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Kilkrazy wrote:A pistol is not a militarily useful weapon anyway.

Wasn't there an American pilot once who shot down a Japanese fighter airplane with his pistol while hanging from a parachute? I remember hearing such an awesome story.

 notprop wrote:

jhe90 wrote:Russia has deployed s400 capable warship to defend its interests.

400km range at longest it seems or 250 miles roughly.

That's a wide defense envelope.

Civilian airliners beware?

Civilian airliners have no business being in warzones.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Hopefully the Russian ships won't accidentally sink. They are a little rusty. Their last action fired cruise missiles into...Iran.

They are sending the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. It is most assuredly not rusty.

Cruise missiles landing in Iran was a completely unproven story by Western media. Do you believe everything they say? Regardless, American cruise missiles have an average failure rate of about 20% (Harpoon missiles had a rate of only 50% at the initial deployment ), so watch for pots and kettles.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wasn't there an American pilot once who shot down a Japanese fighter airplane with his pistol while hanging from a parachute? I remember hearing such an awesome story.

His name is Owen J. Baggett. In 1943, his B-24 was shot down by a Zero and the crew bailed out. At a point after firing on the crew as they descended, the Zero opened its canopy and came close to Baggett. Close enough that he pulled his 1911, fired four times, and hit the pilot in the head. He was captured after hitting the ground, but his captors actually treated him slightly better than other prisoners (still pretty brutal though) because even they couldn't deny his raw badassery

P.S. He survived to see the end of the war and died in 2006.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Cruise missiles landing in Iran was a completely unproven story by Western media. Do you believe everything they say?

They just reported what a military intelligence press release said because it's news and reporting news is what media outlets do. They also reported that Russia and Iran said it didn't happen (because that's also news), and the people who released the initial release promptly shut up because they had red on their faces (not really reported but the whole topic vanished almost over night and the silence was all anyone really needed ).

It's seems that it's Russia's fault these planes got shot down and they failed their pilots IMO.

They breached Turkish airspace several times in previous months. Were warned what would happen if they did so again, then did it again.

Immediately before hand they were ordered to change course and head south over the emergency channel 10 times, I'd still like to see this independently verified.

I think its becoming clear that Russia's military has a severe lack of competency and should not be operating in the area unsupervised.

Russia can't get its story straight, first it was shot down from the ground. Then it was never in the air space, then it was there only 17 seconds. Now it's "there were no warnings given." Sheer incompetence.

This jumble of misinformation is typical of Russia at the moment.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

I'm sure shooting down more jets that are fighting terrorists in Syria will be beneficial!

That would be a change for once, Russia shooting down military airplanes. Can their systems actually do that or do they have to recode the targetting system?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:

I'm sure shooting down more jets that are fighting terrorists in Syria will be beneficial!

That would be a change for once, Russian shooting down military airplanes. Can their systems actually do that or do they have to recode the targetting system?

Your attempt at humor failed, albeit in a hilarious way.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:

I'm sure shooting down more jets that are fighting terrorists in Syria will be beneficial!

That would be a change for once, Russian shooting down military airplanes. Can their systems actually do that or do they have to recode the targetting system?

Your attempt at humor failed, albeit in a hilarious way.

Well it has been a while.

Survived pilot: "I will stay in Syria and revenge for my died commander".

 obsidianaura wrote:
It's seems that it's Russia's fault these planes got shot down and they failed their pilots IMO.

They breached Turkish airspace several times in previous months. Were warned what would happen if they did so again, then did it again.

Immediately before hand they were ordered to change course and head south over the emergency channel 10 times, I'd still like to see this independently verified.

I think its becoming clear that Russia's military has a severe lack of competency and should not be operating in the area unsupervised.

Russia can't get its story straight, first it was shot down from the ground. Then it was never in the air space, then it was there only 17 seconds. Now it's "there were no warnings given." Sheer incompetence.

This jumble of misinformation is typical of Russia at the moment.

The "shot down from the ground" was a nice way to deescalate the incident and if Turkey had STFU it would have worked. And the "17 seconds" comes from Turkey, the territory that was crossed is 2km wide which a plane will cross in a few seconds.

 Ketara wrote:
The point being primarily that when you set out to kill people in a foreign country from a distance, sometimes they get to do it back. And when they do, you have no moral high ground to stand on.

You know, since I read this last night, I've been thinking about it, and ultimately I truly can't understand why it's widely accepted that a guy dropping bombs on dudes with AK-47s from thousands of feet up is a fair fight, but those same dudes shooting back at that guy is unsporting, somehow. How that got codified into international treaties is a mystery to me.

 Ouze wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The point being primarily that when you set out to kill people in a foreign country from a distance, sometimes they get to do it back. And when they do, you have no moral high ground to stand on.

You know, since I read this last night, I've been thinking about it, and ultimately I truly can't understand why it's widely accepted that a guy dropping bombs on dudes with AK-47s from thousands of feet up is a fair fight, but those same dudes shooting back at that guy is unsporting, somehow. How that got codified into international treaties is a mystery to me.

its kind of my point. I'm playing a bit of a devil's advocate, admittedly. It just feeds from my view that "honorable" fighting usually means "my tech and tactics are fine, but yours aren't."

A RT reporter embarrasses the Department of State spokesman.

I don't know what's more embarrassing. The fact that a reporter tried to pretend that "defending airspace" has to equal defending from an actual eminent attack (and that unless Russia wants to attack turkey they should be free to fly through their airspace at their leisure), or the fact that this was posted as an example of "hah, RT embarrassed Obama".

 CptJake wrote:
A RT reporter embarrasses the Department of State spokesman.

Um... okay. If you say so.

All this talk about shooting down aircraft that technically posed no threat reminds me of an old incident that happened back in the 80s where (Soviet) Russia shot down a Korean Air Boeing 747 that had strayed off course en route to Seoul, Korea from Alaska. The Soviets said they were just defending themselves from a "deliberate provocation" by the US. That's right, they deliberately shot down a civilian passenger jet in their airspace. I'd say Russia has little ground to stand on when their aircraft get shot down after straying into another country's airspace.

 d-usa wrote:
or the fact that this was posted as an example of "hah, RT embarrassed Obama".

Who's RT? I hope it isn't Rogue Trader like Dakka's glossary keeps trying to suggest.

 d-usa wrote:
I don't know what's more embarrassing. The fact that a reporter tried to pretend that "defending airspace" has to equal defending from an actual eminent attack (and that unless Russia wants to attack turkey they should be free to fly through their airspace at their leisure), or the fact that this was posted as an example of "hah, RT embarrassed Obama".

Isn't that an extension of their current doctrine to defend ethnic Russians?

 d-usa wrote:
I don't know what's more embarrassing. The fact that a reporter tried to pretend that "defending airspace" has to equal defending from an actual eminent attack (and that unless Russia wants to attack turkey they should be free to fly through their airspace at their leisure), or the fact that this was posted as an example of "hah, RT embarrassed Obama".

I don't think I mentioned a fething thing about Obama. The fact the spokesman was unable to handle the RT reporter is embarrassing for him. He could not/did not clearly make the distinction you so easily pointed out. She then continued to ask questions that got him stumbling and repeating talking points which he should have been able to address and shut her down.

You can't seriously think he did a good job handling her, can you?

 CptJake wrote:
You can't seriously think he did a good job handling her, can you?

I think her question was embarrassing. It's the sort of thing a Journalism 101 student would ask if given the chance.

Regardless of the legality, it was an absurd escalation shooting down a plane for a 17 seconds violation.

 Breotan wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
You can't seriously think he did a good job handling her, can you?

I think her question was embarrassing. It's the sort of thing a Journalism 101 student would ask if given the chance.

I don't disagree, but she is a known entity and always asks questions of this sort. And the same guy always calls on her and then flubs up the responses. So, the lesson she learns is she can continue to ask this type of question and the DoS will continue to field them, then be unable to address them.

Part of the problem with answering the question is probably the fact that he, and she along with everybody else, knows that we fly into other countries all the time ourselves. So you have to walk that a line that everybody knows is BS.

 Tyran wrote:
Regardless of the legality, it was an absurd escalation shooting down a plane for a 17 seconds violation.

How long were Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor?


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 d-usa wrote:
Part of the problem with answering the question is probably the fact that he, and she along with everybody else, knows that we fly into other countries all the time ourselves. So you have to walk that a line that everybody knows is BS.

Don't have a press conference on it or refuse to comment. There's nothing in the US Constitution requiring it.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Regardless of the legality, it was an absurd escalation shooting down a plane for a 17 seconds violation.

How long were Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor?

Honestly, I don't know and I fail to see what it has to do with this incident.

The Russians have been repeatedly violating Turkish airspace. When that happens, your planes get shot down.

Thats how it works.

 Tyran wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Regardless of the legality, it was an absurd escalation shooting down a plane for a 17 seconds violation.

How long were Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor?

Honestly, I don't know and I fail to see what it has to do with this incident.

Single plane in airspace 17 seconds, in known war-zone against a third party that nobody likes, leaving said air-space, chased down and intercepted by fighters already in the air.

vs

"massive deliberate air raid by hundreds of planes, warships, bombing your most key naval base containing half your nation's most powerful weapons for several hours, from a nation that you were already almost at war with'.

...yeah, totally it's the exact same thing.

 Breotan wrote:

Who's RT? I hope it isn't Rogue Trader like Dakka's glossary keeps trying to suggest.

Russian propaganda "news" programme.

 Killionaire wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Regardless of the legality, it was an absurd escalation shooting down a plane for a 17 seconds violation.

How long were Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor?

Honestly, I don't know and I fail to see what it has to do with this incident.

Single plane in airspace 17 seconds, in known war-zone against a third party that nobody likes, leaving said air-space, chased down and intercepted by fighters already in the air.

vs

"massive deliberate air raid by hundreds of planes, warships, bombing your most key naval base containing half your nation's most powerful weapons for several hours, from a nation that you were already almost at war with'.

...yeah, totally it's the exact same thing.

it was during the cold war.

A lot of people like to point to the American/Russian "one violates the other's airspace, the other intercepts peacefully" dynamic when looking at this incident, and I'm not sure why. This is wildly different. We don't intercept, spike each other, get in formation, and have the WSO display the latest Playboy centerfold on the edge of a warzone. That's a peacetime thing where everybody's sure the other side's not going to do something dumb. Things work a bit differently when everybody's dropping gak and there's a legitimate threat of getting shot down by at least two different parties to the conflict.

Turkey protested Russian incursions to the UN multiple times over the past few months. They warned the Fencer to turn back multiple times, and there's no question the Russians knew they were getting spiked. You can only let guys violate your national boundaries so many times before you need to splash them if for no other reason than the necessity of maintaining sovereignty over your territory.

I wonder if part of this shock on the part of Russia that someone actually stood up to them.

LordofHats wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wasn't there an American pilot once who shot down a Japanese fighter airplane with his pistol while hanging from a parachute? I remember hearing such an awesome story.

His name is Owen J. Baggett. In 1943, his B-24 was shot down by a Zero and the crew bailed out. At a point after firing on the crew as they descended, the Zero opened its canopy and came close to Baggett. Close enough that he pulled his 1911, fired four times, and hit the pilot in the head. He was captured after hitting the ground, but his captors actually treated him slightly better than other prisoners (still pretty brutal though) because even they couldn't deny his raw badassery

P.S. He survived to see the end of the war and died in 2006.

Awesome
Now that is a war hero.

obsidianaura wrote:It's seems that it's Russia's fault these planes got shot down and they failed their pilots IMO.

They breached Turkish airspace several times in previous months. Were warned what would happen if they did so again, then did it again.

Immediately before hand they were ordered to change course and head south over the emergency channel 10 times, I'd still like to see this independently verified.

I think its becoming clear that Russia's military has a severe lack of competency and should not be operating in the area unsupervised.

Russia can't get its story straight, first it was shot down from the ground. Then it was never in the air space, then it was there only 17 seconds. Now it's "there were no warnings given." Sheer incompetence.

This jumble of misinformation is typical of Russia at the moment.

There is no misinformation. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that the jet did not stray into Turkish airspace, and released the tracking information they had on the aircraft's course as proof. The navigator, who survived also said that as far as he knows, they did not stray into Turkish airspace, and that the attack was completely unexpected and unprovoked, with no warnings received. This has been the story since the beginning.

The "17 seconds" is actually the Turkish, not the Russian claim. "shot down from the ground'' I have never heard before.

Also, regarding airspace violations, Turkey has violated Greek airspace 2224 times in 2014 alone, so you can hardly say that Russia was 'asking for it'. Airspace violations like that are not at all serious and happen quite frequently.



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Seaward wrote:
A lot of people like to point to the American/Russian "one violates the other's airspace, the other intercepts peacefully" dynamic when looking at this incident, and I'm not sure why. This is wildly different. We don't intercept, spike each other, get in formation, and have the WSO display the latest Playboy centerfold on the edge of a warzone. That's a peacetime thing where everybody's sure the other side's not going to do something dumb. Things work a bit differently when everybody's dropping gak and there's a legitimate threat of getting shot down by at least two different parties to the conflict.

Turkey protested Russian incursions to the UN multiple times over the past few months. They warned the Fencer to turn back multiple times, and there's no question the Russians knew they were getting spiked. You can only let guys violate your national boundaries so many times before you need to splash them if for no other reason than the necessity of maintaining sovereignty over your territory.

That is quite frankly, ridiculous. How was the Su-24 on anti-terrorist operations in Syria a threat to Turkish sovereignty if it strayed into Turkish airspace for 17 seconds? It did not do anything agressive whatsoever, it just crossed a tiny 2km broad part of Turkey that protrudes into Syria for 17 seconds while on mission close to the border. It barely left Syrian airspace and immediately was back in it. (or so the Turks claim)


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 Sigvatr wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

Who's RT? I hope it isn't Rogue Trader like Dakka's glossary keeps trying to suggest.

Russian propaganda "news" programme.

Propaganda is stretching it a lot. It is a english-language Russian media station that is for a large part funded by the Russian state. Don't expect stories on there to be impartial, but it I wouldn't call it propaganda either. Apart from the official government point of views, they usually give a lot of attention to opposing viewpoints as well, which propaganda doesn't really do. They also cover a lot issues that are sensitive in Russia or to the Russian government (which actually makes them less propaganda-like than some independent media in Russia) altough any criticism of V. V. Putin is reportedly strictly off limits.


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 Breotan wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
A RT reporter embarrasses the Department of State spokesman.

Um... okay. If you say so.

All this talk about shooting down aircraft that technically posed no threat reminds me of an old incident that happened back in the 80s where (Soviet) Russia shot down a Korean Air Boeing 747 that had strayed off course en route to Seoul, Korea from Alaska. The Soviets said they were just defending themselves from a "deliberate provocation" by the US. That's right, they deliberately shot down a civilian passenger jet in their airspace. I'd say Russia has little ground to stand on when their aircraft get shot down after straying into another country's airspace.

Firstly, Soviet Russia did not have an army since the founding of the Soviet Union and the end of the Civil War. The Boeing was shot down by the Soviet Union, not by (Soviet) Russia. The Soviet Union was very different from the present-day Russian Federation. Secondly, the Soviets believed they were firing on an US spy plane. They did not find out it was a civilian airliner until it was too late.


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 Ouze wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The point being primarily that when you set out to kill people in a foreign country from a distance, sometimes they get to do it back. And when they do, you have no moral high ground to stand on.

You know, since I read this last night, I've been thinking about it, and ultimately I truly can't understand why it's widely accepted that a guy dropping bombs on dudes with AK-47s from thousands of feet up is a fair fight, but those same dudes shooting back at that guy is unsporting, somehow. How that got codified into international treaties is a mystery to me.

I imagine it is a lot of victor's justice. The Allies after ww2 were probably fed up with the Germans killing bailed out Allied bomber crews and thus wanted to prevent it in the future.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Secondly, the Soviets believed they were firing on an US spy plane. They did not find out it was a civilian airliner until it was too late.

At first they denied everything. It was only later that they made the claim of thinking it to be a spy plane. Even that story didn't hold up because the profile of a Boeing 747 is quite unique and did not match any reconnaissance aircraft used at the time. Also, from the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

The Commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, General Valery Kamensky,[33] was adamant that KAL 007 was to be destroyed even over neutral waters but only after positive identification showed it not to be a passenger plane. His subordinate, General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air Base and later to become commander of the Russian Air Force, insisted that there was no need to make positive identification as "the intruder" had already flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula.

There is also this statement from the pilot who shot down the Boeing 747.

In a 1991 interview with Izvestia, Major Genadi Osipovich, pilot of the Su-15 interceptor that shot the 747 down, spoke about his recollections of the events leading up to the shootdown. Contrary to official Soviet statements at the time, he recalled telling ground controllers that there were "blinking lights".[37] He continued, saying that "I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."[37] He furthermore did not provide a detailed description of the aircraft to his ground controllers: "I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane; they did not ask me."[35][37][note 3]

So, the RUSSIANS - the commander on the ground and the pilot - shot the aircraft down because it crossed over their territory and they simply didn't care what the truth was.

At least Turkey issued warnings to the Russian fighter. That's more than the people on Korean Air flight 007 got.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-25/russia-says-turkeys-attack-jet-was-planned-provocation-ankara-moves-tanks-near-syria
This from wikileaks via zero hedge."Journalists: Learn to do basic maths. Look at Turkey's statement to UN: 1.15 miles / 17 seconds x 60 x 60 = 243 miles/hour = 391 km/hour"

something doesn’t add up about the story Ankara is telling. According to a letter Turkey sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the 15 members of the UN Security Council, the Russian warplane, flying at 19,000 feet, “violated Turkish national airspace to a depth of 1.36 miles and 1.15 miles in length for 17 seconds.” If you do the math on that, it means the Su-24 was basically flying at stall speed.