wrong.

As for the Turkey incident, Russia was operating within Turkish airspace after a warning.  Sure, Turkey could have reacted to it as an act of war, but it downed the Russian aircraft so that was obviously enough for them provided Russia stopped doing it.  They did, so they didn't go beyond that.

The US has so far not retaliated.  And this is where we are relying on sane, calculated responses from the US to avoid creeping us towards WW3.

10 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

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.   

It is never good when nuclear armed forces are deliberately attacking each other because unintended consequences become more likely.

I don't think WW3 is on the table any more today than it was last week, but it is not comforting to know that Russia is willing to tempt fate.

Steve

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

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 it’s a good time to go WW3. Maybe when more banks will start collapsing? We'll see.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown  This?  We are talking about this?  No, this is a Russian violation of Turkish airspace that prompted a lethal response (that was a hard kill to btw).

Ah, well you squarely have the Great US Satan in your brainpan today and look like are planning on a pretty wide scope logic journey while standing on the righteous hill of “it isn’t fair!”

Can we expect a sequel of how the US and NATO forced Russia into invading a neighbour?  Bioweapon black sights and sinister US oil interests?  How all those people at Bucha were crisis actors?  I mean if you are going to go all crazy in public, why do half measures.

[Tux]

The more I think about it the more I suspect this whole thing is actually just a case of an idiot (and let’s just say it one more time: f*ing *reckless*) pilot accidentally colliding with the MQ-9.  There’s no way he deliberately approached a moving target at a closing speed of something like 100kts, the last second or two with the ‘target’ out of sight, and then purposefully clipped just the outer 20cm of the propeller.  There’s also no way his superiors ordered him to try to do just that. 

I think this is an angry clown of a pilot trying to scare the drone’s operators with a very close flyby and… ahem… “messing” it up. 

[chrisl]

13 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

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.

 

To drop fuel on someone you have to be above and in front of them, so if it were matching speed it would have had to be above and in front of the MQ-9, in essentially the same relative positions as a refueling tanker and its recipient.  What the SU pilot did was fly an intercept course from the side where he could probably see the upper bits of the "vertical" stabilizers of the MQ-9 up until the very last second.  You have to extrapolate a bit from the video (and someone with CAD models of both aircraft could do it accurately very easily) because the camera on the MQ-9 is mounted under the nose on a swivel, so it's rotated to about the 135° position and probably as far up as it tilts (roughly horizontal), while the SU pilot is on top of his aircraft but can lean over and look to the left and down as he does his sweep.  What you have to visualize is how much of the top of the MQ-9 is visible to someone stretching up and leaning left in the cockpit.  He would have had a better view if he'd done it from above, banked slightly left, but then would have had to do a quick rotation to avoid slicing the MQ with his left wing.  Instead he risked the belly of the plane (with a higher chance of a hit because of visibility) rather than his flight surfaces.  Where he screwed up on the second pass is intercepting a couple feet aft of where he probably intended to (and of where he did on the first pass).

[panzermartin]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown  This?  We are talking about this?  No, this is a Russian violation of Turkish airspace that prompted a lethal response (that was a hard kill to btw).

Ah, well you squarely have the Great US Satan in your brainpan today and look like are planning on a pretty wide scope logic journey while standing on the righteous hill of “it isn’t fair!”

Can we expect a sequel of how the US and NATO forced Russia into invading a neighbour?  Bioweapon black sights and sinister US oil interests?  How all those people at Bucha were crisis actors?  I mean if you are going to go all crazy in public, why do half measures.

Hey I'm not in the nut camp, thanks. Not yet. But I know elites on both camps are ruthless. Capitalism and war go hand in hand. If all else fails its time for a big war to reshape the markets. Deconstruct to reconstruct. I don't exclude chinese, russian elites or anyone else.   

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, Tux said:

The more I think about it the more I suspect this whole thing is actually just a case of an idiot (and let’s just say it one more time: f*ing *reckless*) pilot accidentally colliding with the MQ-9.  There’s no way he deliberately approached a moving target at a closing speed of something like 100kts, the last second or two with the ‘target’ out of sight, and then purposefully clipped just the outer 20cm of the propeller.  There’s also no way his superiors ordered him to try to do just that. 

I think this is an angry clown of a pilot trying to scare the drone’s operators with a very close flyby and… ahem… “messing” it up. 

For sure I'd say hitting the propeller was accidental, but the dumping of the fuel was not.  The intent was to down the drone.  It's just that it was downed through abject stupidity rather than through smarter means.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Hey I'm not in the nut camp, thanks. Not yet. But I know elites on both camps are ruthless. Capitalism and war go hand in hand. If all else fails its time for a big war to reshape the markets. Deconstruct to reconstruct. I don't exclude chinese, russian elites or anyone else.   

Nobody in elite circles think nuclear war is going to improve their profit margins.  Which is why we haven't had one so far.  For nuclear war, you have to worry about non-elites and accidents.

Steve

[fireship4]

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Count me amongst the people who were surprised that this was a head on confrontation.

The video shows the fighter approaching from the rear (the drone's propeller is a pusher type).

[Tux]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

For sure I'd say hitting the propeller was accidental, but the dumping of the fuel was not.  The intent was to down the drone.  It's just that it was downed through abject stupidity rather than through smarter means.

Steve

No, of course you’re right that the fuel dump(s) were intentional.  Has that ever brought a targeted aircraft down though, as opposed to being the closest to a ‘disrespectful act’ that you can get in these scenarios?  If not then I’m still not convinced the intent was to destroy.

Not that the intent matters very much, now. 

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, panzermartin said:

Hey I'm not in the nut camp, thanks. Not yet. But I know elites on both camps are ruthless. Capitalism and war go hand in hand. If all else fails its time for a big war to reshape the markets. Deconstruct to reconstruct. I don't exclude chinese, russian elites or anyone else.   

Well so far, you:

- have applauded a Russian direct attack on a U.S. military assets in international waters.  “Perfect soft kill” was your exact term, which is just wrong on a lotta levels…not perfect, sloppy because we have freakin camera footage…not soft, hard as it was very likely by kinetic impact and not EW jamming etc.

- Argued that is was within some sort of justifiable ROEs because the US is supporting Ukraine while it fights for it’s life.  It is not justified, at least until this war expands outside Ukrainian borders - hell we are tip toeing around hitting targets inside Russia but apparently international waters and airspace are the Wild West now.

- Offered that we re-write international legal norms as they relate to international waters…reasoning and logic TBD.

- Linked the current incident to another over Turkey in 2015 (unless you believe the Russian position because they have a good track record of being truthful in these matters).  And somehow are trying to make the current situation, again, acceptable.

- Made a huge leap between WW3 and a couple banks collapsing in the US.

- And linked it all back to “elites” because we all know they run the world through a Star Chamber near the earths core…ok, I made up that last part but it really wasn’t that far off-narrative.

But I will accept you are not in the “nut-camp”, however, when you decide to join us in the “grown-up, I am over first year philosophy and political science” camp please let us know.

 

[Peregrine]

I haven't done it for a long time but before CM the best combat simulators were flight simulators and it has been a long time since I have played in one but if I wanted to fly as close as possible to something else in the air the was going much slower than me you would sort of do what the Russian pilot did. They wanted to dump fuel on it so you have to pass close and above it.

You have to see it so you would start at a lower elevation and climb towards it with your aim point being just above it by the distance you wanted to miss. Being slightly off axis also gives yourself more space to miss it.

The fastest way to move yourself in the air jumpy fast wise is to rip back in the stick which means you probably want to be well above your stall speed which may exacerbate the speed difference. You only have two hands so one hand is one the stick and the other dumping fuel at some point so its not on the throttle. 

[chrisl]

4 minutes ago, Tux said:

No, of course you’re right that the fuel dump(s) were intentional.  Has that ever brought a targeted aircraft down though, as opposed to being the closest to a ‘disrespectful act’ that you can get in these scenarios?  If not then I’m still not convinced the intent was to destroy.

Not that the intent matters very much, now. 

Probably more a case of testosterone poisoning on the pilot's side, thinking he's better than he is.

[Harmon Rabb]

Bravo Polska!

[panzermartin]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nobody in elite circles think nuclear war is going to improve their profit margins.  Which is why we haven't had one so far.  For nuclear war, you have to worry about non-elites and accidents.

Steve

I really hope you are right. You are probably are...

But we can go on a larger conventional war on multiple fronts for years before turning nuclear(if ever) . And that will ensure that all the gains we in the West have achieved through decades of social struggles, our freedoms, our standard of living, will go down the drain sacrificed for the "greater cause". That will make the elites very happy. Just look what is happening in Europe right now with major strikes, and people being slowly deprived of post war privileges...

This war is very strange, the way we are willingly sucked into it in an age we had forgotten how to hold a gun in Europe. Maybe it's all about Putin's megalomania maybe not. 

 

[chrisl]

11 minutes ago, Peregrine said:

I haven't done it for a long time but before CM the best combat simulators were flight simulators and it has been a long time since I have played in one but if I wanted to fly as close as possible to something else in the air the was going much slower than me you would sort of do what the Russian pilot did. They wanted to dump fuel on it so you have to pass close and above it.

You have to see it so you would start at a lower elevation and climb towards it with your aim point being just above it by the distance you wanted to miss. Being slightly off axis also gives yourself more space to miss it.

The fastest way to move yourself in the air jumpy fast wise is to rip back in the stick which means you probably want to be well above your stall speed which may exacerbate the speed difference. You only have two hands so one hand is one the stick and the other dumping fuel at some point so its not on the throttle. 

The thing that should really be bumming Russia out is the quality of the video.  That's high quality, sharp, no rolling shutter distortion, and enough bandwidth to get it in realtime halfway around the world.

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

The video shows the fighter approaching from the rear (the drone's propeller is a pusher type).

Duh.  I knew that   So I guess I'm surprised for forgetting that.

Steve

[Beleg85]

18 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Bravo Polska!

Thta's official part, some machines were already send (quite possibly from other countries as well) Airfix-style long before, probably as early as last spring. There are different rumours just how many.

Important thing is that UA AirForce is in the game and biting, year after invasion.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, Tux said:

No, of course you’re right that the fuel dump(s) were intentional.  Has that ever brought a targeted aircraft down though, as opposed to being the closest to a ‘disrespectful act’ that you can get in these scenarios?  If not then I’m still not convinced the intent was to destroy.

Not that the intent matters very much, now. 

To me it's like, pardon the irony, Russian roulette.  Pulling the trigger when a revolver's chamber is empty has never caused anybody to die, even when pointed to a person's head.  But knowing there's a live round somewhere in the revolver and pulling the trigger means you are accepting there is a better than zero chance of a shot being fired.

I have no idea if the fuel dumping thing has shown any chance of causing destruction of an aircraft in the past, but it sure should be considered a possibility by the side doing the dumping.

So whether the Russians deliberately intended to down the drone or deliberately intended to possibly down the drone is, as you say, not really all that important.  The Russians knew what they were doing.

Steve

[Peregrine]

6 minutes ago, chrisl said:

The thing that should really be bumming Russia out is the quality of the video.  That's high quality, sharp, no rolling shutter distortion, and enough bandwidth to get it in realtime halfway around the world.

Unless your the pilot. Then you have a great vid of yourself smashing 30 million dollars worth of someone else stuff then walking away with a shrug.*

* Barring any damage to your jet.

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, chrisl said:

The thing that should really be bumming Russia out is the quality of the video.  That's high quality, sharp, no rolling shutter distortion, and enough bandwidth to get it in realtime halfway around the world.

It is harder and harder for the Russians to spin their side of the story the way they'd like.  Not only are Western systems able to capture events like this, but they are also showing willingness to put them into the public domain and quickly too.  In the past this sort of stuff might have been kept Top Secret in fear of enemies learning something about the platform's capabilities.  Now?  Everybody knows all they need to know about drones and videos from thousands of other sources, which means there's no reason to hold it back.

Now all Russia can do is say the footage is faked.  Not a strong defense.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

I really hope you are right. You are probably are...

But we can go on a larger conventional war on multiple fronts for years before turning nuclear(if ever) . And that will ensure that all the gains we in the West have achieved through decades of social struggles, our freedoms, our standard of living, will go down the drain sacrificed for the "greater cause". That will make the elites very happy. Just look what is happening in Europe right now with major strikes, and people being slowly deprived of post war privileges...

This war is very strange, the way we are willingly sucked into it in an age we had forgotten how to hold a gun in Europe. Maybe it's all about Putin's megalomania maybe not. 

 

Nope, sorry, not going down that conspiracy theory rabbit hole with you on this one.  The elites in Russia and in the West did not want this war, that's for sure.  The elites that hold the most amount of power and influence lost a lot of money and future earnings potential from all of this.  Government elites are also unhappy because they had enough trouble to manage before this war, now they have all of that and this on top of it.  The defense industry elites are happy, of course, but they are a small percentage of the total power structure.

This is all about the psychosis that is at the heart of the Russian culture.  Putin is just a manifestation of what has always been there.  This war is absolutely no surprise to anybody that understands that.

Steve

[chrisl]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It is harder and harder for the Russians to spin their side of the story the way they'd like.  Not only are Western systems able to capture events like this, but they are also showing willingness to put them into the public domain and quickly too.  In the past this sort of stuff might have been kept Top Secret in fear of enemies learning something about the platform's capabilities.  Now?  Everybody knows all they need to know about drones and videos from thousands of other sources, which means there's no reason to hold it back.

Now all Russia can do is say the footage is faked.  Not a strong defense.

Steve

Showing that quality of video is a bit of a flex. That resolution transmitted in realtime is no joke.  "this is the capability we're willing to show you publicly from these drones.  Think about what we aren't showing."

[sburke]

Deadly explosion rips through spy agency building in Russia (yahoo.com)

Quote

 

At least one person was killed and two were injured in an explosion that caused a fire at an FSB Border Service Department building in Russia, local authorities have said.

The security service building is in the port city of Rostov-on-Don, near the Ukrainian border in the southeast of Russia.

Local residents heard an explosion and then black smoke started pouring out of the building, according to local media reports.

"Emergency services were dispatched... details are being clarified," the press office of the emergency services in Rostov-on-Don said in comments carried by the state-run TASS news agency.

It is not yet clear what caused the explosion.

There have been several incidents of reported sabotage attributed to Ukrainian partisans within Russian territory since the Kremlin deployed troops to Ukraine in February last year.

 

 

[chrisl]

15 minutes ago, Peregrine said:

Unless your the pilot. Then you have a great vid of yourself smashing 30 million dollars worth of someone else stuff then walking away with a shrug.*

* Barring any damage to your jet.

Reminds me of a time many years ago when I was stopped at a light in an old Volare I'd inherited from my grandparents.  It had already been totaled by the insurance company because my grandpa had crunched a front corner, and they told him to do what he wanted with it, but he couldn't keep it if he wanted the payout.  I looked over to the right and didn't see a car.  Then I noticed a roofline below the edge of my window, and looked more carefully - it was a Countach.  It quickly went through my teenage brain that with one little twitch I could destroy a few hundred $K worth of car and it wouldn't leave a noticeable mark on mine.  I did manage to refrain.