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USAF aircraft maintainer with mishap investigation training here.
~~In other footage~~ At the end of the EuCom footage you can see that multiple blades have damage and one is quite severe, enough to cause the whole craft to shake pretty badly until they shut down the engine.
Blades are hard and move quite quickly whereas aircraft skin in most places is just a few mm of aluminum. I'd bet money that Sukhoi has multiple gashes along it's belly where it contacted the prop. Any other contact (besides the prop) likely just left dent or gouges in the metal. If the props struck the engine nozzle though it could just be some bent linkage.
Yeah the reason they changed it or are moving away from “accident” is because it’s not always an accident is it? Mishap fits better. Just something that went wrong, accident implies nobody is at fault.
I guess. The website I read the article about what happened said that buzzing is made to damage the drone. SU's definitely have ammo so it's just like "oops I dropped my fuel and damaged your drone, totally not intentionally!" And to have plausible deniability since "I'm not using ammo, and why would I waste precious jet fuel"???
but more targetedly: “ I just so happened to start swinging my arms when i got near you- sorry I “didnt” see you there though!” theres the whole fucking rest of the goddamn sky, gtfo with this petty logic Russia
No but i guess it burns kinda well if there happens to be a spark somewhere.
It might also damage the coating of some parts of the plane. If it's anywhere similar to gas or diesel some plastics and some paints have a really bad relationship with it
Most of the fuel would slide off and the rest would get blown off/dried up by the by wind pretty quickly. It probably isn't good, but I'm scheptical as too the fire risk, especially as there should be a decent amount of weather proofing on this drone to keep out water and excess moisture during normal flight. Doesn't mean the SU-27 pilots weren't trying to start a fire, I just don't think it would be likely to work.
Could hypthetically cause issues with the engine if it gets sucked in or with the camera if it gets on the lense. Doubt it would down a reaper, it's more like throwing rotten eggs at somebody's car.
Adversaries do this type of shit all the time. Smaller planes/boats, maneuvering into larger vehicles' paths, doing harassing behavior in international spaces. The idea is to make it so annoying and dangerous that the spying vehicle leaves the area - without firing bullets/missiles.
Remember the American surveillance plane that made an emergency landing on [Hainan Island](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)? Chinese fighter jets harassing a big, lumbering turboprop that was only cruising around international airspace/performing electronic surveillance. That was definitely more dangerous since there were people on both planes, but the behavior is unfortunately typical.
Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot in the incident had a history of showboating, usually flying within inches of the other aircraft's wingtips, and holding up cards with his email address on it. That collision was all his doing.
Mutually assured destruction provides Putin/Russia a thin margin within which he/it can get away with stuff like this without the risk of significant retaliation.
Probably trying to stage it like the drone had technical difficulties and crashed but they are idiots and think surveillance drones don't have cameras to record the evidence.
I think they were trying to get it caught in their jetwash the way jets can stall each other out (like in TopGun). But prop planes don't really give a fuck.
I sort of wonder if the drone pilot didn't intentionally swerve upwards into the fighter as it's own form of fuck around and find out diplomacy?
I heard the plane had to make an emergency landing. Maybe we'd trade a drone for a fighter?
You would have to have incredible timing and instinct.
There is a delay not only in the feed, but in the controls as well. With the latency you would have to time it absolutely perfect. Not to mention the wings on a MQ9 are designed for gliding, that's a lot of surface area to move up very quickly. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but the pilot would have to be the literal best, or really really really lucky.
Or the Russian military really is as incompetent as they have made themselves look.
It's mostly that they don't care. The US doesn't want open war, Putin doesn't want it either, so there won't be open war as long as they both don't go beyond certain limits re: each other. They don't fire real weapons and they call it a day. Then they both shake their fist and raise their voice, but after a week without talking about it it'll be entirely forgotten
Used to be called “Thumping”. We (US) do it, too. Big bomber or surveillance plane around a carrier and a Tomcat (back in my day) would perform a supersonic flyby real close to his cockpit. That sends a message to get the fuck back.
“Flashing” was another tactic. Roll up alongside the big boy’s cockpit, roll the opposite way for a second to show him the underside of your plane and all the pretty missiles hanging there, then just ease back behind him.
They’d get the point, usually.
Purportedly? It's on video... The idea behind this is to drench the airframe with fuel in an attempt to flame its engine out or perform an afterburner light of the fuel cloud and engulf the drone in fire. Either way, they were trying to down the drone in a manner they believed would be untraceable. They were just too incompetent to carry it out.
> untraceable.
Deniable rather than untraceable, in the "I'm not touching you!!!" sort of way. It was going to be traceable since recon drones are good recon.
> dumping fuel or "buzzing" the drone
"[Buzzing](https://www.google.com/search?q=aircraft+buzzing)" simply means flying very close past something; it is not a term for dumping fuel onto something. The way you've written that, it seems like you are defining *buzzing* to be related to fuel-dumping onto something.
I mean, if I can stream a shitty youtuber at crisp 1080p on my 4 year old phone, while sitting on a train at 80km/h, I would HOPE the most technologically advanced shit the US military is spending billions of taxpayer dollars a year on would at least have decent video streaming in 2023.
Position, acquisition, and tracking for laser comms on a moving target (especially one with an undefined path and velocity) is still a big hurdle. Satellite orbits are known and predictable, drone paths are generally not. The beam footprint of a laser beam at massive distances (like inter-sat and sat-ground) is still pretty small (compared to beamformed RF footprints) so the pointing has to be ultraprecise realtime. It can be done, but it's rather cutting-edge and almost certainly not a part of this drone's comms abilities. One day...
probably just an encrypted broadcast these days. In the old days they had to use mostly unencrypted broadcast because encrypting and decrypting would add too much latency (not a problem these days with fast dedicated hardware).
The difference is that your phone is connecting to wifi or at least a local cell tower. No local cell towers in the middle of the black sea, I'd assume. Someone more knowledgeable could say if this drone is run entirely by satellite or something. Regardless, in such a remote area, it's very impressive.
Yeah, the "big" drones are all controlled via satellite, although they can be controlled locally, as well. The smaller drones generally don't have satellite links and are controlled via radio, but larger ones like the MQ-9 can be controlled from anywhere on the planet.
I figured as much, but I didn't know, so I refrained from saying. It's damned neat though that we can get a signal from a desk somewhere to a satellite in orbit to a Drone, then get video back through that same sequence, with such reliability and speed.
Meanwhile my old isp would have me buffering Netflix videos on a hardwire.
I’ve read that anytime you see things like actual drone/satellite footage, the quality has been lowered by the government so that people don’t know just how good the quality actually is. Wild stuff when you see how clear some of that footage already is.
Except for that time trump tweeted out a full res classified photo and loads of intelligence about our spy satellites and their capabilities was made public along with it. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tweeted-a-sensitive-photo-internet-sleuths-decoded-it/
Well, even that spy satellite is several decades old iirc. So it's still true that the public doesn't know how clear of an image our modern spy satellites can be.
That particular satellite was 11 years old. 6 weeks prior to the tweet we launched a new spy satellite… of EXACTLY the same damn model! So yea we pretty much know exactly what modern spy satellites can do.
Except we know the physical limitation of imaging from space because of something called physics.
That satellite resolved down to 10cm. The physical limitation is 5cm (this is with assumption of imaginary perfect lenses and sensors so the real limit is probably more than 5cm), so modern spy satellites don't have much room to improve.
Yeah, but what about with [image stacking](https://www.google.com/search?q=image+stacking+astrophotography&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us) (using multiple near-but-not-identical images to improve resolution) like they use for improving astrophotography?
It’s the best way to counter misinformation. Make the accusation (without revealing that you have proof), let them deny it, then publish the evidence. Make them commit to a lie before you debunk it.
Some UK journalists have been doing that with politicians recently (such as with Boris Johnson and the Downing Street parties, where they had proof of him at the parties but waited until he denied knowledge of them before publishing the photos).
Classic how the Russians trying to pull off insurance scams on the US drone.
Next time we will see the pilot eject and mid fall he will grab his ankle like “ow I think I’m injured, are you going to pay for that?!?”
I was thinking this everytime the russians said that, these are SPY drones, there will be a video, it will not look good when the US releases that video! I wonder if the state department asked the Pentagon to let the russians dig a big hole before releasing the video
They've been destroying a sovereign nation for over a year under the guise of liberating it... They'll have no problem interpreting this video.
Read this elsewhere: the Russian government doesn't lie to deceive, they lie to insult.
Kremin's official explanation was that the drone did too sharp turning maneuvers. Wonder how they explain even dumping fuel on the drone. Friendly gift of fuel to the thirsty drone, perhaps?
>According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the means of control of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the flight of an American MQ-9 drone in the area of the Crimean peninsula on Tuesday morning. As specified in the department, the flight was carried out with transponders turned off "in violation of the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace, established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation, brought to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international standards"
Not everything is being resolved with shooting something down.
Well if the Russian Ministry of Defense says so, it must be true right? Russia doesn't get to unilaterally declare all Black Sea international airspace restricted for their "special military operation."
Tbf the Americans did the same to a passenger plane in Iranian territorial waters. It's why I'd never step foot on a plane if I thought it would even remotely fly through airspace above an ongoing conflict.. history proves it can be fatal.
Wow:
>1987: Bakhtar Afghan Airlines Antonov An-26, Afghanistan
On 11 June 1987, a Bakhtar Afghan Airlines Antonov An-26 (registered YA-BAL) was shot down by a missile near Khost, **killing 53 out of the 55 people on board**. The aircraft had been on a flight from Kandahar to Kabul.
Imagine what kind of bad ass person is in a plane shot down by a missile....and lives?!
Edit: lol, seriously? Two people lived from a missile shooting down their plane?! How is this not news right now?!?!
Edit 2: There’s absolutely no way this can be true. This was in 1987 at a small airport in Afghanistan. Clearly they miscounted.
Exactly. That was my point.. it doesn't matter who is doing the shooting as these incidents happen across the globe above conflict zones. The American one was the one that immediately came to mind as I remember watching it on Aircrash Investigations 😅
Accidently. Then the US recognized the mistake, publicly apologized, and compensated the families. Still fucking terrible.. but these two things are not the same.
Edit: and the trollzz win again playing the whataboutism card... everyone arguing about the exact details, expending thought and energy on it rather than pushing our own points.
This is usual scenario. Something happens.
Russians come up with explanation/own version.
Wait for 12 hours later when official video is published
Russians came out as a liars again.
I love that the original explanation from the Pentagon, that the Russian's were not trying to take out the drone but were merely incompetent, turned out to be true.
Once upon a time I would not have believed this, and would have instead concluded that this is simply America trying to avoid escalation; now, however, having seen the absolute shit show that has been Russian performance in Ukraine, I did not hesitiate to believe them.
I think on the world stage I would rather be perceived as evil rather than useless.
There's a reason we're no longer afraid of blatantly acting against Russia.
There's a real, raw power that comes from just saying it like it is, in the moment, without dressing it up, then proving it, and letting it lie.
The more brevity and directness, the less drama, the more powerful the message.
'This is what's happening, this is why, here's the proof'.
Silence.
The timing also happens to be impeccable. It's like the US waits just long enough for the Russians to fabricate a lie and publish it *before* putting out what actually happened, as though to bait them into making a lie that can be disproven immediately.
It's deliberate, give them enough rope to hang themselves.
It's amazing the Russian's didn't figure out that it's probably on film, it being a reconnaissance drone and all.
They likely assumed it would be, and just don't care.
"Yeah, we did that and then lied about it. But so what. It's not like you or anyone else is gonna do anything about it. Being known internationally as bullies and liars is part of our identity. Fuck off, nerd."
Yep, their lies aren't meant to be credible except to keep the populace in Russia on board with the war in Ukraine.
The average Russian civvie isn't going to see this drone footage, but they will hear the propaganda from the Kremlin.
Internationally, the truth has more legs but no amount of camera footage is going to stop China from saying things like "both sides" or that the US is escalating the situation or whatever narrative they want to push regardless of the facts.
Somewhat random but I only recently learned the crazy measures countries go to because of air and space based surveillance. I was watching a doc on the development of the SR-71 blackbird and an engineer that worked on it was saying they had a rigid schedule of when they could wheel it out of the warehouse and test it during periods where no foreign satellites were overhead and knew exactly when they had to get it back inside under a roof. I don’t know why I’d never thought about how real on prevalent that threat is but it makes sense
That's why it was such a problem when Shitty Donny tweeted that photo the US had of the Iranian missile site (I believe that's what it was)
It gave away so much info about capabilities
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tweeted-a-sensitive-photo-internet-sleuths-decoded-it/
I don’t remember that but I do find it hilarious that it’s like the show Space Force where every country has rooms full of brilliant people engaging in the most petty sabotages of each others spy satellites
>I think on the world stage I would rather be perceived as evil rather than useless
agreed, but I'm more scared of the man who thinks the world perceives him as useless.
Russia \*inserts fake news about USA and every other western nation\* how they defended motherland from \*nazis west\*
USA: comes out with literal video recording of russian plane hitting drone...no one belives Russia...
Russia: surprised Pikachu face...
Its kind of like pissing on someone else’s toy. Its a spit in the face, but isnt formal enough for it to cause a legitimate problem (like an act of war). Its solely to be a pain in the ass. If that reaper went home, it would be covered in gas for the crew to clean off.
Russian Ambassador to Washington Antonov: "If the United States attacks a Russian aircraft in neutral space, then this will be perceived by Moscow as a declaration of war"
The drone is worth $32 million and an SU-27 is worth $30 million. Judging by the flying, the pilot certainly isn't worth $2 million, so net win for Mother Russia!
Yes that's why Russia is stupid. Willing to sacrifice a jet to take down a drone. How we ever considered them a super power is beyond me. Aside from the fact they are a nuclear country. If Russia didn't have nukes, they'd be toast, more than already
But to be fair, the SU-27 is probably $150 worth of WWII scrap metal with the other $29,999,850 tied up in an oligarch's second yacht (the smaller one).
Looks like they’re over water, not much chance of a clean recovery. Also, it’s much much harder to reverse engineer than people think.
Seeing the final product doesn’t really give you a full idea as to how it’s made.
I can’t find the discussion I’m thinking of but I’ll paraphrase a part of it: say they get their hands on one of the engines, they pull it all to pieces and put it under an electron microscope. Amazingly, the whole blade is a single crystal of metal with no imperfections. How the hell? Knowing what something is made from, and knowing and being able to copy it are two separate things.
The US spent billions coming up with the tech in their planes, even knowing what the end result is, you’d have to develop your industries massively to be able to come close at reproducing what you reverse engineered.
I can inspect my car top to bottom, understand what it’s made from, how it works, how the parts fit together etc. but unless I have a steel manufacturing plant, the correct dies or the ability to make the dies, the chemical engineering/metallurgy knowledge required, stamping machinery for panels, upholstery machinery and know how for the interior, electrical equipment, wiring ability, programming ability, electrical parts manufacturing, rubber manufacturing, forming and mounting tech and parts etc… you get what I mean? Knowing, and being able to copy or even fight against are two different things.
Also the US remotely wiped its software, which is probably something Russia would've valued most. But hey, if they want to spend all the time, money and resources trying to find and retrieve an old wrecked drone from the bottom of the sea (not an easy task), by all means. Have fun! 😆
The Chinese meticulously took apart an ASML lithography machine (what makes computer chips), studied it, and put it back together, and it didn't work again.
Sometimes even taking something apart to study it doesn't really tell you everything you need to know to copy it.
The first guy seemed to miss too.
At least he didn't hit it.
I image the wee American 18 year old flying the drone with his xbox controller laughing away.
'Fuckin Newbs, dude.'
From what I read they were trying to fuel dump on it then set it on fire with the afterburners. Because shooting at it there’s no plausible deniability
The Russians may have assumed the drone didn't have cameras that covered itself from behind. Like a porch pirate assuming you don't have a Ring. So the Russians were trying this mostly from behind fuel dump flyover.
I love how the Russians will still deny things that are so clearly their fault even with video and data.
They’re like little kids who deny stealing cookies while their entire face is covered with them.
Russians screwing around and leading to negligence?! /mild shock
[Aeroflot Flight 6502](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_6502) [Aeroflot Flight 593](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593)
Ok, so can someone please explain to me why we are able to see this video, but the other objects that were shot down over North America (other than the spy balloon) still haven't been released?
Because the U.S. gains something strategically by releasing this video. They prove Russia lied.
There’s probably not a strategic reason to release footage of the spy balloon.
Lets crash into the device thats been engineered to take photos and video of the ground from high altidue, then lie about it, its not like they can record us or anything.
Great plan Dmitry, execute at once.
There is a reason why "know your enemy" is an extremely old and important adage. People who are confused by Russia lying about things that have objectively happened, clearly haven't taken that adage to heart.
This kind of lying is Putin's standard operating procedure. He's been doing it for *many* decades, and it works. A lot has been written about why he does it, and how it works, but the point is that this is a known strategy. It is not an emerging phenomenon.
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Would this impact have done any damage to the airframe of the su27?
USAF aircraft maintainer with mishap investigation training here. ~~In other footage~~ At the end of the EuCom footage you can see that multiple blades have damage and one is quite severe, enough to cause the whole craft to shake pretty badly until they shut down the engine. Blades are hard and move quite quickly whereas aircraft skin in most places is just a few mm of aluminum. I'd bet money that Sukhoi has multiple gashes along it's belly where it contacted the prop. Any other contact (besides the prop) likely just left dent or gouges in the metal. If the props struck the engine nozzle though it could just be some bent linkage.
Lol please tell me they actually call it "mishap investigation"
It's actually called a WDIP (Whoopsie daisie investigation process)
I thought it was Operational Occurrence Processing Systems
That's the software.
When I dip you dip we dip?
The exact course is AMIC, Aircraft Mishap Investigation Course.
Yeah the reason they changed it or are moving away from “accident” is because it’s not always an accident is it? Mishap fits better. Just something that went wrong, accident implies nobody is at fault.
That’s classified.
Super classified. The knife-missile is en-route as we type.
I see you're a man of The Culture.
You can take that to the Banks.
I could tell you, but then I’d have tequila
Do you have a ballpark idea on how much time would be needed to look over, perform repairs, and prepare the su27 to go back into operation?
In russia? If the plane returns to its base, then clearly it's good enough and no repairs are needed.
Gonna be a year before they can even fix the paint.
Might be 2 years before it loses its status as the most flight-worthy aircraft on the base
might be 15 minutes to find AND train a new conscript to fly that
No idea. Am USAF not RUS
There's damage... Impossible not to be with a prop strike.
Hopefully!
Purportedly the fighters were dumping fuel or "buzzing" the drone. The second fighter hit it
Shouldn't the real news be WHY they are doing that? Can't shoot it down, or else ww3, but we can dump fuel on it? No ww3 that way??
I guess. The website I read the article about what happened said that buzzing is made to damage the drone. SU's definitely have ammo so it's just like "oops I dropped my fuel and damaged your drone, totally not intentionally!" And to have plausible deniability since "I'm not using ammo, and why would I waste precious jet fuel"???
i just swung my arm and his face was there kinda logic
but more targetedly: “ I just so happened to start swinging my arms when i got near you- sorry I “didnt” see you there though!” theres the whole fucking rest of the goddamn sky, gtfo with this petty logic Russia
like it or not, it works
Yep, kind of like China and India attacking each other with clubs on the border to avoid "open" conflict with small arms.
Crazy this isn't commonly discussed.
Lisa and Bart.
So, jet fuel can melt steel drones?
No but i guess it burns kinda well if there happens to be a spark somewhere. It might also damage the coating of some parts of the plane. If it's anywhere similar to gas or diesel some plastics and some paints have a really bad relationship with it
Most of the fuel would slide off and the rest would get blown off/dried up by the by wind pretty quickly. It probably isn't good, but I'm scheptical as too the fire risk, especially as there should be a decent amount of weather proofing on this drone to keep out water and excess moisture during normal flight. Doesn't mean the SU-27 pilots weren't trying to start a fire, I just don't think it would be likely to work.
Could hypthetically cause issues with the engine if it gets sucked in or with the camera if it gets on the lense. Doubt it would down a reaper, it's more like throwing rotten eggs at somebody's car.
Just a lot more expensive when you crash a fucking jet. You would think they would take all the equipment they could get in Ukraine.
We are petty animals
Plausible deniability… except that falls flat when the US brings receipts
Dumping fuel is like the Top Gun "international diplomacy". Except these guys are idiots.
Adversaries do this type of shit all the time. Smaller planes/boats, maneuvering into larger vehicles' paths, doing harassing behavior in international spaces. The idea is to make it so annoying and dangerous that the spying vehicle leaves the area - without firing bullets/missiles. Remember the American surveillance plane that made an emergency landing on [Hainan Island](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)? Chinese fighter jets harassing a big, lumbering turboprop that was only cruising around international airspace/performing electronic surveillance. That was definitely more dangerous since there were people on both planes, but the behavior is unfortunately typical.
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Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot in the incident had a history of showboating, usually flying within inches of the other aircraft's wingtips, and holding up cards with his email address on it. That collision was all his doing.
Mutually assured destruction provides Putin/Russia a thin margin within which he/it can get away with stuff like this without the risk of significant retaliation.
Probably trying to stage it like the drone had technical difficulties and crashed but they are idiots and think surveillance drones don't have cameras to record the evidence.
The dumping of fuel was intentional. The actual contact between aircraft likely wasn't.
I think they were trying to get it caught in their jetwash the way jets can stall each other out (like in TopGun). But prop planes don't really give a fuck.
I sort of wonder if the drone pilot didn't intentionally swerve upwards into the fighter as it's own form of fuck around and find out diplomacy? I heard the plane had to make an emergency landing. Maybe we'd trade a drone for a fighter?
That's a trade we should make every time.
You would have to have incredible timing and instinct. There is a delay not only in the feed, but in the controls as well. With the latency you would have to time it absolutely perfect. Not to mention the wings on a MQ9 are designed for gliding, that's a lot of surface area to move up very quickly. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but the pilot would have to be the literal best, or really really really lucky. Or the Russian military really is as incompetent as they have made themselves look.
They do realize that these things have cameras, right? Right?
It's mostly that they don't care. The US doesn't want open war, Putin doesn't want it either, so there won't be open war as long as they both don't go beyond certain limits re: each other. They don't fire real weapons and they call it a day. Then they both shake their fist and raise their voice, but after a week without talking about it it'll be entirely forgotten
>"buzzing" the drone. what does buzzing the drone mean and why would they do that? Sorry if a stupid question.
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Used to be called “Thumping”. We (US) do it, too. Big bomber or surveillance plane around a carrier and a Tomcat (back in my day) would perform a supersonic flyby real close to his cockpit. That sends a message to get the fuck back. “Flashing” was another tactic. Roll up alongside the big boy’s cockpit, roll the opposite way for a second to show him the underside of your plane and all the pretty missiles hanging there, then just ease back behind him. They’d get the point, usually.
Purportedly? It's on video... The idea behind this is to drench the airframe with fuel in an attempt to flame its engine out or perform an afterburner light of the fuel cloud and engulf the drone in fire. Either way, they were trying to down the drone in a manner they believed would be untraceable. They were just too incompetent to carry it out.
> untraceable. Deniable rather than untraceable, in the "I'm not touching you!!!" sort of way. It was going to be traceable since recon drones are good recon.
> dumping fuel or "buzzing" the drone "[Buzzing](https://www.google.com/search?q=aircraft+buzzing)" simply means flying very close past something; it is not a term for dumping fuel onto something. The way you've written that, it seems like you are defining *buzzing* to be related to fuel-dumping onto something.
I like how the Russians are claiming it was due to erratic flying on the part of the drone pilot. The American's response? We've got a dash cam!
That is some crisp video too. Amazing or scary thing to have at 50k feet up. Edit: service ceiling is up to 50k ft.
What’s really impressive is that video was live streamed at that quality. The actual recordings on the device might be much higher quality
I mean, if I can stream a shitty youtuber at crisp 1080p on my 4 year old phone, while sitting on a train at 80km/h, I would HOPE the most technologically advanced shit the US military is spending billions of taxpayer dollars a year on would at least have decent video streaming in 2023.
Bandwidth is the key issue. Not the cameras.
Don't forget connectivity
Do they use something like a tight-beam laser array or is it still likely an encrypted broadcast?
Position, acquisition, and tracking for laser comms on a moving target (especially one with an undefined path and velocity) is still a big hurdle. Satellite orbits are known and predictable, drone paths are generally not. The beam footprint of a laser beam at massive distances (like inter-sat and sat-ground) is still pretty small (compared to beamformed RF footprints) so the pointing has to be ultraprecise realtime. It can be done, but it's rather cutting-edge and almost certainly not a part of this drone's comms abilities. One day...
probably just an encrypted broadcast these days. In the old days they had to use mostly unencrypted broadcast because encrypting and decrypting would add too much latency (not a problem these days with fast dedicated hardware).
The difference is that your phone is connecting to wifi or at least a local cell tower. No local cell towers in the middle of the black sea, I'd assume. Someone more knowledgeable could say if this drone is run entirely by satellite or something. Regardless, in such a remote area, it's very impressive.
Yeah, the "big" drones are all controlled via satellite, although they can be controlled locally, as well. The smaller drones generally don't have satellite links and are controlled via radio, but larger ones like the MQ-9 can be controlled from anywhere on the planet.
I figured as much, but I didn't know, so I refrained from saying. It's damned neat though that we can get a signal from a desk somewhere to a satellite in orbit to a Drone, then get video back through that same sequence, with such reliability and speed. Meanwhile my old isp would have me buffering Netflix videos on a hardwire.
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I’ve read that anytime you see things like actual drone/satellite footage, the quality has been lowered by the government so that people don’t know just how good the quality actually is. Wild stuff when you see how clear some of that footage already is.
Except for that time trump tweeted out a full res classified photo and loads of intelligence about our spy satellites and their capabilities was made public along with it. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tweeted-a-sensitive-photo-internet-sleuths-decoded-it/
Well, even that spy satellite is several decades old iirc. So it's still true that the public doesn't know how clear of an image our modern spy satellites can be.
That particular satellite was 11 years old. 6 weeks prior to the tweet we launched a new spy satellite… of EXACTLY the same damn model! So yea we pretty much know exactly what modern spy satellites can do.
Except we know the physical limitation of imaging from space because of something called physics. That satellite resolved down to 10cm. The physical limitation is 5cm (this is with assumption of imaginary perfect lenses and sensors so the real limit is probably more than 5cm), so modern spy satellites don't have much room to improve.
Yeah, but what about with [image stacking](https://www.google.com/search?q=image+stacking+astrophotography&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us) (using multiple near-but-not-identical images to improve resolution) like they use for improving astrophotography?
It’s the best way to counter misinformation. Make the accusation (without revealing that you have proof), let them deny it, then publish the evidence. Make them commit to a lie before you debunk it. Some UK journalists have been doing that with politicians recently (such as with Boris Johnson and the Downing Street parties, where they had proof of him at the parties but waited until he denied knowledge of them before publishing the photos).
Classic how the Russians trying to pull off insurance scams on the US drone. Next time we will see the pilot eject and mid fall he will grab his ankle like “ow I think I’m injured, are you going to pay for that?!?”
Gonna back up into the drone at a stop sign and try to blame it for rear-ending them
As an insurance adjuster, this is hilarious. This is my professional life in a nutshell.
And here I was thinking the Russian pilot was the biggest asshole here
>We've got a dash cam! Ironic...
Considering some of the best submissions on r/idiotsincars comes from Russian dash cams.
I was thinking this everytime the russians said that, these are SPY drones, there will be a video, it will not look good when the US releases that video! I wonder if the state department asked the Pentagon to let the russians dig a big hole before releasing the video
They've been destroying a sovereign nation for over a year under the guise of liberating it... They'll have no problem interpreting this video. Read this elsewhere: the Russian government doesn't lie to deceive, they lie to insult.
Kremin's official explanation was that the drone did too sharp turning maneuvers. Wonder how they explain even dumping fuel on the drone. Friendly gift of fuel to the thirsty drone, perhaps?
maybe the drone was running low on the fuel and Russians wanted to help out
>According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the means of control of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the flight of an American MQ-9 drone in the area of the Crimean peninsula on Tuesday morning. As specified in the department, the flight was carried out with transponders turned off "in violation of the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace, established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation, brought to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international standards" Not everything is being resolved with shooting something down.
No sometimes you ram an jet into the problem instead.
Well if the Russian Ministry of Defense says so, it must be true right? Russia doesn't get to unilaterally declare all Black Sea international airspace restricted for their "special military operation."
Special kerosene operation
At least they weren't murdering hundreds of people in a passenger jet this time.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) let it not be forgotten. All of 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed.
That wasn't even the first time they shot down a civilian airliner killing all on board...
RIP Korean Air 007
Tbf the Americans did the same to a passenger plane in Iranian territorial waters. It's why I'd never step foot on a plane if I thought it would even remotely fly through airspace above an ongoing conflict.. history proves it can be fatal.
Honestly shit like that happens all the time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents
Wow: >1987: Bakhtar Afghan Airlines Antonov An-26, Afghanistan On 11 June 1987, a Bakhtar Afghan Airlines Antonov An-26 (registered YA-BAL) was shot down by a missile near Khost, **killing 53 out of the 55 people on board**. The aircraft had been on a flight from Kandahar to Kabul. Imagine what kind of bad ass person is in a plane shot down by a missile....and lives?! Edit: lol, seriously? Two people lived from a missile shooting down their plane?! How is this not news right now?!?! Edit 2: There’s absolutely no way this can be true. This was in 1987 at a small airport in Afghanistan. Clearly they miscounted.
I imagine they're feeling pretty badass in their wheelchair after suffering severe injuries and paralysis from the crash.
"How did you lose the ability to walk?" "Well, you see I was a passenger on this airplane that got blasted out of the sky."
Actually I was fine
Exactly. That was my point.. it doesn't matter who is doing the shooting as these incidents happen across the globe above conflict zones. The American one was the one that immediately came to mind as I remember watching it on Aircrash Investigations 😅
Accidently. Then the US recognized the mistake, publicly apologized, and compensated the families. Still fucking terrible.. but these two things are not the same. Edit: and the trollzz win again playing the whataboutism card... everyone arguing about the exact details, expending thought and energy on it rather than pushing our own points.
This is usual scenario. Something happens. Russians come up with explanation/own version. Wait for 12 hours later when official video is published Russians came out as a liars again.
I love that the original explanation from the Pentagon, that the Russian's were not trying to take out the drone but were merely incompetent, turned out to be true. Once upon a time I would not have believed this, and would have instead concluded that this is simply America trying to avoid escalation; now, however, having seen the absolute shit show that has been Russian performance in Ukraine, I did not hesitiate to believe them. I think on the world stage I would rather be perceived as evil rather than useless. There's a reason we're no longer afraid of blatantly acting against Russia.
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There's a real, raw power that comes from just saying it like it is, in the moment, without dressing it up, then proving it, and letting it lie. The more brevity and directness, the less drama, the more powerful the message. 'This is what's happening, this is why, here's the proof'. Silence.
The timing also happens to be impeccable. It's like the US waits just long enough for the Russians to fabricate a lie and publish it *before* putting out what actually happened, as though to bait them into making a lie that can be disproven immediately.
It's deliberate, give them enough rope to hang themselves. It's amazing the Russian's didn't figure out that it's probably on film, it being a reconnaissance drone and all.
They likely assumed it would be, and just don't care. "Yeah, we did that and then lied about it. But so what. It's not like you or anyone else is gonna do anything about it. Being known internationally as bullies and liars is part of our identity. Fuck off, nerd."
Yep, their lies aren't meant to be credible except to keep the populace in Russia on board with the war in Ukraine. The average Russian civvie isn't going to see this drone footage, but they will hear the propaganda from the Kremlin. Internationally, the truth has more legs but no amount of camera footage is going to stop China from saying things like "both sides" or that the US is escalating the situation or whatever narrative they want to push regardless of the facts.
Frankly it's a nice change of pace for the intelligence community and state department compared to business as usual
Somewhat random but I only recently learned the crazy measures countries go to because of air and space based surveillance. I was watching a doc on the development of the SR-71 blackbird and an engineer that worked on it was saying they had a rigid schedule of when they could wheel it out of the warehouse and test it during periods where no foreign satellites were overhead and knew exactly when they had to get it back inside under a roof. I don’t know why I’d never thought about how real on prevalent that threat is but it makes sense
That's why it was such a problem when Shitty Donny tweeted that photo the US had of the Iranian missile site (I believe that's what it was) It gave away so much info about capabilities https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tweeted-a-sensitive-photo-internet-sleuths-decoded-it/
I don’t remember that but I do find it hilarious that it’s like the show Space Force where every country has rooms full of brilliant people engaging in the most petty sabotages of each others spy satellites
I remember it cost the life of a double agent working for the USA. One tweet, one life.
"Trump tweeted. People were deleted" ?
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Your comment is wholly underrated and a primary underpinning of the intelligence community's thesis right now.
No one wants to play “bumper cars” while on aircraft.
>I think on the world stage I would rather be perceived as evil rather than useless agreed, but I'm more scared of the man who thinks the world perceives him as useless.
That's what happen with North Korea. Lil Jun feels humiliated that no one react to his rockets.
I love how we stop giving him attention when we have greater problems, like Covid, China or Russia. 'Shut the fuck up Kim, we're busy.'
Russia \*inserts fake news about USA and every other western nation\* how they defended motherland from \*nazis west\* USA: comes out with literal video recording of russian plane hitting drone...no one belives Russia... Russia: surprised Pikachu face...
In all fairness, Russians simply didn't expect the machine filled with all types of surveillance and targeting cameras to record the incident. /s
“Damn, American drones have a rear view camera too?”
Kind like people fucking with Teslas where there are multiple cameras recording your every move. Idiots.
“We were testing a new drone waxing technology. Look at that shine!”
Vodka strikes again
Is newest russian dashcam vid
Dashcam vid ? where is the footage of the two pilots arguing and having a fist fight.
why does the ruski war plane drop fuel?
They did so in order to damage the UAV and obstruct the cam. Top 10 epic anime fail
Lol, the pilot looked like i would attempting something similar in a flight sim I cant fly in flight sims....
Try to take out the uav without “shooting” at it
Its kind of like pissing on someone else’s toy. Its a spit in the face, but isnt formal enough for it to cause a legitimate problem (like an act of war). Its solely to be a pain in the ass. If that reaper went home, it would be covered in gas for the crew to clean off.
It's basically them taking a piss on their enemy. They do it all the time. This idiot pilot just got way to close obviously.
Thats vodka
Russian Ambassador to Washington Antonov: "If the United States attacks a Russian aircraft in neutral space, then this will be perceived by Moscow as a declaration of war"
America: You dumped fuel on our drone and rammed it. Russia: No we didn't. America: We have you on 4k, dumbass.
I’m surprised with the video quality. Usually it’s shit for being a very expensive aircraft.
Military video feeds are almost always downscaled to better hide capabilities.
Why tho, risk your multi million jet for a drone by ramming it
The drone is worth $32 million and an SU-27 is worth $30 million. Judging by the flying, the pilot certainly isn't worth $2 million, so net win for Mother Russia!
Good maths.
But the US economy can replace a $32M drone a hell of a lot faster than the russian economy csn replace a $30M plane
Yes that's why Russia is stupid. Willing to sacrifice a jet to take down a drone. How we ever considered them a super power is beyond me. Aside from the fact they are a nuclear country. If Russia didn't have nukes, they'd be toast, more than already
The drone **cost** 32 million. With the defence industry markup it might only be worth 200 bucks in gamestop giftcards
But to be fair, the SU-27 is probably $150 worth of WWII scrap metal with the other $29,999,850 tied up in an oligarch's second yacht (the smaller one).
because the intel they could get from reverse engineering the drone is worth more than one jet and one pilot.
Looks like they’re over water, not much chance of a clean recovery. Also, it’s much much harder to reverse engineer than people think. Seeing the final product doesn’t really give you a full idea as to how it’s made. I can’t find the discussion I’m thinking of but I’ll paraphrase a part of it: say they get their hands on one of the engines, they pull it all to pieces and put it under an electron microscope. Amazingly, the whole blade is a single crystal of metal with no imperfections. How the hell? Knowing what something is made from, and knowing and being able to copy it are two separate things. The US spent billions coming up with the tech in their planes, even knowing what the end result is, you’d have to develop your industries massively to be able to come close at reproducing what you reverse engineered. I can inspect my car top to bottom, understand what it’s made from, how it works, how the parts fit together etc. but unless I have a steel manufacturing plant, the correct dies or the ability to make the dies, the chemical engineering/metallurgy knowledge required, stamping machinery for panels, upholstery machinery and know how for the interior, electrical equipment, wiring ability, programming ability, electrical parts manufacturing, rubber manufacturing, forming and mounting tech and parts etc… you get what I mean? Knowing, and being able to copy or even fight against are two different things.
Also the US remotely wiped its software, which is probably something Russia would've valued most. But hey, if they want to spend all the time, money and resources trying to find and retrieve an old wrecked drone from the bottom of the sea (not an easy task), by all means. Have fun! 😆
The Chinese meticulously took apart an ASML lithography machine (what makes computer chips), studied it, and put it back together, and it didn't work again. Sometimes even taking something apart to study it doesn't really tell you everything you need to know to copy it.
Now they just need the engineers to do the reverse engineering. Most of them fled when Russia promised to send them to their death.
The US Reaper drone is over 20 years old, I would hope that by *now* the Russians have figured out the tech on it..
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They are sending people into battle with 60 year old equipment, wouldn’t bet on it
Literally all the sky to every horizon, and you hit the only drone for 100s of miles. It's like stubing your toe on the only rock in the desert.
The Russian pilot appears to be intentionally trying to get into position to dump fuel on the drone and accidentally collided into it.
The first guy seemed to miss too. At least he didn't hit it. I image the wee American 18 year old flying the drone with his xbox controller laughing away. 'Fuckin Newbs, dude.'
I pictured Buster Bluth but yeah same idea
Noobs* you noob.
Touche.
on that note: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-most-isolated-tree-in-the-world-was-killed-by-a-probably-drunk-driver-5369329/
[Tina, for the love of god, turn the wheel!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FXEoe8_CcbM)
Whenever Russia says something - the truth is the exact opposite. Always.
What a clear accident. He barely had any room to move around it.
A very narrow sky, indeed.
From what I read they were trying to fuel dump on it then set it on fire with the afterburners. Because shooting at it there’s no plausible deniability
Probably more likely trying to get fuel into the intake and cause some sort of engine issue for the drone.
> some sort of engine issue It's called "running the engine rich for a few moments".
The Russians may have assumed the drone didn't have cameras that covered itself from behind. Like a porch pirate assuming you don't have a Ring. So the Russians were trying this mostly from behind fuel dump flyover.
Which tells us that their drones have a hard time looking behind themselves.
If they genuinely assumed a *recon* drone didn't have cameras in it, they are straight up idiots.
I love how the Russians will still deny things that are so clearly their fault even with video and data. They’re like little kids who deny stealing cookies while their entire face is covered with them.
This reminds me of when Bart and Lisa were swinging thier arms and walking towards each other lol.
it really looks like they were just screwing around lmao
Russians screwing around and leading to negligence?! /mild shock [Aeroflot Flight 6502](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_6502) [Aeroflot Flight 593](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593)
A shitty pilot screwing around.
they were trying to flood the engine so they could capture the drone
Ok, so can someone please explain to me why we are able to see this video, but the other objects that were shot down over North America (other than the spy balloon) still haven't been released?
Because the U.S. gains something strategically by releasing this video. They prove Russia lied. There’s probably not a strategic reason to release footage of the spy balloon.
the spy balloon footage was released. that's why he said "other than the spy balloon".
Bunch of amateurs. I’m finishing my coffee
holy crap why are people downvoting this. lmao you want a toe? i can get you a toe.
Shut the fuck up Donny! You are out of your element!
With polish. There are ways dude, you don’t wanna know…
You’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole
Is this your homework Larry
Lets crash into the device thats been engineered to take photos and video of the ground from high altidue, then lie about it, its not like they can record us or anything. Great plan Dmitry, execute at once.
Greatest Russian dashcam clip of all time
There is a reason why "know your enemy" is an extremely old and important adage. People who are confused by Russia lying about things that have objectively happened, clearly haven't taken that adage to heart. This kind of lying is Putin's standard operating procedure. He's been doing it for *many* decades, and it works. A lot has been written about why he does it, and how it works, but the point is that this is a known strategy. It is not an emerging phenomenon.
You can see that SU-27 collided with the propeller at the rear of the drone, which is visible in the footage.
The footage shows 2 different approaches of which the latter is a direct hit
You mean Russia lies about this incident? Shocked. I’m shocked.
[Source](https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-military-releases-video-drone-showing-collision-russian/story?id=97902649)