Again?
Yeah. Can’t tell whether this is the second one or if this is a week old news.
shot trying to escape with a nice jet maybe
Interesting thought. Is there any indication that this or the other Su-35 shot down by friendly fire were potential defectors? The Russian army has displayed such astounding incompetence at different times throughout the war, my immediate assumption was that these were just two more, but the idea of defection seems not unlikely for much the same reason…
Possible, but how would the air defence know? I mean, know to a degree of confidence that they’d risk shooting down one of the most valuable assets? It’s not like Su-35s grow on trees.
they would know because there is very tight security against exactly that… because defection of pilots is always a particularly outsized risk for them… they are probably better prepared to shoot down their own aircraft than the opposition… same with their front line troops…
it’s just life there… the generals sell off ammo and fuel to pay for yachts and gambling debts… their hotshot pilots all want a fat paycheck for their jet, and to go live in Serbia…
I figure they may be able to compare flight plans with actual course and tell when a pilot is diverging from the planned route. Based on how they are diverging, it may suggest that they are trying to book it to Ukraine? Not sure if this is actually possible, but it’s the best way I can imagine them being able to tell, other than the pilot just disobeying immediate orders and heading for the border, which would be pretty obvious.
One of their more advanced and irreplaceable jets. Hopefully there’s also one less terrorist in the world.
Is this new, or the aircraft short down a few days ago? I’d believe the latter.
Couldn’t these pilots lie about a mechanical emergency to justify a route change, then get low and fast until they are safely inside Ukraine? What would the ideal processes be to defect with an aircraft like this that can go Mach 1+ at sea level? I’m legitimately asking, I don’t know much about military aviation.
I also wonder how they would get out of Russia and into Ukraine without being shot down by Ukraine, if they weren’t aware of what you were doing. I’d imagine the most dangerous part of the flight would be the front line areas where Ukraine and Russian air defense both would be targeting you?
