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

Wingtip vortices could have damaged it, as well as a transonic shock wave.

Though fouling the engine with fuel was clever.

Them damned Russians are tricky. Knocked the yellow stripes right off of those props.

Now they're going to have to remake the video and add the yellow stripes... 🤣🤣🤣

I see the stripes?

Not after that Russian plane hit the props and knocked them off you don’t.

Any hotdog throttle jockey knows the procedure is supposed to be "Fuel dump- - - -afterburner- - - -instant blowtorch!" Singe the feathers off the wings and the bird will fall out of the sky!

Didn’t figure a different camera angle would flummox you as much as it does jag.

They didn't knock the strips off. Look at the video carefully and you will see that in the first pass that the only time the stripes are VERY visible is when the sunlight hits them on the bottom of the rotation. On the second pass, the drone is positioned to where the sunlight is not shining them, but if you slow the video way down you can make them out a bit.

Some of y'all just want to make a conspiracy theory out of anything.

Conspiracy theory? Here is one for you. Pull up a picture of an MQ-9 and explain how those props got hit without touching any of the rest of the airframe.

The MQ-9 was also maneuvering pretty abruptly as well apparently as that it is going a completely different direction on that second pass than it was on the first.

You do realize it's 2 separate passes correct?

First pass is close.

2nd pass hits the drone and the screen goes dark/grey/gone. You have no idea that the props were or weren't hit without the airframe because visuals disappear after the hit - on pass 2

Uke deep diving experts to recover the drone : https://twitter.com/GraphicW5/status/1636330880154181633?t=C5KS4rAdqVym97Y4ja93Bw&s=19

No, they don’t. They show the damaged props minus the yellow stripes.

Multiple cameras and angles are apparently a bit much for some here.

Same camera. Same camera angle.

But different heading and different lighting.

Navlav8r, one second's thought and you'll realize why making a pass from behind and slightly above is really dumb. The drone would have been completely out of sight below his nose the whole time. Hence the attempt to approach from below and pull up. Badly timed, however.

On the second pass the prop is in the shadow of the fuselage or wing. Different direction? The prop is in the shadow of the fuselage or wing; that’s why the tips aren’t as visible on the second pass. The two passes weren’t back to back and the drone had simply turned.

I’m guessing the Russkie’s right wingtip or right horizontal stab hit the prop. Looks like two prop blades are damaged.

As I said it’s clearly going a different direction. Look at the sun on the water in the first pass. But I’ll be damned if I can make out stripes on the props even if I slow it down and look hard. But it really doesn’t make much difference. The drone’s transponder was off and it was gathering intelligence that we have admitted we supply to Ukraine. They would have been justified in making a gun run on it.

Appears one blade tip is curled, second blade is feathered...
Pentagon spokesman on the noon news said there's nothing of value to be recovered from the wreckage...

Yup. Look how the sun hits the ventral fin in each pass.

I agree that it likely a right wingtip strike, judging from his pullup. It made a pretty good thump to knock the camera offline like that.

Just a rough guess, but from that altitude, they probably had 15 minutes of glide time to first clean their shorts back at the control center, and then take steps to wipe/disable everything of intel value. I have no idea if they have a destruct package on parts of it - that's not likely, though.