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.

What might a fuel dump do to a turboprop if a cloud of fuel vapor were pulled into the intake???

Would it be more effective than shooting a sidewinder at hot air balloon which has little to no heat signature or radar cross section???

The SU27's wing loading at max weight is 107 lbs/ft. Wake vortex would be vicious, and it's entirely possible that they used it intentionally.

Depending on the a/c, when you initiate fuel dump it GUSHES out and it does vaporize but it’s pretty much like a fire hose at first.

Can’t speak to this case but a good friend of mine was flying an A-4 on a TRANSPAC and during one of his inflight refueling episodes, the drogue leaked some fuel and due to the placement of the aircraft’s refueling probe the fuel went down the intake, exploded and flamed out the engine and it wouldn’t relight. After multiple airstart attempts he ended up jumping out and he spent a couple of days in a raft and then a week or so on a freighter.

So… could it cause an engine failure? Possibly.

Exactly! Please stop believing what you hear from MSM. Everything they report as a chorus is Bullshiit and lies!

Nav….Why’d he have to spend a few days in a raft and at sea? Wouldn’t SAR get to him immediately? Wouldn’t the tanker be close enough to see and mark it?

one would think if they let their A/C engage the prop on the drone in some way.

Russians were notorious for using their a/c props to engage control surfaces on German A/C during WW2. Seems it would take a high level of skill. Russians think differently and more primatively than most other folks in the world. If they were out of ammo, where other pilots would break off an attack, it was not uncommon to ram the German A/C with their props.

It was considered no big deal to the Soviets to sacrifice one of their A/C to bring down a German one. They don't seem to be phased by their level of losses in the Ukraine nowadays. Besides, the Soviets were being given A/C by the USA and Britain, some used and obsolete and many brand new. The P 39 and the later P 63, most of all of their production went to the Soviets...The P 39 was considered obsolete by the USA. The Russian pilots loved American A/C. They had radios in them for communications where most Soviet A/C did not.. They were more robustly built, and in ramming attacks on Luftwaffe A/C, they held up and brought the plane home even if damaged. The way the Soviets treated them, due to lack of maintenance, they had a short service life.

When I first heard the report, with an explanation of damaging the prop on the drone is what brought it down, figured they are still making it doctrine left over from their WW 2 days. Its also been heavily reported the sad mechanical shape a lot of their ground equipment is, and they don't seem to care., and seemed unphased by the number of losses and even crew members that have been lost. They have mobile crematoriums with them to even cremate their dead right there in the Ukraine. They are taking people off the streets, impressing them into service in the Ukraine also with little training ahead of time, just like their winter war in 1939 & 40 against Finland. Read and/or look up Finnish losses in manpower alone, and what the Soviet losses were in 5 months of combat. Same with German losses on the Eastern Front in WW 2 vs Soviet losses in manpower alone, much less in equipment.

If the same pattern still exists today, they'd sacrifice an A/C for a drone of the other side. How high were their losses in the 70s in Afghanistan?

consider some of their historical patterns from the last 70 years in wars.... and the pilot got lucky the SU 27 didn't go down with the drone...probably a senior more experienced pilot by Russian/Soviet Standards... just a suggested thought to consider also.

I thought the story was just that- got close and collided? I don't get which story is BS.

Video of the collision

Granted this would be hard to verify that it's the one in question from this week. But then again - how many videos of a Su-27 clipping a Reaper after dumping fuel over what appears to be water could there be to show instead?

Kinda goes to my initial point all along - dude was hot dogging and hit it on accident.

Proof of what I and a couple others have said...

Where was the Drone's base? It had to have had a military objective. What was it? Was it there to target Russian military for Ukraine attack? Why are we engaged in a war we have no reason to be in or do we? What is there that is so sensitive in Ukraine that we must risk World War to protect? Inquiring minds want to know.

Senator Lindsey was on the air 2 days ago. He said that if Russia took down one of our planes, we need to take down 2 of theirs.
Hello, WW3. Good job, Miss Lindsey.

One would think there would be a self destruct device. Unless we wanted Russia to have this intel.

There were no SAR assets anywhere nearby and there’s lots of water between Hawaii and the mainland. At that time, the tanker would have been a KC-135 and they would mark the spot, communicate the problem and get folks moving that way but it just takes time.

Another buddy and his RIO in a Tomcat, operating off the boat, got lost 😳! and ended up jumping out when they ran out of gas. They spent three days in their rafts before they were found BY ACCIDENT after the ship had called off the search….presumed dead. I think it was an S-3 on a surface search mission that just happened to fly over and see them.

When you look at the video there’s no way the pilot could see the drone when he got within 500’ or so. I don’t know why they felt like that had to pull up from low to high to get fuel on the drone. Better to have just approached level from dead 6:00 and a few feet above it or “thump” it by pulling just in front of it which would make the drone fly through the dumped fuel.

Brings context to those obits "died in a training accident".

Kinda surprised he didn't hit the blowers, like the Australians did with their FB-111's. Quite a show.

No, an incredibly STUPID and reckless one..

Good to hear we were good for SOMETHING!

Apparently the collision was hard enough to knock the yellow stripes right off those props.

That was a prohibited maneuver in the Tomcat. Huge ! flames.

In the Tomcat, the fuel dump switch was locked out with weight on the wheels and the dump mast was between the tailpipes. I was in the fuel pits at Oceana, refueling after a hop one day as one of our sister squadron jets was taking off. BUT the fuel dump switch was on and as soon as he lifted off there was a huge plume of flames 🔥😳

My first thought was, “We’re stuck here in the fuel pits hooked up to a refueling hose and he’s going to crash and we’re gonna die!”

After a few seconds I realized that they had left the dumps on and got on tower frequency and yelled. “your dumps are on!” Just a few seconds later the flames went out. Whew!!!

Russians are anything but primitive. But they value technological simplicity, where we value complexity. Each have their virtues and their places.

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.

Yeah Rocky, pretty poor over the nose visibility. He only got in that position because he was trying pull up behind the drone, losing sight in the process.

Had he done it using the “thump” method, flying slightly below it, he could have pulled up in front of it, thereby keeping the drone in sight until he passed it. Even then it’s a judgement call on when to pull up and cause a near miss.

The way he did it the pilot got just a teeny bit too close 😁

Not a pilot - but is that "pull up" basically a flare to turn the entire plane into an air brake and slow TF down in the hopes of dumping the fuel on the drone? Or is just maneuvering?

It seemed to me that the pass they chose to make was to keep the drone in sight as long as possible, but it was still a poor choice. Your thought to pass just below and then pop up would have been better - either to thump or to create a long fuel dump trail. Look at the fuel trail created in the first pass as the drone makes a shallow right turn; it's an impressive cloud. Plant that along the drone's heading by passing under and then climbing 50 feet, and you've probably blown the drone's engine.

Teal, he was just trying to miss. And failed. See my post above.

All I know is that it was environmentally unfriendly, dangerous, and highly unprofessional.

Helpfull description. I was thinking the drone probably operates at slow enough speeds that it would be tough for a fighter to not just blow by it. Maverick could probably go inverted and hang out just a few yards above it while giving it the bird but he's been to top gun.

Bb