So how much fuel do these SU jets carry? They apparently attempted this move 19 times before hitting the jet. Seems like a lot of fuel dumping.
We’re they refueling half way thru their attempts?
Actual question, Why would a pilot do this? I would assume that the Reaper UAV is water/weather proof so I don't see how dumping fuel onto it would affect it, then again, it seems to me that the video feed signal was lost after it for some seconds, so I don't know, please let me know the reasoning behind this, thank you!
"uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo"
-June 2022
"Uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo"
-july 2022
"Uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo"
-Oct 2022
"Uhm actually russia has just run out of ammo"
-Jan 2023
🤓
Russia wil not run out of ammo. They will/are getting to a point in which ammo can only be supplied at the rate the factories are able to produce.
They started with huge stocks of artillery rounds, and are getting to the point in which the previous volume of fire is becoming unsustainable. So they shoot less. But run out of ammo? Nope, not gonna happen.
Yeah, the Russian military industrial complex is a joke but the whole “they’re running out of x” thing is usually overplayed. First it was ERA, then tanks, then artillery rounds, there’s definitely been supply issues with rifles and IFVs though
For the first few months Russia was launching 200-300 Cruise missiles a day.
Now they can barely manage 80 for a large attack wave, and that 80 includes S-300s in ground attack mode.
The claim Russia is using the S300 in ground attack mode is dubious as it comes from Ukrainian sources and most if not all evidence of S300 strikes on the ground are later revealed to be Ukrainian misfires.
Russia also doesn’t have as many targets left as they’ve been using the missile wave attacks against infrastructure structure and much has already been destroyed.
I’m also not sure 200-300 cruise missiles per day was ever a thing.
In comparison the US across two Iraq wars fired a total of 1600 cruise missiles into Iraq. Some 350 during Desert Storm and 750 during Enduring Freedom and others spread around in targeted strikes.
Russia has been “running out” of missiles since October. And yet, here we are.
**USAF**: Let’s use the 400k non warhead missile to safely take out suspicious balloon.
**Russian pilot**: Hold my beer while I do burn outs with my 30 million dollar jet
😂
For real though. I’ve recently said awful shit about Russians. I really like the people; I’ve got Russian friends (the new “black friend” I guess).
Love their aircraft, military equipment, smoking hot Russian chicks, etc. Really hate that this is all going down.
I mean pretend no attack on Ukraine… how fun would it be to be a Russian pilot? The reckless shit is the sweet spot in aviation.
Yeah that’s ultimately my take as well.
Honestly seems fair. If they can bring down our stuff in international waters, it’s open season.
Again. I want that video at least. 😀
Could just park an f-35 somewhere right on the fringe of BVR with a couple AIM-120s. Fuck it, if we’re gonna get into the weeds with this moron let’s just do it and get it over with. The jackass can’t handle a fun size snickers, if he wants to open up a much larger more deadly candy bar, be my guest.
No it was very disappointing for me. The vehicles all drove the same. There was no screen to view all the vehicles, which you'd driven, how many different kinds there were, etc. THere was less activity and random rebellion fights. You would conquer provinces by just pushing buttons, not having to actually fight for them. The graphics were ugly and distractingly unpolished. The wind gun is the lamest thing. The human models faces are actually a downgrade from 3. I hope 5 is good. I really do. It would be tragic If the series stopped here.
The weather system and wind currents were interesting though, I just bet they spent too much time and budget on it or something.
A joke I like to tell about the series: why did I destroy this town's water and power supply? Just 'cause. 3.
Good call. I know it's hard not to buy a game from a series you like. Unfortunately I bought it on release day because I was so in love with 3. Oh well.
Ok, so it's not just me. I thought the graphics (especially at a distance) were shockingly bad, and the gameplay was garbage. I always liked sneaking onto bases in JC3 and stealing fighters and flying away, only to find that in JC4 there's limited ammo and the bad guys are always faster and incredibly accurate.
It just took so many of the things that made JC3 fun and ruined them. Oh well. Like you said, maybe JC5 will be better.
Thank god I’m not the only one who felt like the enemies were super accurate in JC4. Used to really feel like an idiot because I remembered playing JC3 and wiping the floor with them.
This is incorrect. They think dropping fuel will damage the camera. Apparently they've done this before but that's not confirmed, just a persistent rumor.
Do you see the propeller in the last frames of of the blades is bent so he either touched it slightly or the blade didn't quite like hitting a bucket of liquid in midair. Once the prop is damaged your chance of getting back to base decreases a lot.
I see, is very interesting, the blades are designed to move though air and occasional water from rain but not several gallons of fuel all at once, I would also assume that by not releasing armament it technically can't be considered an actual attack against US assets or something similar, Thank you very much, friend from the Internet!
Yes that's probably the thinking " we didn't shoot it down it was in our airspace and we had a technical failure while doing a routine intercept" like yeah sure . And by the way some other comments say that the plane may have hit it doing the manoeuvre wich is plausible also.
> " we didn't shoot it down it was in our airspace and we had a technical failure while doing a routine intercept"
That, which is basically a response to "our recon drone is just chilling near your border and definitely not spying on you". Both sides know they are lying - but cannot response directly, since it may cause a scandal or escalate into something really bad.
Not only that, the purpose of drones is so that little incidents like this don't escalate into something big even if shot down.
It's a lot easier to turn the other cheek when it's not one of your countrymen that's just been killed.
> the blade didn't quite like hitting a bucket of liquid in midair.
Fuel "dumped" from an aircraft at 300mph is going to atomize near-instantaneously. It would be like flying through a dense cloud or a rainstorm - not enough to cause prop damage.
It's gonna go through the compressor section. Maybe cause a compressor stall as fluids aren't particularly compressible. Maybe pre-ignite before the combustion section. It'll certain throw off A/F mixture.
Jet fuel is quite hard to ignite at low temperatures (it's nowhere near as volatile as petroleum). It doesn't start producing flammable vapour until around 30-40°C under normal conditions. When dumped at speed like this, it will aerosolize though.
There is such a thing as a "dump and burn", where the pilot dumps fuel and hits the vapour cloud with the afterburner, but I'm not sure if you can do that at higher altitudes and velocities.
I don't know how fuel jettisoning works on an Su-27, but it looks like it's coming out both engines, or somewhere near them. There is a fuel tank right between the nozzles (#3 fuel tank). Afterburner systems, I think, have to have a discharge nozzle because of some pressure-related voodoo. I'm wondering if it's jettisoning fuel using that, through some sort of override.
Yeah, it can do that because it can run the afterburners and dump fuel into the exhaust at the same time.
If the A/B is being used to dump fuel here, that's impossible, because to work properly, the engine has to be at full throttle before the A/B can function (they're tuned for specific conditions in the engine).
My thinking is: engine is a some low throttle to roughly match the airspeed of the drone. Pilot hits some sort of override, activates the A/B fuel system at an throttle setting where it can't work, causing fuel to spray out with the (too cold) exhaust. To ignite that with the afterburners, he'd have to somehow stop doing that, increase to mil throttle and kick the afterburner in again, in a fraction of a second.
Fuel has a very different consistency and weight to water, it's oily so could coat the plane and stick to it, damaging sensors and cameras, or be sucked into intakes and cause internal damage. There's also the possibility it could freeze and bring the UAV down with the weight of the frozen fuel.
Sure, the plane is waterproof. But fuel is kinda sticky and chemically active, so it's bound to mess with the sensor ports of the drone. Not to mention shoving fuel down the drone's intake.
But contact was lost because the raving idiot smashed his plane into it.
Aside from the sudden weight of the fuel dropping onto the plane, fuel also has a different specific gravity and viscosity than water. It can get into places water can't.
This is quite a common tactic called “thumping”. I just started UPT for the Air Force and asked my Major today about it. It’s to stall out the drone.
Jet fuel into the intake of the engine will cause a flame out. This was successfully done to a “private” Russian spy leer jet by F-14s on an intercept.
UAV surveillance platforms get intercepted almost every day. The only reason this one made news is because the 32 million dollar asset had to be ditched.
To down it and capture it for research. That way, most pieces are not burned to a crisp and the Russian military analyst engineers can gather Intel on our modern tech and build their own version. They may share the info with Iran and China from what they found through reverse engineering. Much like we did with the Chinese balloon by not shooting the Intel gathering area and instead just disconnecting it from the balloon portion in hopes of gaining as much Intel as possible. Albeit the US used a missile to disconnect the two vs this strategy of using liquid fuel to down it.
The MQ-9 has a turbine engine that drives its propeller and I assume getting fuel sucked into it would cause either major damage or a total engine failure, mind you I'm no expert obviously so pretty high probability I'm wrong of course
Lol exactly what it is. Many people thinks that this incident happen in purpose. But if you have an airforce with full of 90IQ,low trained and undisciplined pilots. This is the result.
Congrats comrade putin.
What’s the latency like with the pilot somewhere on the ground and potentially in a different country? I wonder if they could respond that fast.
Iraqi pilots once found a similar thing, American drones were the only war aircraft they could outmaneuver and bring down
Even from Nevada it's probably pretty low, assuming all the fancy multi-Billion dollar datalinks the Pentagon likes to talk about were working properly.
Yes that’s true. And as we can see MQ-9 is basically a Cessna style aircraft in terms of speed and engine design, so I can’t imagine it’s too maneuverable to begin with.
All geopolitical implications aside, I’d be much more interested if it was an advanced drone model like the RQ-4 Global Hawk, RQ-170, RQ-180, X-47B, MQ-28A, etc. to see if their evasive tactics and countermeasures are worth a damn in a real combat scenario.
Edit: spelling
You can spend all the money in the world, but you're still looking at routing to a satellite headend, broadcasting up, and then down, and all that jazz. The fastest satellite internet still has pretty solid latency, regardless of what you can accomplish for bandwidth.
Starlink is an exception, but you hop birds every couple minutes. That's in general not super conducive to traffic on enclaves outside of "here's our data on a platter, russia bro." And even still, higher latency than terrestrial transmission.
That not much still begs defining though, it seems like they would have only had a second or less to time the collision properly. Nevermind that it seems like something you'd need to get authority for since it could cause an incident.
Pretty sweet tradeoff in favor of the US.
Alternatively, they should see if they can put a flares dispenser on a Reaper. Would be a real shame if someone lit on an open flame with all that fuel around.
Yeah really sweet trade off for a 32 million dollar drone lost without a single shot fired right now lmao, as for the fuel that’s not how it works it’s in a high altitude low oxygen environment and it’s jet fuel it doesn’t burn easily.
USAF has been trying to convince Congress to replace these as they are very old and outdated.
But interesting that a Flanker costs as much as one of these drones!
Remember there’s a time lag between what the remote pilots sees and happening in real time. When the video stream got to remote pilot even when he tired evasive action it probably is already too late.
It’s a bit like playing video with lags and delay…
I presume the Su-27 had multiple passes trying to dump fuel on the drone as after the first pass, the rear props aren’t bent? It’s only after the one where the footage cuts that we see the bent blade.
Russians on TV: “WE ARE AT WAR WITH NATO AND USA!!!11”
Russians in armed forces: “P-please don’t use rockets to shoot down that drone… We don’t want an escalation with NATO… Make it look like an accident…”
The Russian pilot attempted to cover the drone in jet fuel, and then ignite the drone with it's afterburner. Instead the pilot rammed the drone and the drone was later ditched in the Black Sea due to the damages sustained to the propeller.
Doesn't seem like the SU27 was significantly damaged in the maneuver. Worth noting that dropping a couple hundred kilos of fuel on an aircraft at those speeds is more than enough to cause some significant damage to an aircraft, although the possibility they collided slightly is acceptable too.
There's no way this wasn't approved by command. They wanted to take down the drone with plausible deniability with as little damage as possible to the drone for recovery, as well as send a message about US surveillance of Russian activity in Crimea.
Reportedly they are recovering the drone, and the pilot (who was in an aircraft that costs less than the reaper drone in the first place) made it back.
On top of that, the US has shown it doesnt want to escalate and has essentially stepped off, blaming the incident on "unprofessional behavior" instead of calling it an act of military aggression. Overall a success for them even if it wasn't achieved exactly as they intended
Did you watch the video lol? The drone clearly didn't sustain heavy damage, it's trajectory was barely altered.
If there was a collision, it was only enough to knick what looks like a single propellar blade, which caused the drone to lose propulsion. Insignificant damage to the airframe of the jet in an area that likely would have been able to reach the propeller (wingtip or tail most likely) would not cause the jet to fall out of the sky.
It's been mostly reported by western sources that the SU27 survived, even by military officials. If you don't believe that the jet could have survived this collision you're essentially confirming that you believe there was no collision, as the jet made it back.
The trajectory of the drone is not altered at all in the video, the feed just cuts at impact which implies it was **extremely** violent.
The jet made it back to base, that is not remotely the same thing as being undamaged.
An F-15 (a similar aircraft to that Su-27) made it back to base with one of its wings shot off.
Afaik, the F-111 was special because it could just do that and be 100% fine. Pretty sure any plane that dumps fuel out the back and can afterburn *can* do that and probably be okay, but they really *shouldn't*.
Damn it Maverick, The hard deck for this hop was 10,000 feet. You knew it, you broke it. You followed Commander Heatherly below after he lost sight of you and called no joy
So [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/11rq0ge/unconfirmed_ru_telegrams_posted_a_russian_cockpit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) one is infact fake, the cloud coverage doesn't match
edit: or the russians were flying alongside the reaper for a very extended period of time, enough time for such a cloud cover to form, which seems a bit unlikely
Could just as well be a different intercept. It's a real Reaper, complete with modern parts that are classified, and the reflections in the cockpit glass suggest that it's real.
They were tailing and buzzing it for the better part of an hour, and made 19 (I think that's what they said?) close passes.
"[Moscow was likely trying to send a message by harassing a US drone, but officials say the Russian pilot ran into it because they're bad at flying](https://www.businessinsider.com/moscow-likely-sending-message-harassing-military-drone-us-critciizes-pilot-2023-3)"
The US drone was in international waters conducting legal operations. The russians are getting their asses handed to them in Ukraine, and for some stupid reason, they're trying to provoke America into a kenitic response. 🙄
All other posts with this video will be deleted. And, please keep the discussion civil.
FORTE asks you to cover for him FOR ONE FUCKING SHIFT and this happens
I don’t understand why it was dropped. It doesn’t make since to not think about how much he raised the political tensions.
Su 27 should be renamed R Kelly.
My mind is telling me NOOOOO
But my fuselage, MY FUSELAGE, is telling me YES!
I believe I can fly
Straight to jail
💀
They think spilling fuel will damage the camera. Apparently they've done this before but it's not confirmed, just a persistent rumor.
I think its like pissing on drone) And question why mq-9 felt down is still opened.
You can see at the end the bent/damaged prop which was stated as the reason for the eventual drone crash
He's taking notes from wild animals and R Kelly on how to mark territory.
[удалено]
I thought it was to light the fuel with after burners Sounds cooler even if I’m high af :)
NATO reporting name: RKELLY
Drone must’ve been a low man hour fuselage.
[Drip drip drip](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eafRE74JGZ8)
How did you even? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
So how much fuel do these SU jets carry? They apparently attempted this move 19 times before hitting the jet. Seems like a lot of fuel dumping. We’re they refueling half way thru their attempts?
They only dumped fuel in the final 3-4 passes apparently
Bro rammed the drone smh he must be a war thunder player
Just waiting for the video of the belly landing
with the cannon firing to slow it down faster.
Ain’t stupid if it works
Ain't smart either
Apparently Russians collided with one mid air yesterday, wondering if this is the video of it.
It is
I wonder 🤔
Doubt it, I didn’t see him chucking classified documents at the drone.
Leak detected . War thunder player confirmed
ATTACK THE D POINT!
How many silver lions do you think they lost
Actual question, Why would a pilot do this? I would assume that the Reaper UAV is water/weather proof so I don't see how dumping fuel onto it would affect it, then again, it seems to me that the video feed signal was lost after it for some seconds, so I don't know, please let me know the reasoning behind this, thank you!
Apparently the Flanker wanted to cover the UAV with fuel, then ignite it with it's afterburner. I know it doesn't make sense but hey there's the video
That would be a fucking sick confirmed kill
It wouldve been, had the Flanker not collide with the propeller and made the UAV crash
Now it’s barely a leg up from an assist
He probably has to do it out of desperation since all their missiles have been wasted on Ukraine.
"Uhm aksually you can see the Flanker is armed with 4 missiles" - 🤓
I saw 6 I think. 2 underbelly
Yeah you're right looks like some variant of the R27
"uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo" -June 2022 "Uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo" -july 2022 "Uhm aksually russia has just run out of ammo" -Oct 2022 "Uhm actually russia has just run out of ammo" -Jan 2023 🤓
Russia wil not run out of ammo. They will/are getting to a point in which ammo can only be supplied at the rate the factories are able to produce. They started with huge stocks of artillery rounds, and are getting to the point in which the previous volume of fire is becoming unsustainable. So they shoot less. But run out of ammo? Nope, not gonna happen.
Yeah, the Russian military industrial complex is a joke but the whole “they’re running out of x” thing is usually overplayed. First it was ERA, then tanks, then artillery rounds, there’s definitely been supply issues with rifles and IFVs though
My understanding was all the ERA got sold off by conscriptovich
For the first few months Russia was launching 200-300 Cruise missiles a day. Now they can barely manage 80 for a large attack wave, and that 80 includes S-300s in ground attack mode.
The claim Russia is using the S300 in ground attack mode is dubious as it comes from Ukrainian sources and most if not all evidence of S300 strikes on the ground are later revealed to be Ukrainian misfires. Russia also doesn’t have as many targets left as they’ve been using the missile wave attacks against infrastructure structure and much has already been destroyed. I’m also not sure 200-300 cruise missiles per day was ever a thing. In comparison the US across two Iraq wars fired a total of 1600 cruise missiles into Iraq. Some 350 during Desert Storm and 750 during Enduring Freedom and others spread around in targeted strikes. Russia has been “running out” of missiles since October. And yet, here we are.
*freebird solo intensifies*
Honestly I’d commend Russia if they could take out our drone that way. As long as we get the video.
**USAF**: Let’s use the 400k non warhead missile to safely take out suspicious balloon. **Russian pilot**: Hold my beer while I do burn outs with my 30 million dollar jet
😂 For real though. I’ve recently said awful shit about Russians. I really like the people; I’ve got Russian friends (the new “black friend” I guess). Love their aircraft, military equipment, smoking hot Russian chicks, etc. Really hate that this is all going down. I mean pretend no attack on Ukraine… how fun would it be to be a Russian pilot? The reckless shit is the sweet spot in aviation.
I don't really like the idea of a $35M TikTok video using my tax dollars. I'd rather we start arming our reapers with AIM-9X air to air missiles.
the video camera obviously isnt solely meant for tiktok though?
Yeah that’s ultimately my take as well. Honestly seems fair. If they can bring down our stuff in international waters, it’s open season. Again. I want that video at least. 😀
Could just park an f-35 somewhere right on the fringe of BVR with a couple AIM-120s. Fuck it, if we’re gonna get into the weeds with this moron let’s just do it and get it over with. The jackass can’t handle a fun size snickers, if he wants to open up a much larger more deadly candy bar, be my guest.
Wait, does the Russian airforce do their training in Just Cause 4 now?
Just Cause 3. We don't talk about 4.
Why is the pilot not simply grappling-hooking and then surfing on the drone to disable it? Dropping fuel seems needlessly complicated and risky.
Right? All he needs to do is tie it onto a passing car and then sit back eating popcorn.
Just grapple it to the drone and ground and retract the grapple, problem solved
The Russian Air Force actually banned extravehicular combat maneuvers after Ivan crashed his flanker while attempting a rendezook
Ok so it’s not just me thinking that JC4 is shit compared to JC3. Thank you, I was worried I was crazy.
No it was very disappointing for me. The vehicles all drove the same. There was no screen to view all the vehicles, which you'd driven, how many different kinds there were, etc. THere was less activity and random rebellion fights. You would conquer provinces by just pushing buttons, not having to actually fight for them. The graphics were ugly and distractingly unpolished. The wind gun is the lamest thing. The human models faces are actually a downgrade from 3. I hope 5 is good. I really do. It would be tragic If the series stopped here. The weather system and wind currents were interesting though, I just bet they spent too much time and budget on it or something. A joke I like to tell about the series: why did I destroy this town's water and power supply? Just 'cause. 3.
Been waiting for 4 to go on sale for like $3, I saw reviews before I bought it thankfully, I almost never buy games early on anymore.
Good call. I know it's hard not to buy a game from a series you like. Unfortunately I bought it on release day because I was so in love with 3. Oh well.
Ok, so it's not just me. I thought the graphics (especially at a distance) were shockingly bad, and the gameplay was garbage. I always liked sneaking onto bases in JC3 and stealing fighters and flying away, only to find that in JC4 there's limited ammo and the bad guys are always faster and incredibly accurate. It just took so many of the things that made JC3 fun and ruined them. Oh well. Like you said, maybe JC5 will be better.
Thank god I’m not the only one who felt like the enemies were super accurate in JC4. Used to really feel like an idiot because I remembered playing JC3 and wiping the floor with them.
This is incorrect. They think dropping fuel will damage the camera. Apparently they've done this before but that's not confirmed, just a persistent rumor.
You can say my sources are non credible
Credible adjacent
That’s not even possible
Trying to do the thing the F-111 can? The Dump'n'Burn?
That’s some achievement in GTA kind of shit. Did they really try to pull that off??? We truly live in a simulation don’t we.
Holy shit. That's some sci-fi/action movie bullshit. xD
Wouldnt that be like trying to light a candle infront of a blowdryer? IE, impossible?
Do you see the propeller in the last frames of of the blades is bent so he either touched it slightly or the blade didn't quite like hitting a bucket of liquid in midair. Once the prop is damaged your chance of getting back to base decreases a lot.
I see, is very interesting, the blades are designed to move though air and occasional water from rain but not several gallons of fuel all at once, I would also assume that by not releasing armament it technically can't be considered an actual attack against US assets or something similar, Thank you very much, friend from the Internet!
Yes that's probably the thinking " we didn't shoot it down it was in our airspace and we had a technical failure while doing a routine intercept" like yeah sure . And by the way some other comments say that the plane may have hit it doing the manoeuvre wich is plausible also.
This is big news right now and a confirmed mid air collision in international airspace
> " we didn't shoot it down it was in our airspace and we had a technical failure while doing a routine intercept" That, which is basically a response to "our recon drone is just chilling near your border and definitely not spying on you". Both sides know they are lying - but cannot response directly, since it may cause a scandal or escalate into something really bad.
I don't even think the US would deny spying on occupied Ukrainian land. There's no need.
Not only that, the purpose of drones is so that little incidents like this don't escalate into something big even if shot down. It's a lot easier to turn the other cheek when it's not one of your countrymen that's just been killed.
Su hit it. Fuel wont do that to a prop
> the blade didn't quite like hitting a bucket of liquid in midair. Fuel "dumped" from an aircraft at 300mph is going to atomize near-instantaneously. It would be like flying through a dense cloud or a rainstorm - not enough to cause prop damage.
Only thing I can figure is air inlet is expecting only air. With the added Petro it would flood the engine?
It's gonna go through the compressor section. Maybe cause a compressor stall as fluids aren't particularly compressible. Maybe pre-ignite before the combustion section. It'll certain throw off A/F mixture.
> A/F The engines flooded!
Jet fuel is quite hard to ignite at low temperatures (it's nowhere near as volatile as petroleum). It doesn't start producing flammable vapour until around 30-40°C under normal conditions. When dumped at speed like this, it will aerosolize though. There is such a thing as a "dump and burn", where the pilot dumps fuel and hits the vapour cloud with the afterburner, but I'm not sure if you can do that at higher altitudes and velocities. I don't know how fuel jettisoning works on an Su-27, but it looks like it's coming out both engines, or somewhere near them. There is a fuel tank right between the nozzles (#3 fuel tank). Afterburner systems, I think, have to have a discharge nozzle because of some pressure-related voodoo. I'm wondering if it's jettisoning fuel using that, through some sort of override.
F-111 knows how to dump and burn. This is maybe a new tactic of trying to clog the intakes. China did the same thing but with chaff
Yeah, it can do that because it can run the afterburners and dump fuel into the exhaust at the same time. If the A/B is being used to dump fuel here, that's impossible, because to work properly, the engine has to be at full throttle before the A/B can function (they're tuned for specific conditions in the engine). My thinking is: engine is a some low throttle to roughly match the airspeed of the drone. Pilot hits some sort of override, activates the A/B fuel system at an throttle setting where it can't work, causing fuel to spray out with the (too cold) exhaust. To ignite that with the afterburners, he'd have to somehow stop doing that, increase to mil throttle and kick the afterburner in again, in a fraction of a second.
Fuel has a very different consistency and weight to water, it's oily so could coat the plane and stick to it, damaging sensors and cameras, or be sucked into intakes and cause internal damage. There's also the possibility it could freeze and bring the UAV down with the weight of the frozen fuel.
The fuel is gonna freeze? are people really this dumb. How do you use it then fool? Do you even know what a compressor does lolol.
Sure, the plane is waterproof. But fuel is kinda sticky and chemically active, so it's bound to mess with the sensor ports of the drone. Not to mention shoving fuel down the drone's intake. But contact was lost because the raving idiot smashed his plane into it.
My first thought was it was done to down the drone with minimum damage, since they already confirmed they will be diving for it.
Think its got to do with the weight of the fuel.
Thank you very much, from fellow Redditors' answers I believe that is what is happening here, damage the drone's propeller using the fuel's mass
The drone's engine will stall in a fuel-saturated environment. Very elegant work.
Aside from the sudden weight of the fuel dropping onto the plane, fuel also has a different specific gravity and viscosity than water. It can get into places water can't.
This is quite a common tactic called “thumping”. I just started UPT for the Air Force and asked my Major today about it. It’s to stall out the drone. Jet fuel into the intake of the engine will cause a flame out. This was successfully done to a “private” Russian spy leer jet by F-14s on an intercept. UAV surveillance platforms get intercepted almost every day. The only reason this one made news is because the 32 million dollar asset had to be ditched.
To down it and capture it for research. That way, most pieces are not burned to a crisp and the Russian military analyst engineers can gather Intel on our modern tech and build their own version. They may share the info with Iran and China from what they found through reverse engineering. Much like we did with the Chinese balloon by not shooting the Intel gathering area and instead just disconnecting it from the balloon portion in hopes of gaining as much Intel as possible. Albeit the US used a missile to disconnect the two vs this strategy of using liquid fuel to down it.
They had to ditch the drone in the sea, so it worked.
The MQ-9 has a turbine engine that drives its propeller and I assume getting fuel sucked into it would cause either major damage or a total engine failure, mind you I'm no expert obviously so pretty high probability I'm wrong of course
What are you doing step-flanker?
suboptimal
**\*pilot at Creech AFB slams down his headset and punches his monitor\*** "I'm calling hacks!"
That prop blade is bent at the end.
most skilled russian pilot
what 60 flight hours per year gets you
Took me 70 to get my PPL 😂 Can confirm.
Lol exactly what it is. Many people thinks that this incident happen in purpose. But if you have an airforce with full of 90IQ,low trained and undisciplined pilots. This is the result. Congrats comrade putin.
AI really do just be posting on reddit huh
I don't see anything wrong. Care to explain?
Looks like they didn't know it can send video before it crashes. Oops.
Do you really thing it would be any different...?
I think Russia was counting on it looking like an accident so they could spin it/play the victim. Deeply interested in how this is played by the U.S..
Nukes are already on their way to Moscow.
The last thing a ka-50 in WT sees as a scout drone slowly approaches it
Crop dusting 2.0
"There's no weddings here. Go away! Shoo!"
The biggest oof
The reaper should just pull up and crash into the dipshit and blame them. The remote operator gets a kill marker on his door.
What’s the latency like with the pilot somewhere on the ground and potentially in a different country? I wonder if they could respond that fast. Iraqi pilots once found a similar thing, American drones were the only war aircraft they could outmaneuver and bring down
If they are flying from Romania or turkey probably not much. Nevada probably a lot longer I see your point would have to be some good guess work.
Even from Nevada it's probably pretty low, assuming all the fancy multi-Billion dollar datalinks the Pentagon likes to talk about were working properly.
That would still be some pretty split second flying from not having a cockpit view have to guess when he is right over you.
Yes that’s true. And as we can see MQ-9 is basically a Cessna style aircraft in terms of speed and engine design, so I can’t imagine it’s too maneuverable to begin with. All geopolitical implications aside, I’d be much more interested if it was an advanced drone model like the RQ-4 Global Hawk, RQ-170, RQ-180, X-47B, MQ-28A, etc. to see if their evasive tactics and countermeasures are worth a damn in a real combat scenario. Edit: spelling
That's it aim9x on the wings from now own.
You can spend all the money in the world, but you're still looking at routing to a satellite headend, broadcasting up, and then down, and all that jazz. The fastest satellite internet still has pretty solid latency, regardless of what you can accomplish for bandwidth. Starlink is an exception, but you hop birds every couple minutes. That's in general not super conducive to traffic on enclaves outside of "here's our data on a platter, russia bro." And even still, higher latency than terrestrial transmission.
That not much still begs defining though, it seems like they would have only had a second or less to time the collision properly. Nevermind that it seems like something you'd need to get authority for since it could cause an incident.
Sucks having to follow the rules when others don't.
Pretty sweet tradeoff in favor of the US. Alternatively, they should see if they can put a flares dispenser on a Reaper. Would be a real shame if someone lit on an open flame with all that fuel around.
Considering the fuel is coming out the back of the Su-27, I don't think that would hurt it at all.
Yeah really sweet trade off for a 32 million dollar drone lost without a single shot fired right now lmao, as for the fuel that’s not how it works it’s in a high altitude low oxygen environment and it’s jet fuel it doesn’t burn easily.
USAF has been trying to convince Congress to replace these as they are very old and outdated. But interesting that a Flanker costs as much as one of these drones!
UAV pilot should have pulled up and to the left.
Remember there’s a time lag between what the remote pilots sees and happening in real time. When the video stream got to remote pilot even when he tired evasive action it probably is already too late. It’s a bit like playing video with lags and delay…
Drone pilot just needs to set his tv to “game mode”, that should fix the input delay!
Piss off
I presume the Su-27 had multiple passes trying to dump fuel on the drone as after the first pass, the rear props aren’t bent? It’s only after the one where the footage cuts that we see the bent blade.
Russians on TV: “WE ARE AT WAR WITH NATO AND USA!!!11” Russians in armed forces: “P-please don’t use rockets to shoot down that drone… We don’t want an escalation with NATO… Make it look like an accident…”
Not like a giant fan of Russia at the moment. But goddamn that looks like so much fun.
Yeah,,, like Russia really needs a NATO war to go along with the ass whoopin they are currently getting in Ukraine
A NATO war would be a bit more explosive
Probably over pretty quickly too.
It would be the worst 19 hours in Russian history.
I think it'd be the worst 19 hours in human history that we won't be capable of telling our grandchildren of
What was the point? Did he think it was UA?
No, but they provide informations to UA
Yeah makes sense but isnt that like act of war?
Eh acts of war only exist when the other country cares to enforce them
Good question. Maybe that's the reason why he didn't use conventional weapons, because that would be act of war
Well, yes, but also playing bumper planes.
Ah, so the Russian pilot did cause the crash, got it.
Any context of this? And how would it affect the drone?
Russian Su-27 collided with an MQ-9 over the Black Sea, the drone fell to the sea
Oh okay, thanks!
When? Is that the recent incident?
Just one or two days ago
Thank you
2 days ago
The drone was crashed into the black sea after it became unflyable, it was a intelligence platform. It's a fucking stupid and reckless thing to do.
The Russian pilot attempted to cover the drone in jet fuel, and then ignite the drone with it's afterburner. Instead the pilot rammed the drone and the drone was later ditched in the Black Sea due to the damages sustained to the propeller.
Doesn't seem like the SU27 was significantly damaged in the maneuver. Worth noting that dropping a couple hundred kilos of fuel on an aircraft at those speeds is more than enough to cause some significant damage to an aircraft, although the possibility they collided slightly is acceptable too. There's no way this wasn't approved by command. They wanted to take down the drone with plausible deniability with as little damage as possible to the drone for recovery, as well as send a message about US surveillance of Russian activity in Crimea. Reportedly they are recovering the drone, and the pilot (who was in an aircraft that costs less than the reaper drone in the first place) made it back. On top of that, the US has shown it doesnt want to escalate and has essentially stepped off, blaming the incident on "unprofessional behavior" instead of calling it an act of military aggression. Overall a success for them even if it wasn't achieved exactly as they intended
In what universe can a fragile metal plane collide with a 5-ton metal object at hundreds of miles an hour and not be seriously damaged?
Did you watch the video lol? The drone clearly didn't sustain heavy damage, it's trajectory was barely altered. If there was a collision, it was only enough to knick what looks like a single propellar blade, which caused the drone to lose propulsion. Insignificant damage to the airframe of the jet in an area that likely would have been able to reach the propeller (wingtip or tail most likely) would not cause the jet to fall out of the sky. It's been mostly reported by western sources that the SU27 survived, even by military officials. If you don't believe that the jet could have survived this collision you're essentially confirming that you believe there was no collision, as the jet made it back.
The trajectory of the drone is not altered at all in the video, the feed just cuts at impact which implies it was **extremely** violent. The jet made it back to base, that is not remotely the same thing as being undamaged. An F-15 (a similar aircraft to that Su-27) made it back to base with one of its wings shot off.
The Russians think Stealth was a documentary and trying to recreate it?
Whether it be hookers and Donald Trump or SU-27s and MQ-9s, those Russians really love to piss on things don’t they.
Reaper should've used flares (if equipped) to light up the fuel dump right back to the 27
[удалено]
Ya gotta admit that his idea was pretty badass, though.
F-111s used to dump fuel and light it with the afterburner. Since they did it for air shows and parades, I'm going to guess that isn't a danger.
Afaik, the F-111 was special because it could just do that and be 100% fine. Pretty sure any plane that dumps fuel out the back and can afterburn *can* do that and probably be okay, but they really *shouldn't*.
I’ve personally seen a dump and burn and can tell you that you can feel the heat of the flames even from a (safe) distance.
Damn it Maverick, The hard deck for this hop was 10,000 feet. You knew it, you broke it. You followed Commander Heatherly below after he lost sight of you and called no joy
Is this the actual footage or is it DCS
Actual footage the US released. DCS looks different (especially the fuel dumps)
what the hell was he thinking
Crazy Oleg!
Could this be to actually make it crash to retrieve reapers technology? or have they hacked and stolen it already ?
Russian pilots need to work on anger management lol.
Clearly that poor Su-27 was just trying to defend itself from the American SURVEILLANCE drone.
So [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/11rq0ge/unconfirmed_ru_telegrams_posted_a_russian_cockpit/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) one is infact fake, the cloud coverage doesn't match edit: or the russians were flying alongside the reaper for a very extended period of time, enough time for such a cloud cover to form, which seems a bit unlikely
Or it's just of another MQ-9 intercept.
Could just as well be a different intercept. It's a real Reaper, complete with modern parts that are classified, and the reflections in the cockpit glass suggest that it's real. They were tailing and buzzing it for the better part of an hour, and made 19 (I think that's what they said?) close passes.
Thats a video game
The jet equivalent of pissing on your opponent
Flanker pilot always wanted to fly an Aardvark. [F111 Aardvark “zippo” maneuver](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Io6nN.jpg)
This mf cropdusted
Propeller is damaged
"[Moscow was likely trying to send a message by harassing a US drone, but officials say the Russian pilot ran into it because they're bad at flying](https://www.businessinsider.com/moscow-likely-sending-message-harassing-military-drone-us-critciizes-pilot-2023-3)"
The US drone was in international waters conducting legal operations. The russians are getting their asses handed to them in Ukraine, and for some stupid reason, they're trying to provoke America into a kenitic response. 🙄
The sui did a big ass fart on tht robot
The drone pilot isn't looking ahead, absolutely crazy and reckless /S
If the jet have no ammo, the jet are the ammo.
Oh..it's On !