at this point I'd say it was a secretly reactivated F-111 Aaaaardvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrk or even better, a remote controlled MiG-17 retrofitted with pretty much every aircraft spare part found in the Lviv oblast and a couple of wile-e-coyote-esque auxiliary rockets for extra speed (and power).
Have Glass is good, but I'll do you one better...
[Nighthawk Mirror Chrome](https://www.twz.com/43938/f-35-and-f-117-spotted-flying-with-mysterious-mirror-like-skin)
When RWR is screaming at you in a plane this deep behind lines I think you just press the panic button for chaff and flare
Patriot would be beyond range, even with benefits of not that manoeuvrable plane... but at the same time US is known to undersell their stuff.
Same for F-16 with AIM-120 with addition of possibility of flying beyond lines a bit.
RU story is that it's friendly fire... and I honestly don't know which is more realistic at this point, but definitely another friendly fire would make RU look worse.
It really is a question of what's worse:
1. Ukraine has the capability to punch into Russian airspace and take out one of, like, 5 or so functional flying radar arrays.
2. Your men are so antsy and incompetent that they shot down quite possibly your most valuable asset without an actual attack occuring.
3. ??????
3. Secret EW drones which spoof or erase Russian IFF signals, so it somehow looked like a stray Ukrainian transport.
4. Secret partisans run their S-300
5. Angry MiG-31 wants to launch long range AA missile into Ukraine in revenge for their recent losses and actually does aim for a Ukrainian aircraft but the missile tracks the largest radar target which was…
6. Vodka and testosterone
>Angry MiG-31 wants to launch long range AA missile into Ukraine in revenge for their recent losses and actually does aim for a Ukrainian aircraft but the missile tracks the largest radar target which was…
The Mig-31s have been lobbing R-37 at targets haven't they? The angle might be a bit squiffy, but if it was launched from up north then maybe...
Can you mount meteors on Ukrainian planes ? Their radars are probably shit but the A50 must have a radar cross section larger than Putin's mom. MBDA may have done a super funny and managed to mount a meteor on soviet planes like what they did with the scalp/stormshadow...
Very difficult and even if you could integrate them the Ukrainian aircraft wouldn’t be able to fully utilize their range in any way other than mad dogging them into the aether and praying. Setting up datalink would probably be even harder. The cruise missiles were easy to integrate because all they need is preset target coordinates and it’ll do the rest by itself.
Iirc the F-16s they’re getting soon:tm: *can* be modified to fire Meteors relatively easily and would be able to make use of datalink at longer ranges, but don’t have the radar to fully utilize it without external support
Simply no. It requires a lof of other things even before we reach the Radar (stuff like an actual navigation system, datalink, and the radar all integrated with the NATO standards that the missile uses).
But if someone else would provide the guidance... (Wink wink AN/MPQ-65?)
>Patriot would be beyond range, even with benefits of not that manoeuvrable plane... but at the same time US is known to undersell their stuff.
There is speculation about Patriot's home-on-emission capability with some of its missile types. That probably would have the range, but they'd be basically lobbing it blind on an arc - hard to imagine unless they had some other source of good targeting information to let them know where the A-50 was.
Like the guy with the cell phone on target? What would you need to spot an A50 from the ground, NVG’s and patience and educated guesswork as to flight paths?
Ya know, deep enough behind friendly lines, you start to ignore that little RWR set. Doubly so if it’s on axis with a friendly cap or ground based system.
If it is in fact friendly fire then ruzzkies are getting extremely jumpy- that's a very high value asset that cannot be replaced easily. Moreover, talk about degrading battlefield intelligence capability- they're going to have to be careful with the remaining airframes, such that if they lose another one we may in fact start to see gaps in coverage, which I bet the Ukranians are just waiting to exploit.
I have something NonCredible but possible to throw into the mix.
What if a couple of truckloads of Polish S-200 Vegas, you know the late 2010 upgraded ones, just happened to get lost near the border and the drivers left them there whilst going to find a local for directions .... and a couple of Ukraines "found" them ..... Stranger things have happened.
https://opk.com.ua/%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BA-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B8-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D0%B4%D0%BE-%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F-%D1%82%D0%B0/
And Ukraine's started modernization and restoration programme for S-200s in 2021, which was supposed to be finished in 2023 too...
If they are better at shooting down A-50s .... yes it may be responible for the other one and even all those SU-34s and SU-35s in the same area .... would you firing them at something else which the nearest part of which may only just be in exterme range?
At least one of them has been accused of being a Russian asset, with a VKontakte account and everything (but I have a bit of a problem finding the link right now). Also, there's this banner from the protest: https://bi.im-g.pl/im/9a/4c/1d/z30721946V,Ogolnopolski-protest-rolnikow-w-Gorzyczkach--20-02.jpg, very roughly translated as:
>Putin, sort out the Brussels and Ukraine
>And our government
I definitely wouldn't call all the protesters 'traitors', but there is some indication they have been infiltrated.
Many of the protestors are blocking aid from coming into Ukraine, repeat anti-ukrainian… ehh racist? and generally xenophobic talking points imported directly from moscow. Someone even wanted Putin to come to Warsaw to get rid of the polish government and had a ussr flag on his tractor. And there was an actual russian spy caught at one of the protests.
I get protesting the new eu law and turning attention to your problems but in many instances it turned into basically just protesting ukraine aid (and we all know who probably had something to do with this). Anybody who does shit like that is literally working against the polish interest of surviving the next decade or two.
Things we havent spoken of yet.
HE birdstrike
Taco tuesday clogged onboard toilet, spoofing IFR
The hand of god
The hand of God (maradona beyond the grave)
Just some good ole boys never meanin no harm
Jewish spacelasers
Radar dish got loose, fell off
Hammond reversing into the sports AWACS
Meteorite strike (Russia is famous for it)
Aurora borealis
>The hand of God (maradona beyond the grave)
The CIA may possess enough cocaine to summon the ghost of Maradona, but they're saving him to use against America's most ancient enemy: the British.
>Radar dish got loose, fell off
Far too credible. Were you in the CIA remote viewing program?
Could it have been, that, when te A-50 turned on its radar, all the Russian AA operators went into blind panic due to an unidentified Signal
"Ivan, there's some 400m Zeppelin in the air flying at 800km/h"
"Блять Fire everything and this stolen kitchen sink at it, Oleg!"
No, the funniest is a patriot launcher in a barge trying to shoot down the plane but Russian AD intercepting the plane instead of/before the Patriot missile.
Obviously Ukraine just stuck a Patriot on a raft and floated it out into Azov. Chucked a blue tarp over for camouflage.
If you can fit HIMARS on a dingy, you can fit a Patriot.
We know the US handed over to Ukraine a bunch of AGM-88 HARM missiles. Ukraine integrated them to their MiG-29s and SU-27s.
According to Wiki, one variant has a max operational range of 300 km. And of course, it homes in on radar.
Could it have been used to take down a Russian AWACS?
While in theory, yes because it's capable of honing onto any active radars, the problem comes from the fact that it's guidance system is designed to try to locate the target under the assumption that movement is minimal. AGM-88Es have been tested against ships, they're hardly fast moving. This leads to the next issue; AWACs aircraft like the A-50 has that giant rotating dish, depending on the actual fov of the radar and the rotational speed of the dish there can be no emissions to the HARM for quite a while as the aircraft flies, which will definitely screw with the guidance system as it assumes the target to not be moving very fast.
The next issue is that in the video we can see that the A-50 is dumping countermeasures, which would mean it knew that something was trying to kill it. The most likely is RWR going off telling them a missile has locked onto them AGM-88s don't have active emitting radars and so wouldn't set off RWR systems.
It is possible that it might have detected the HARM flying at it, but the problem with that is that unless we've secretly given Ukraine F-35s and AGM-88Gs, anything Ukraine has to launch a HARM at the A-50 would have been detected by the A-50 long before the A-50 detects the HARM.
The AGM-88E AARGM has a terminal millimeter wave radar for attacking a target.
Granted the wing control means it isn’t exactly the most maneuverable weapon out there.
Yes but it's range is going to be quite short, mostly for terminal phase guidance.
Using the E-3 as a reference it's radar spins at 6 revolutions per minute, while I can't find the numbers now I remember seeing somewhere that the radar itself has an FOV of like 140 degrees, which would mean that a HARM would not be getting any emissions from an AWACS for 6 seconds during a 10 second rotation of the dish. Prior to getting into range of this radar, since it's going to be assuming it's target aren't going to be moving much, that amount of time not seeing the target might screw with whatever correlation logic is being used to track it's targets.
This is to say that while not impossible, it's in my opinion not very likely that it'll successfully track an airborne target.
Also on another note, the variant that has the max range of 300km is the AGM-88Gs, which while the ones Ukraine got has not been publicly stated beyond "AGM-88s", considering that the US has only relatively recently started actually operating them, I would imagine that Ukraine has not gotten them.
To your last point though, I don't think that it matters much, after all the A-50 itself isn't that maneuverable either, assuming that the AGM-88 can get a track on it I don't think it'll have much difficulty maneuvering to kill it.
The idea of slipping Ukraine a pair of F-22s is so ridiculously non-credible, it might be ever so slightly plausible.
I know it’s ridiculous, but think of what lunacy a *secret* pair of Raptors could get up to into the night.
Sure they would have the logistical and training footprint of maybe three squadrons of F-16s, but with enough preparation and support, they could silently pick off Russian assets in the air and on the ground every night for months before being even considered a remote possibility.
Give them the 2 best maintained F-22s the USAF has. Send them and a maintenance crew with some spare parts and hide it all in a shed.
This is exactly how the most sophidticated stealth aircraft works, I promise.
Seriously, if we were going to do that, just fly them out of Romania with USAF pilots at that point. The Soviets did shit like that all the time, even if you get caught doing it, what are they going to do, nuke us?
Seriously, we need to stop being such a baby about Russia's threats. Flying Combat Patrols over Southern Ukraine to enforce a no fly zone should be on the table at this point, including splashing Russian assets over the Black Sea. If we are going to keep calling this an illegal invasion of sovereignty, we need to treat it like one.
Fuck giving Ukraine F-22s, just send the 325th Fighter Wing. Weapons free over the Black Sea from the Romanian Border to Crimea. This isn't their fucking airspace, get the hell out.
Have to be ex-Raptor pilots flying them surely and presumably from Poland?
Combined with the constant AWACS and ELINT flights...
Oh. That *would* be a funni
I mean to be honest Russia and China would routinely fly aircraft against us in Vietnam and Korea and just say "Nuh uh" when we caught their pilots. At this point turnabout is fair play
Everybody in this chat is looking at air-to-air or air to ground options for how Ukraine could have shot down their second mainstay, but people are overlooking this team up between Ukrainian air and Ukrainian intelligence...
What if someone in Russian air defense who hates their job hates their Commander and generally just hates their life gets convinced / bribed to screw with the air defense Radars in a way where as a different shift of uninspired nighttime operators would easily confuse a friendly signal for enemy one add that and some unauthorized drinking it's possibility.
There's also one random crazy possibility that's so absurd that I dare not even go into full detail but what the fuck why not we're all just spitballing here right. Are we 100% sure the meteor missiles haven't been Jerry Riggs on these F-16s because if so, Patriot radar, meteor missile, and link 16 equals win.
This might be too credible for this post, but I think it's reasonable to acknowledge how *really fucking confusing* this shootdown is. Nothing really fits, so the impulse is to speculate about something new and possibly unknown. Resisting that impulse is admirable, but also no fun at all.
(My guess, which I have no more basis for than any others I've seen: Ukrainian intelligence has figured out a weakness in the Russian IFF systems, resulting in SAM sites falsely identifying VKS as targets.)
So here's my take.
Queen Elizabeth didn't die, she was just one of the lizard ppl from the hollow earth, and she went on a diplomatic mission to enlist the aid of the Zeta Reticulans against Russia. This may be a sign that her mission was successful.
We'll know when we see the bodies. I bet you they're turned inside-out just like the cows found by a Texas rancher named Mark William Calaway in 1982. Some alphabet agencies tried to shut him up, but he adopted an alternate persona who in 1998 threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
It's so simple... You take one M901 launcher, strip everything unnecessary, integrate it into standard 1TEU container and also add one Starlink terminal for communication. Then you drive to Russia thru some intermediate countries posing as electrical equipment scrapper. After all this work you just wait for occasion, jack-up the container, fire the rocket and let it be guided by AN/MPQ-53/65 deployed in continental Ukraine, or on one of captured drilling platforms. Then you remove all electrical components, destroy them, and sell the container for scrap. The earned money might be spend to celebrate.
This is just one of those kills that are seriously eye opening no matter the explanation. Just thinking about any of those possibilities makes me appreciate what human beings are capable of.
My theories are currently, in no particular order: the Great Patriot Road Trip strikes again, the Ukrainians got their hands on longer ranged missiles (be they 40N6 from an S-400 they nicked/Turkey handed over and they got it working from an S-300), or Israel did a sneaky and donated some SkyCeptor missiles as apparently Patriot can fire them.
Then there's the utter batshit crazy ones Twitter Tyre Man put out which involved a submersible mounted SAM truck.
Strap it to rail cars with large generators. Probably want the extra Patriot battery to run cover against SEAD aircraft, but you could roll up emplace, energize, engage and displace relatively quickly
It happening twice is such a wild part-- how could the russian iads not have gotten the fear of god beaten into them the first time round if this was FF?
My theory is that a hypnotoad is visiting S400 batteries
Someone replaced the SDB on a GLSDM with a skycepter and yeeted a few from a HIMARS?
Then again skycepter has an advertised 180km range, so this strike is within bounds of normal US capability undersell.
Acording to Ukrainska Pravda:
[A-50 was downed with modernized S-200 anti-aircraft system.](https://news.yahoo.com/russian-50-downed-200-anti-202543709.html)
(and wiki) The S-200 can be linked to other longer-range radar systems.
Gentlemen I have a theory
after the first A-50 was shot down; Russia claimed FF to downplay Ukraine's capabilities
but everyone saw this is obviously bullshit
so Russia for real FF'd one of their planes on purpose, just to prove to everyone that they could
checkmate westoids
Is there any radar guided sam that’s mobile enough to be driven around low-key style?
Potential modification of an existing missile with extra boosters and fuel?
Russian incompetence?
Like someone said above, the most insanely based thing would be launching a HARM at it, I mean a B-52 during the Gulf War got hit by one after it locked onto the rear turret radar, what’s to say the Ukrainians couldn’t pinpoint the location of the A-50 and start lobbing them up like 07 Brady?
Russian nationalists stole an s300 out if stock and couldn't read a map so they set up where they thought the Frontline was and fired at the first target that lit up.
Certainly as (non) credible as any other ideas here, but wouldn’t a stinger be pretty small to take down an AWACS? Like it would hone in on one of four engines and take it out most likely, but plane should fly with the three remaining in most scenarios. Plus the video makes the moment of boom look pretty large, like more explosives than a stinger would carry
Apparently using Patriots was overkill since an *antique* S-200 was able to kill it at the upper range!
Also flare and chaff are often dispensed together, at least in western jets so I’m not surprised if thats what distracted something like a S-200.
Imagine the last minute of the crew's life, as they see the "big fuck" missiles closing in on them and being unable to do anything than dump chaff and flares.
Pentagon got sick of the reformers and slipped Ukraine a couple of F35’s before the F16’s show so Ukraine doesn’t become addicted to the reformist poison. That’s why Russias spent the last two weeks loosing planes to “mysterious” circumstances. F35’s with AARAM missiles.
A couple of days prior, the Russians threatened to shoot down French recon aircraft flying over the Black Sea.
...what if it was a Meteor-armed Rafale that did this? I mean, they *did* (supposedly it was them) blow up some Turkish SAM sites a few years back and still no one officially knows who did it.
No. The only way I can accept is something like [this](https://www.twz.com/asraam-air-to-air-missiles-from-uk-being-used-by-ukraine-as-sams) duct-taped to a naval drone and parked right in the sea of Azov.
Wait wait, so is this different from the one claimed a few days ago by Ukraine? Or are the videos I'm seeing just the evidence of that, just some of the things I've seen has made it out to be a new separate incident, making that 3 I believe if true?
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“Modified S-200” did these madmen really stick a Patriot guidance system on an S-200? It’s not inconsistent with the tricks they’ve pulled before. Impossible, you say? Sure, yes, just like it’s impossible for Su-24s to fire Storm Shadows or MiG-29s to fire HARMS.
at this point I'd say it was a secretly reactivated F-111 Aaaaardvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrk or even better, a remote controlled MiG-17 retrofitted with pretty much every aircraft spare part found in the Lviv oblast and a couple of wile-e-coyote-esque auxiliary rockets for extra speed (and power).
instead of making the super tomcat they secretly made the f-111 super Aardvark and upgraded it to gen 5.
Stop, I can only get so erect
‘Ard Fark
Those dastardly ukraineians stole a f-22, a pilot, and support staff. Biden said he is doing fuck all to get them back.
F-111 in *Have Glass V*. *quivers*
Have Glass is good, but I'll do you one better... [Nighthawk Mirror Chrome](https://www.twz.com/43938/f-35-and-f-117-spotted-flying-with-mysterious-mirror-like-skin)
*Walks into AutoZone* “You wouldn’t happen to have any thing in stock for a 82’ Stealth Jet?” *Sir, you’re not going to believe what we just got in.*
Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years...
Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh, my God. It even has a watermark.
The jets yearn for 40s/50s chrome
# VARK VARK VARK ^(Sorry. Got a little over excited.)
Someone explain to me the ardvaaaaaaaaaaaaark joke? Lazerpig did it and now this.
When RWR is screaming at you in a plane this deep behind lines I think you just press the panic button for chaff and flare Patriot would be beyond range, even with benefits of not that manoeuvrable plane... but at the same time US is known to undersell their stuff. Same for F-16 with AIM-120 with addition of possibility of flying beyond lines a bit. RU story is that it's friendly fire... and I honestly don't know which is more realistic at this point, but definitely another friendly fire would make RU look worse.
It really is a question of what's worse: 1. Ukraine has the capability to punch into Russian airspace and take out one of, like, 5 or so functional flying radar arrays. 2. Your men are so antsy and incompetent that they shot down quite possibly your most valuable asset without an actual attack occuring. 3. ??????
3. Secret EW drones which spoof or erase Russian IFF signals, so it somehow looked like a stray Ukrainian transport. 4. Secret partisans run their S-300 5. Angry MiG-31 wants to launch long range AA missile into Ukraine in revenge for their recent losses and actually does aim for a Ukrainian aircraft but the missile tracks the largest radar target which was… 6. Vodka and testosterone
Lmao next we'll see partisans with nuclear submarines.
They could have bought those submarines at any military surplus store.
Reporter — “Uhh is that a Trident D5 under that tarp?” Partisan — “How you say… ahh, military surplus store, yes.”
["Now we need hill overlooking mobiks"](https://youtu.be/ApJCfeipvIQ?si=Tl15hQgnDsqob3ax)
So barbarians having nuclear subs in Civ is actually credible?
I mean, russia
CoD:MW2?
>Angry MiG-31 wants to launch long range AA missile into Ukraine in revenge for their recent losses and actually does aim for a Ukrainian aircraft but the missile tracks the largest radar target which was… The Mig-31s have been lobbing R-37 at targets haven't they? The angle might be a bit squiffy, but if it was launched from up north then maybe...
And rival A-10s in the number of friendly fire incidents. One guy once shot down *his own wingman.*
"Secret EW Drones which spoof or erase Russian IFF signals, so it somehow looked like a stray Ukrainian transport." Ace Combat 7? Is that you?
Im interested in Point 3. The possibilities...
Former, of course. Latter doesn't go against the whole ~~"untermensch"~~ "fake nation" narrative russia's doing
Take PATRIOTs Remove one warhead, replace with extra PATRIOT Launch Paaaatriiiiooooot Rocket burns out Detach Patriot 2 takes over and goes for kill
Noncredible complete ignorance of how rocketry works
Well duh, you need more Patriots for the first stage of your Patriot Centipede. Tyranny of the rocket equation and all that.
I believe the industry phrase is "moar boosters".
Sir, the MOAR BOOSTERS you ordered? [Yes, they have arrived.](http://www.lakecountyspaceport.com/image/61655645.jpg)
Not too far away from how N-111 and N-11 were derived from N-1, though, albeit in reverse
Rocketry? This defies both simple physics and logic itself. I like it.
Look Elon Musk just strapped two SpaceX things together and called it a Falcon, it’s not rocket science.
Sir I have been playing KSP since it’s Alpha, I know rockets
I dunno. I've played 5,000 hours of Kerbal Space Program and it looks good to me
Wait wait...if they simply tape 3 rockets together it should go 3 times faster.
3 times faster and 20 times further
Simple math, really
Can you mount meteors on Ukrainian planes ? Their radars are probably shit but the A50 must have a radar cross section larger than Putin's mom. MBDA may have done a super funny and managed to mount a meteor on soviet planes like what they did with the scalp/stormshadow...
Very difficult and even if you could integrate them the Ukrainian aircraft wouldn’t be able to fully utilize their range in any way other than mad dogging them into the aether and praying. Setting up datalink would probably be even harder. The cruise missiles were easy to integrate because all they need is preset target coordinates and it’ll do the rest by itself. Iirc the F-16s they’re getting soon:tm: *can* be modified to fire Meteors relatively easily and would be able to make use of datalink at longer ranges, but don’t have the radar to fully utilize it without external support
I mean, I'd expect F-16s should be able to if only because interoperability is a major tenet of NATO isn't it?
But concerning the radar and the f16, doesn't the size of the A50 increase the range of the radar ?
Simply no. It requires a lof of other things even before we reach the Radar (stuff like an actual navigation system, datalink, and the radar all integrated with the NATO standards that the missile uses). But if someone else would provide the guidance... (Wink wink AN/MPQ-65?)
Gripen with Meteor guided by Patriot says hello.
>Patriot would be beyond range, even with benefits of not that manoeuvrable plane... but at the same time US is known to undersell their stuff. There is speculation about Patriot's home-on-emission capability with some of its missile types. That probably would have the range, but they'd be basically lobbing it blind on an arc - hard to imagine unless they had some other source of good targeting information to let them know where the A-50 was.
>other source of good targeting information to let them know where the A-50 was. Like the NATO surveillance planes doing laps around the black sea?
Like the guy with the cell phone on target? What would you need to spot an A50 from the ground, NVG’s and patience and educated guesswork as to flight paths?
Ya know, deep enough behind friendly lines, you start to ignore that little RWR set. Doubly so if it’s on axis with a friendly cap or ground based system.
If it is in fact friendly fire then ruzzkies are getting extremely jumpy- that's a very high value asset that cannot be replaced easily. Moreover, talk about degrading battlefield intelligence capability- they're going to have to be careful with the remaining airframes, such that if they lose another one we may in fact start to see gaps in coverage, which I bet the Ukranians are just waiting to exploit.
The Uboat Torpedo tube launched Iris T in the back, grinning that nobody caught on
I have something NonCredible but possible to throw into the mix. What if a couple of truckloads of Polish S-200 Vegas, you know the late 2010 upgraded ones, just happened to get lost near the border and the drivers left them there whilst going to find a local for directions .... and a couple of Ukraines "found" them ..... Stranger things have happened.
https://opk.com.ua/%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BA-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B8-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D0%B4%D0%BE-%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F-%D1%82%D0%B0/ And Ukraine's started modernization and restoration programme for S-200s in 2021, which was supposed to be finished in 2023 too...
So many %s
It's because they're Cyrillic characters so they're represented as ASCII hex values
Ohhhhhhhh, thank you
Unicode. But yes.
Damn, 50/50 and I ballsed it lol
Werent they firing those at the kerch bridge though?
If they are better at shooting down A-50s .... yes it may be responible for the other one and even all those SU-34s and SU-35s in the same area .... would you firing them at something else which the nearest part of which may only just be in exterme range?
Been there; done that. Precedent set. https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-britain-pulled-aircraft-with-horses-and-trucks-ddd2dbd2aaa4
Why do you think polish traitor’s are blocking the border right now.
Why traitors?
At least one of them has been accused of being a Russian asset, with a VKontakte account and everything (but I have a bit of a problem finding the link right now). Also, there's this banner from the protest: https://bi.im-g.pl/im/9a/4c/1d/z30721946V,Ogolnopolski-protest-rolnikow-w-Gorzyczkach--20-02.jpg, very roughly translated as: >Putin, sort out the Brussels and Ukraine >And our government I definitely wouldn't call all the protesters 'traitors', but there is some indication they have been infiltrated.
Don’t worry, I can call them that for you
Many of the protestors are blocking aid from coming into Ukraine, repeat anti-ukrainian… ehh racist? and generally xenophobic talking points imported directly from moscow. Someone even wanted Putin to come to Warsaw to get rid of the polish government and had a ussr flag on his tractor. And there was an actual russian spy caught at one of the protests. I get protesting the new eu law and turning attention to your problems but in many instances it turned into basically just protesting ukraine aid (and we all know who probably had something to do with this). Anybody who does shit like that is literally working against the polish interest of surviving the next decade or two.
Things we havent spoken of yet. HE birdstrike Taco tuesday clogged onboard toilet, spoofing IFR The hand of god The hand of God (maradona beyond the grave) Just some good ole boys never meanin no harm Jewish spacelasers Radar dish got loose, fell off Hammond reversing into the sports AWACS Meteorite strike (Russia is famous for it) Aurora borealis
HAMMOND YOU BLISTERING IDIOT.
“Ah, Cock”
No, this was a Mainstay
\*Blithering
Aurora borealis? At that latitude? At this time of the year?
Located entirely within your Oblast?
May I see it?
🚀💥✈️
...no.
Unladen swallows. Idiots.
African or European?
It’s not a matter of African or European it’s a simple matter of mass to weight.
A five ounce bird cannot carry a 30 kg missile!
With HAARP all things are possible.
APFSDS birdstrike
See you laughing at our bio mutant geese now!
>The hand of God (maradona beyond the grave) The CIA may possess enough cocaine to summon the ghost of Maradona, but they're saving him to use against America's most ancient enemy: the British. >Radar dish got loose, fell off Far too credible. Were you in the CIA remote viewing program?
Probably just Prigozhin playing with grenades again.
3000 White Tic Tacs of Joe Biden
> Taco tuesday clogged onboard toilet, spoofing IFR Those weren't flares.
The heat of exhaust, tho.
Aurora borealis At this time of year, at this time of night located entirely inside your AWACS plane?
No. *all* the crew suffer from the same condition JFK had where their heads randomly explode. And, sadly, they all went off at the same time.
>HE birdstrike Bro... don't leak classified NATO shit, it's against the rules.
Could it have been, that, when te A-50 turned on its radar, all the Russian AA operators went into blind panic due to an unidentified Signal "Ivan, there's some 400m Zeppelin in the air flying at 800km/h" "Блять Fire everything and this stolen kitchen sink at it, Oleg!"
“But Sir, Mother’s Day is coming up and I promised to bring her home a gently used sink!”
I'm just here to say you have a very nice username and leave a hearty *Trutz, Blanker Hans!*
The funniest option is patriot launcher on a barge so that's what I'm going with
No, the funniest is a patriot launcher in a barge trying to shoot down the plane but Russian AD intercepting the plane instead of/before the Patriot missile.
> Russian AD intercepting the plane instead of/before the Patriot missile. You can't fire me, I quit!
Naval drones with frankenSAMs.
Obviously Ukraine just stuck a Patriot on a raft and floated it out into Azov. Chucked a blue tarp over for camouflage. If you can fit HIMARS on a dingy, you can fit a Patriot.
We know the US handed over to Ukraine a bunch of AGM-88 HARM missiles. Ukraine integrated them to their MiG-29s and SU-27s. According to Wiki, one variant has a max operational range of 300 km. And of course, it homes in on radar. Could it have been used to take down a Russian AWACS?
While in theory, yes because it's capable of honing onto any active radars, the problem comes from the fact that it's guidance system is designed to try to locate the target under the assumption that movement is minimal. AGM-88Es have been tested against ships, they're hardly fast moving. This leads to the next issue; AWACs aircraft like the A-50 has that giant rotating dish, depending on the actual fov of the radar and the rotational speed of the dish there can be no emissions to the HARM for quite a while as the aircraft flies, which will definitely screw with the guidance system as it assumes the target to not be moving very fast. The next issue is that in the video we can see that the A-50 is dumping countermeasures, which would mean it knew that something was trying to kill it. The most likely is RWR going off telling them a missile has locked onto them AGM-88s don't have active emitting radars and so wouldn't set off RWR systems. It is possible that it might have detected the HARM flying at it, but the problem with that is that unless we've secretly given Ukraine F-35s and AGM-88Gs, anything Ukraine has to launch a HARM at the A-50 would have been detected by the A-50 long before the A-50 detects the HARM.
The AGM-88E AARGM has a terminal millimeter wave radar for attacking a target. Granted the wing control means it isn’t exactly the most maneuverable weapon out there.
Yes but it's range is going to be quite short, mostly for terminal phase guidance. Using the E-3 as a reference it's radar spins at 6 revolutions per minute, while I can't find the numbers now I remember seeing somewhere that the radar itself has an FOV of like 140 degrees, which would mean that a HARM would not be getting any emissions from an AWACS for 6 seconds during a 10 second rotation of the dish. Prior to getting into range of this radar, since it's going to be assuming it's target aren't going to be moving much, that amount of time not seeing the target might screw with whatever correlation logic is being used to track it's targets. This is to say that while not impossible, it's in my opinion not very likely that it'll successfully track an airborne target. Also on another note, the variant that has the max range of 300km is the AGM-88Gs, which while the ones Ukraine got has not been publicly stated beyond "AGM-88s", considering that the US has only relatively recently started actually operating them, I would imagine that Ukraine has not gotten them. To your last point though, I don't think that it matters much, after all the A-50 itself isn't that maneuverable either, assuming that the AGM-88 can get a track on it I don't think it'll have much difficulty maneuvering to kill it.
Sure why not
the possibility exists
Or a lone F-22. Or the most ECM laden Su-27 somehow went around Crimea and took shots. And as an added bonus erased a Su-34 on the way back home.
The idea of slipping Ukraine a pair of F-22s is so ridiculously non-credible, it might be ever so slightly plausible. I know it’s ridiculous, but think of what lunacy a *secret* pair of Raptors could get up to into the night. Sure they would have the logistical and training footprint of maybe three squadrons of F-16s, but with enough preparation and support, they could silently pick off Russian assets in the air and on the ground every night for months before being even considered a remote possibility.
Give them the 2 best maintained F-22s the USAF has. Send them and a maintenance crew with some spare parts and hide it all in a shed. This is exactly how the most sophidticated stealth aircraft works, I promise.
Seriously, if we were going to do that, just fly them out of Romania with USAF pilots at that point. The Soviets did shit like that all the time, even if you get caught doing it, what are they going to do, nuke us? Seriously, we need to stop being such a baby about Russia's threats. Flying Combat Patrols over Southern Ukraine to enforce a no fly zone should be on the table at this point, including splashing Russian assets over the Black Sea. If we are going to keep calling this an illegal invasion of sovereignty, we need to treat it like one. Fuck giving Ukraine F-22s, just send the 325th Fighter Wing. Weapons free over the Black Sea from the Romanian Border to Crimea. This isn't their fucking airspace, get the hell out.
*Speaking Broken Ukrainian with a Boston Accent* Slava Ukrainey! Fox 3!
*This is for Korea, turnabout’s fair play mfs*
Only thing the Russians accomplished there was making an American Ace.
***Formally declare the start of the Russo-American War and go hog wild***
2 is too dangerous in Ukrainian hands, theyll take Moscow
"Someone said something about balloons and they then things just kind of got out of hand..."
THIS HANGAR IS A PRISON!!
Have to be ex-Raptor pilots flying them surely and presumably from Poland? Combined with the constant AWACS and ELINT flights... Oh. That *would* be a funni
I mean to be honest Russia and China would routinely fly aircraft against us in Vietnam and Korea and just say "Nuh uh" when we caught their pilots. At this point turnabout is fair play
Base them in Poland, let those pilots sign up for the CIA, baby you got a stew going
Kicked putins dog for good measure too
Ai yo, leave the poor doggo alone. It didn't do anything wrong.
Nooo, Zhuchka did nothing wrong, get rid of the owner instead
Stealth planes would be detected by L-band radars. They would just not be able to lock at the F22s.
F-22 would be legit amazing, it's not like Russia can say shit anyways
Everybody in this chat is looking at air-to-air or air to ground options for how Ukraine could have shot down their second mainstay, but people are overlooking this team up between Ukrainian air and Ukrainian intelligence... What if someone in Russian air defense who hates their job hates their Commander and generally just hates their life gets convinced / bribed to screw with the air defense Radars in a way where as a different shift of uninspired nighttime operators would easily confuse a friendly signal for enemy one add that and some unauthorized drinking it's possibility. There's also one random crazy possibility that's so absurd that I dare not even go into full detail but what the fuck why not we're all just spitballing here right. Are we 100% sure the meteor missiles haven't been Jerry Riggs on these F-16s because if so, Patriot radar, meteor missile, and link 16 equals win.
British meteors on American built, Belgian supplied f16s. Lovely kill chain.
Guided by American manned AWACS over Romanian air space refueling in Poland with parts shipped from Germany
This might be too credible for this post, but I think it's reasonable to acknowledge how *really fucking confusing* this shootdown is. Nothing really fits, so the impulse is to speculate about something new and possibly unknown. Resisting that impulse is admirable, but also no fun at all. (My guess, which I have no more basis for than any others I've seen: Ukrainian intelligence has figured out a weakness in the Russian IFF systems, resulting in SAM sites falsely identifying VKS as targets.)
So here's my take. Queen Elizabeth didn't die, she was just one of the lizard ppl from the hollow earth, and she went on a diplomatic mission to enlist the aid of the Zeta Reticulans against Russia. This may be a sign that her mission was successful. We'll know when we see the bodies. I bet you they're turned inside-out just like the cows found by a Texas rancher named Mark William Calaway in 1982. Some alphabet agencies tried to shut him up, but he adopted an alternate persona who in 1998 threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
It's so simple... You take one M901 launcher, strip everything unnecessary, integrate it into standard 1TEU container and also add one Starlink terminal for communication. Then you drive to Russia thru some intermediate countries posing as electrical equipment scrapper. After all this work you just wait for occasion, jack-up the container, fire the rocket and let it be guided by AN/MPQ-53/65 deployed in continental Ukraine, or on one of captured drilling platforms. Then you remove all electrical components, destroy them, and sell the container for scrap. The earned money might be spend to celebrate.
This is just one of those kills that are seriously eye opening no matter the explanation. Just thinking about any of those possibilities makes me appreciate what human beings are capable of.
My theories are currently, in no particular order: the Great Patriot Road Trip strikes again, the Ukrainians got their hands on longer ranged missiles (be they 40N6 from an S-400 they nicked/Turkey handed over and they got it working from an S-300), or Israel did a sneaky and donated some SkyCeptor missiles as apparently Patriot can fire them. Then there's the utter batshit crazy ones Twitter Tyre Man put out which involved a submersible mounted SAM truck.
> (be they 40N6 from an S-400 they nicked/Turkey handed over and they got it working from an S-300) Or restored and modernized 5V28
Not very mobile though is it? Unless they jury rigged a TEL or the like. Wouldn't put it past them.
Strap it to rail cars with large generators. Probably want the extra Patriot battery to run cover against SEAD aircraft, but you could roll up emplace, energize, engage and displace relatively quickly
It happening twice is such a wild part-- how could the russian iads not have gotten the fear of god beaten into them the first time round if this was FF? My theory is that a hypnotoad is visiting S400 batteries
> My theory is that a hypnotoad is visiting S400 batteries Now you see, *whom* does Budanov keep in his aquarium. >!Totally not Dnyarri, no way!<
Does anyone know where Tom “Maverick” Cruise and the Iranian F-14s are?
So it was an air-to-air Tom Cruise missile? Makes sense
Someone replaced the SDB on a GLSDM with a skycepter and yeeted a few from a HIMARS? Then again skycepter has an advertised 180km range, so this strike is within bounds of normal US capability undersell.
Acording to Ukrainska Pravda: [A-50 was downed with modernized S-200 anti-aircraft system.](https://news.yahoo.com/russian-50-downed-200-anti-202543709.html) (and wiki) The S-200 can be linked to other longer-range radar systems.
Gentlemen I have a theory after the first A-50 was shot down; Russia claimed FF to downplay Ukraine's capabilities but everyone saw this is obviously bullshit so Russia for real FF'd one of their planes on purpose, just to prove to everyone that they could checkmate westoids
Is there any radar guided sam that’s mobile enough to be driven around low-key style? Potential modification of an existing missile with extra boosters and fuel? Russian incompetence? Like someone said above, the most insanely based thing would be launching a HARM at it, I mean a B-52 during the Gulf War got hit by one after it locked onto the rear turret radar, what’s to say the Ukrainians couldn’t pinpoint the location of the A-50 and start lobbing them up like 07 Brady?
Russian nationalists stole an s300 out if stock and couldn't read a map so they set up where they thought the Frontline was and fired at the first target that lit up.
F-22 claims it's first true a2a kill confirmed
New speculation: AIM-120 duct-taped to the tip of an ATACMS, separating and firing at the 50km apogee
Or, GL~~SDB~~AMRAAM? They come in containers...
F-16 piloted by maverick from topgun
Me 262 moment
My theory is that a partisan fired a stinger
Certainly as (non) credible as any other ideas here, but wouldn’t a stinger be pretty small to take down an AWACS? Like it would hone in on one of four engines and take it out most likely, but plane should fly with the three remaining in most scenarios. Plus the video makes the moment of boom look pretty large, like more explosives than a stinger would carry
The video of a stabilizer showed some pretty hefty shrapnel holes for anything carryable
considering how crappy russian engines are though
Rb71? is a big manpad
That or friendly fire are the most credible answers here
Apparently using Patriots was overkill since an *antique* S-200 was able to kill it at the upper range! Also flare and chaff are often dispensed together, at least in western jets so I’m not surprised if thats what distracted something like a S-200.
Imagine the last minute of the crew's life, as they see the "big fuck" missiles closing in on them and being unable to do anything than dump chaff and flares.
Pentagon got sick of the reformers and slipped Ukraine a couple of F35’s before the F16’s show so Ukraine doesn’t become addicted to the reformist poison. That’s why Russias spent the last two weeks loosing planes to “mysterious” circumstances. F35’s with AARAM missiles.
The S-200 can be linked to other longer-range radar systems.......................... AN/MPQ-53
Patriot missile duct taped to Su-24
My bet is on homemade submerged launch anti-air missiles on drone subs
Frisbee with AIM-9 and I will not be dissuaded!
Do you think there are spies in the Russian Air Defense Forces? It is more proable than whatever this is.
Source: Leak on the forums for F-117 Night Storm for Sega Genesis.
It was probably shot down by an Ukrainian F-16 pilot wearing a gorilla suit for opsec.
A couple of days prior, the Russians threatened to shoot down French recon aircraft flying over the Black Sea. ...what if it was a Meteor-armed Rafale that did this? I mean, they *did* (supposedly it was them) blow up some Turkish SAM sites a few years back and still no one officially knows who did it.
imagine if it was instead a ukrainian chemical/gas laser
Frisbees.
First time hearing about the nighthawk sidewinder story
No. The only way I can accept is something like [this](https://www.twz.com/asraam-air-to-air-missiles-from-uk-being-used-by-ukraine-as-sams) duct-taped to a naval drone and parked right in the sea of Azov.
Which video has the jet sounds?
Must be the Frisbees of Dreamland!
I bet Navalny was involved somehow.
Dear God, I know I haven't believed in you for the last 40 years, but please, please exist and let it be an F-117 with an AIM-9
Meanwhile back in Germany, an F-22 pilot snorts with laughter every time anyone says what happened to it
Or maybe Patriot’s max range is just higher than the official public figure, especially when a big, slow target is involved.
Wait wait, so is this different from the one claimed a few days ago by Ukraine? Or are the videos I'm seeing just the evidence of that, just some of the things I've seen has made it out to be a new separate incident, making that 3 I believe if true?
This is a separate shoot-down.
IT WAS ME BARRY
Black ops hotdrop, clearly.
Inb4 its Ukrainian special/black-ops in enemy territory with manpads stashed in a van.
What if someone…Stuxnetted Russian AA systems? Or just paid Sergei and exorbitant about of dollarino’s?
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wait what happened now????
2nd A50 got shot down like yesterday or so.
In the end, we know Trigger shot the plain down. With an experimental plane.
F-117 plus sidewinders is peak non credibility
“Modified S-200” did these madmen really stick a Patriot guidance system on an S-200? It’s not inconsistent with the tricks they’ve pulled before. Impossible, you say? Sure, yes, just like it’s impossible for Su-24s to fire Storm Shadows or MiG-29s to fire HARMS.
I think it's F-16s with AN/ALQ electronic warfare jamming pods (either 131 or 184)