Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A very skillful pilot NO?

I never flew a jet but I would think the Russian pilot took a big chance at bringing down his own very expensive aircraft by "clipping the props" of the US spy drone.

If, indeed that really happened.

As I said, I don't know if it would be easy or maybe it happened unintentionally. Can anyone who flies planes shed some light on the difficulty of diverting a drone without severe risk of damaging or crashing your own aircraft?

One thing for sure we will never get the real truth, one way or another, from our Government.

Don’t confuse luck with skill. It’s possible that the wake vortex from a close proximity high g maneuver damaged the drone.

Thanks Dan that would be my best guess. I was looking at pictures of the drone and I think it'd be hard to clip the propeller.

Look up "Gorgon Stare". The drone was so equipped and now the Russians have it, in all likelihood. Data from the GS cannot be transmitted, it is too big. I has to be downloaded from the drone itself. Now the Russians will know exactly what the drone was looking at.

Worth the risk of losing a Su-27?

Could have been several things.

He could have just gotten too close and touched the prop. The Russkies will not allow anyone to find out.

There were some reports that the Migs were flying in front of the drone and dumping fuel. If it was ingested in the drone’s engine that might cause an explosion or compressor stall and/or flameout. I would think they have a way to restart the engine but ???

The Migs may have “thumped” the drone by passing it below it and abruptly pulling up in front of it creating turbulence and possibly making it depart from controlled flight. I know a guy that got to discuss this maneuver with the Admiral after he did it in front of a Soviet a/c. That’s how he got his call sign…. Remember name of the rabbit in Bambi? 😁

The Migs could have flown in front of a drone’s wingtip so that their wingtip vortices might create enough turbulence to cause the drone to lose control.

There’s no no way that we serfs will ever know.

No clue how the vis is out of a Su-27 but the Mig29 I sat in - horrible so it's also possible dude was just trying to get close to it and simply "lost" where he was in relation and clipped it on accident.

Since all the sensitive electronic equipment , radar, GPS, and other valuable stuff is in the front nosecone, it is doubtful this was done on purpose or he might have lost his flight controls and damaged one of their remaining Migs ...

The official line is that the drone was "clipped" and had fuel dumped on it. What kind of a pilot would let that happen, Russian or not?

Do we now believe all news as fact. How do we know it wasn't shot down?

Max and cruise speed of the MQ-9 are too very different things. It probably cruises at closer to 200. At altitude, a SU-27 probably can't fly that slow at all, and would be very hard to control if it could.

My guess is that the SU-27 came up from behind or quartering on an intercept path, and failed to correct quickly enough to miss the drone. Impact would most probably come on something on the belly of the SU -- engine inlet leading edge or one of the pylons.

When flying formation, an intercept path is one where the craft you are joining stays stationary in your windscreen. It can be very difficult to judge the relative closing rate until you are quite close, especially with different types of craft. You aren't flying nose on; the other craft is off to the side and you are flying towards it at an angle. Think "leading" it like with a shotgun. Before you realize it, it is RIGHT DAMN THERE and you have to rather violently push or pull the stick to miss. Pilots universally pull. That would make any impact come to the bottom of your plane, as I described above.

Thanks Rocky. Glad someone who's BTDT chips in on this sort of stuff.

Maybe a pilot that DID NOT want to start a shooting war with the US. Or it could be an act of aggression that could be played off as an accident. One would think shooting down one of our drones in international waters would be an act of war. Running into one maybe not so much. Either way a message was delivered.

Rocky gives a good idea of the situation. In the Navy we call it “collision bearing” or constant bearing, decreasing range. Any time you’re on collision bearing, it’s hard to see closure. That could be head on, beak to beak, or driving up someone’s smoke trail or joining from one side.

Coming up from behind we call it a “running rendezvous” where ideally you fly a parallel flight path with some excess speed, then as your lead reaches about 11:00, throttle back so you only have 5-10 knots when the lead is at 10:00. Then a little wing dip toward the lead gives a little heading differential so the closure is pretty slow and controllable. As a flight lead that’s one of the scariest things you have to sit through at the end of an ACM hop because we do them at unknown speed….it’s the wingman’s job to get there whatever it takes.

As long as the lead a/c )in this case, the drone) is moving aft on the canopy with relative motion, by definition, you’re not on collision bearing and you won’t hit him.

Escorting a slow mover can be a little tricky and sometimes you just have to fly “S-turns” to stay behind them or use 1/2 flaps which burns more gas. It was a pain in the butt escorting Iranian P-3s, Russian “Mays” or “Coots” in an F-4 off Iran.

There's now a YouTube vid purportedly showing a Russian jet making several flybys of a drone, taken from inside the Russian cockpit. It may be of this incident or some previous one, there's no way to tell. But each pass the Russ gets closer and closer. It tells us very little except that it is apparently their practice to "cowboy" it up to some degree. Do that enough and sooner or later you have an ohschidt.

You can't get that close without colliding, the story is complete bullshit. There may have been an incident, but that ain't what happened.

You bunch of conspiracy theorists. I don't know why Dans and Navs are so tight lipped about this well known maneuver.
Sometimes they are too close for missiles.

Thought this was about the Redbull pilot landing a plane on a skyscraper heli-port…

What’s the stall speed of a Su-27 vs recon speed of a drone? I highly doubt they were able to match speeds to pull off any fancy wing tipping or prop sheering maneuvers.

The fuel dump was curious to me. The fuel vaporizes almost immediately. The speed disparity would seem to make it a difficult task as well.

Insightful as always RR!
Thanks

If you know anything about the reapers, there is plenty of video, but it's not likely to be released anytime soon.