"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (3 Viewers)

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Now the Russian perspective on the Reaper incident (source BBC):

We're now hearing for the first time from the Russian defence ministry on the incident.

Moscow is insisting its aircraft did not use on-board weapons or come into contact with the drone.

They say Russia airspace control systems detected a US MQ-9 unmanned drone flying over the Black Sea, near the Crimean Peninsula, in the direction of the border of the Russian Federation.

They accused the US of violating the boundaries of its temporary airspace "established for the special military operation".

Russia says it scrambled its aircraft to identify the intruder, but due to quick manoeuvring, the MQ-9 drone went into an "unguided flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface".
 
1678822265759.png
 
From the differing accounts of the Reaper incident, it seems like the Russians were trying to disrupt the flight of the Reaper by any means possible: wake turbulence, dumping fuel on it etc. The Russian account of the Reaper undertaking "quick manoeuvring" is quite laughable since a look at the design of the Reaper makes it clear that the aircraft was never designed for quick manoeuvres.

So...either the Russian aircraft did hit the Reaper and caused it to crash or, perhaps, wake turbulence caused the Reaper to depart from controlled flight and it crashed.

At least that's my take on things. Happy to hear other thoughts.
 
A pretty good account of the Reaper incident in this article.

It states that the operator lost control of it after an impact. I'm willing to bet that they could see the impact from the operator's video feed. If the prop was struck and damaged, the engine monitor would have displayed a jump in RPMs plus the prop is located close to the vert-stabs and it may have lost one (or both) as well.

www.airforcetimes.com

Russian jet, US drone crash over Black Sea, US military says

The incident marked the first time that an unsafe interaction with Russian aircraft caused a U.S. drone to crash.
www.airforcetimes.com www.airforcetimes.com
 
The Russian Ambassador to the US has claimed America's stance on the Reaper issue is a "provocation." I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you!!!!

Russia's ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, was cited by Russian media following his meeting with US officials.
He said that Russia views America's handling of the drone incident as a "provocation", according to the state-owned RIA-Novosti news agency.
Antonov said that both the US and Russia need to be "extremely cautious" moving forward, and that Russia is not looking for a conflict with the US, the news agency reported


.In related news, the US is working to declassify data from the Reaper which, hopefully, will prove the argument one way or the other:

US Department of Defense spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder has said that officials are working to declassify footage from the incident.
It is unclear if it was captured by still images or video, or how the footage was captured.
If released, however, it will likely offer more details about what occurred.


Source for both: BBC
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
It's a shame escorting those missions would be such a difficult mission to mount.
Click to expand...
It may come to that.

Last October, Russian jets "accidently" launched missiles at a British RC-135 over the Black Sea and are now escorted by Typhoons.

Of course, Moscow stated that they were also in the "special operation exclusion zone", which is a bullshit statement because A) their special operation is illegal and, B) international airspace is not negotiable.
 
GrauGeist said:
It may come to that.

Last October, Russian jets "accidently" launched missiles at a British RC-135 over the Black Sea and are now escorted by Typhoons.

Of course, Moscow stated that they were also in the "special operation exclusion zone", which is a bullshit statement because A) their special operation is illegal and, B) international airspace is not negotiable.
Click to expand...

I'd read Moscow's objection. I suspect if a couple of F-15Es based in Bulgaria had been around this may not have happened. Getting their approval would be the hard sledding. The Eagles, with conformal tanks, no bombs, and fully capable of air intercept could do this.

Hopefully State Dept gets to work on this.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
I'd read Moscow's objection. I suspect if a couple of F-15Es based in Bulgaria had been around this may not have happened. Getting their approval would be the hard sledding. The Eagles, with conformal tanks, no bombs, and fully capable of air intercept could do this.

Hopefully State Dept gets to work on this.
Click to expand...
The U.S. has four bases in Bulgaria, one in Plovdiv and one near Yambol but I don't recall the other two.

So I'm willing to bet that if they wanted to provide escort, it wouldn't be an issue.

The MQ-9 is most likely operating out of one of those bases, or perhaps Romania.
 
buffnut453 said:
The Russian Ambassador to the US has claimed America's stance on the Reaper issue is a "provocation." I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you!!!!

Russia's ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, was cited by Russian media following his meeting with US officials.
He said that Russia views America's handling of the drone incident as a "provocation", according to the state-owned RIA-Novosti news agency.
Antonov said that both the US and Russia need to be "extremely cautious" moving forward, and that Russia is not looking for a conflict with the US, the news agency reported


.In related news, the US is working to declassify data from the Reaper which, hopefully, will prove the argument one way or the other:

US Department of Defense spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder has said that officials are working to declassify footage from the incident.
It is unclear if it was captured by still images or video, or how the footage was captured.
If released, however, it will likely offer more details about what occurred.


Source for both: BBC
Click to expand...
Is a shame that Rusia didn't came forward with the nuclear threat, what a disappointment.

BTW, this war special military operation wasn't, supposedly, against NATO, the US and the west, which are actively in combat? I'm missing something?
 
re the planned retirement of of 42x A-10s in 2024 budget

These 42x airframes being retired are non-operational and have been so for the last 7-8 years. Since congress forced the USAF to continue maintaining the A-10 in operational form the requirement has been to keep ~170x airframes up to standard and available for operations. The USAF/ANG still have ~270x airframes in inventory, but only the ~170x airframes (+ about a dozen more for training) are operational.
 
GrauGeist said:
The U.S. has four bases in Bulgaria, one in Plovdiv and one near Yambol but I don't recall the other two.

So I'm willing to bet that if they wanted to provide escort, it wouldn't be an issue.

The MQ-9 is most likely operating out of one of those bases, or perhaps Romania.
Click to expand...

I expect the difficulty lies in getting local approval to use that basing to fly what could turn into combat missions.
 
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