Unbelieveable

[phantom82]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cdrj6xkkvxko

 

Firstly i do not mean to offend or cause any upset to anyone .

 

I watched this and thought with all the fake news going around is this real and i know incidents like this happen alot and go unreported

 

But it got me thinking of a pilots mentality ,training, self discipline etc etc. Now i cant even  fly an aircraft on an  xbox lol............. and if someone overtakes me in my car in what i would deem stupid and dangerous i used to want to and have chased them and berated them, now i`m older i don`t................. but one other thing my Citroen C3 Aircross isn`t armed with a canon and sidewinder missiles 😱

 

I wonder what happened after the video stopped

[Captain Glumbo]

The US pilot caught up with him and then inverted over the top (of the presumably Mig-29) and gave him the finger (and took a polaroid).

 

[phantom82]

Aah ,so your the famous MIG insultor😁

[kiseca]

Not a lot the US pilot could do really. Can't shoot at him even though the Russian pilot had put himself in a perfect position to get shot, can't pull him over and tell him off. Only options are to ignore and continue escorting the Bear, or keep maneuvering to keep the idiot where he can be seen - which may be seen as aggressive and could escalate things to the point where he actually can start shooting.. or he could retaliate and try a close flypast of the Russian fighter, and I think we all know how that ends. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

The Tu-22s used to fly along near the  Scandinavian territories to encourage jets to come up and intercept them. Once intercepted, they'd basically fly away from the land and stooge around and lead their escorts off until those escorts were at bingo fuel and had to turn and land. The Tu-22 would then follow from a distance for a while to see where they most likely landed and from that they tried to learn more about where the Scandinavian (Finland mostly, I think) airforce strength was based.

Edited Wednesday at 11:48 AM by kiseca

[Robin-42]

It’s the difference between a professional and a cowboy. China famously pulled a similar stunt and actually hit a P3 because he misjudged it. The P3 managed to make an emergency landing-in China. After the video, nothing happened. The US pilots would protest on the guard channel, continue the intercept and fill out the paperwork when they landed. Diplomatic protests would be raised. Rinse and repeat. 

[pigsty]

1 hour ago, Robin-42 said:

China famously pulled a similar stunt and actually hit a P3 because he misjudged it. The P3 managed to make an emergency landing-in China. After the video, nothing happened.

That was partly because it was an EP-3E sniffing around China's radio comms.  Everyone felt it was better treated as a no-score draw, although the Chinese were pretty unreasonable about making the US take the plane apart to remove it, and about charging the crew for board and lodgings.

 

A more obviously stupid one was when a Russian Su-27 managed to run into a Norwegian P-3B back in 1987.  Oddly enough, that produced some of the best pictures of the Flanker up to that point.  But, in terms of the thread title ... all too believable, I'm afraid, and a long-standing bad habit.

[spruecutter96]

To be frank, this seems like a continuation the traditional "sabre-rattling" that has been going on between the two sides for many decades.

 

At it's most extreme, the Soviets shoot down a Korean, civilian aircraft and consistently claim that it was a military aircraft, on a spying-mission. Unfortunately, neither side seems to learn anything from such tragic incidents. 

 

As much as I understand the need for military might in our unstable and deeply-flawed world, it is a great shame that these mistakes are made.

 

The Russian pilot was taking a MASSIVE risk and it could have ended in a disaster. 

 

Cheers. 

 

Chris.  

[kiseca]

I found that Tu-22 story I related earlier and didn't get the details quite right:

 

"Experienced Tu-22 crews would often play their own games with intercepting NATO fighters. On one occasion, a Norwegian F-16 intercepted a Tu-22RDM-2 and formated on the Russian aircraft. The Blinder crew had been tasked to find out which airfield the F-16 had come from. The northern latitudes were divided into several zones, depending upon the state of the ice in the winter. The first zone consisted of detached icebergs, further north there was a zone of drifting ice floes and further north still there was the region of solid pack ice. The Norwegian fighters were only allowed to fly beyond the area of drifting ice if they had sufficient fuel. The experienced Tu-22RDM-2 crew exploited this knowledge and turned north. In order to remain with their target, the fighters were obliged to go in the same direction, rather pointlessly using up fuel, and after a short time they had to turn back towards their base. As soon as the airborne operator reported that the fighters had turned away, the Blinder turned in the same direction. The fighters could no longer cover their target, since they only had enough fuel to get back to base, so the F-16s virtually led the Tu-22 back towards their airfield, where the Russian aircraft was able to conduct its reconnaissance. (Clearly this was from a stand-off location over the sea and not over the base itself.)"

 

 

[IanC]

Shocking video, but it made me think of Robert Shaw in the 'Battle of Britain' - 'takatakataka'... 

 

Don't US pilots 'check six' anymore?

 

Yes, I know, it's far more complicated than that and he probably knew he was there etc etc.

[Mike]

That’s probably not as close as it appeared, but I bet it made the pilot sit up and take notice.   It’s a good job pilots are a little more restrained in their revenge urges than your average car driver though, as we could all be mingling in radioactive clouds by now

[exdraken]

2 hours ago, kiseca said:

so the F-16s virtually led the Tu-22 back towards their airfield, where the Russian aircraft was able to conduct its reconnaissance.

 

Credit where credit is due!

What about a second pair of F-16s?

[hairystick]

18 hours ago, Robin-42 said:

China famously pulled a similar stunt and actually hit a P3 because he misjudged it. The P3 managed to make an emergency landing-in China. 

There were "learning outcomes" from that incident... The main one being that getting rid of sensitive equipment from the P-3 was not possible to do.

[kiseca]

12 hours ago, exdraken said:

Credit where credit is due!

What about a second pair of F-16s?

Um, the author didn't elaborate 😄

[exdraken]

the question to me i those cases is:

what are pilots supposed to do? what is their escort? mission?

 

if it is about hindering the other aircraft to keep on doing wht it is doing, what shell they do just short of using armament?

the one who gives in earlier looses.... I assume the risk of an accident is part of the equation,

 

I suppose that is always quite delicate to judge without knowing the whole story ....

[kiseca]

That is the question indeed, and that's why it reminded me of that Tu-22 story. Whatever odd things they are doing, there's often method to their madness (and I guess sometimes there's just madness to their method) but they'll get experience of how the other side commonly reacts, and someone will come up with a way to exploit that. Those reconnaissance Tu-22s were often photographing shipping and the Norwegian F-16s started flying underneath them to block the view of the cameras, or one would fly in front and below to block the oblique camera while their wingman flew behind and helped them line up. Thus, I suppose, the Tu-22s would take home a bunch of useless extreme closeup photos of F-16s.

 

That flypast in the OP could just be a cowboy pilot and as dumb as it looks, but it could be a calculated gamble to learn something or to try influence the American pilots into a particular response, maybe make them pay less attention to the Bear and get more distracted by the escorts, or maybe the Russian pilot now knows he can get half a second in a perfect firing position behind the F-16 and the Vipers won't react (or he now knows how they reacted), and after that he did the dumb flypast so everyone's focussing on that stunt instead of what he was doing a few seconds before. Or... who knows? Maybe all of those ideas are stupid - I'm not an ex fighter pilot after all - but just because I haven't thought of an intelligent motivation behind the stunt doesn't mean that noone else has.

 

I used to think that all those Bears getting escorted away from coastlines by F-15s, F-16s, Phantoms, Tornado F.3s and whatever else were just wasting their time seeing if the defences happened to be awake, but clearly they were learning a lot more than I was giving them credit for while in the West it seems the only messages we got were some photos of a Russian bomber surrounded by Western fighters... look, the big bad Russians can't hurt us, we'll catch them before they get near the mainland. Etc.

Edited Thursday at 04:39 PM by kiseca

[Lord Riot]

Looks unprofessional to me, regardless of any aircraft handling skills.

 

Obviously the US jet cannot engage unless attacked. I’m hoping the pilot or their wingman would have been checking six and aware of a massive Sukhoi bearing in on them though.

 

Thankfully no harm done, but wouldn’t it have been a shame if that Russian cowboy had crashed into his own Bear 🤭

[Hunker]

Pretty sure the US pilot knew the Sukhoi was where he was, though perhaps he didn't figure it would pass quite that close. Both sides know the rules so there wasn't much point in taking evasive action, it could have even made it worse as he could have pulled or banked straight into the Russians path. When he flicked the plane after the Russian I must admit a perverse thought of hoping he would send a few cannon shells his way as he was lined up perfectly!

[Alan P]

Childish and pathetic. Just a cocky VVS jock fannying about with F-16s after all the hype about Ukraine's procurement, trying to score meaningless points. 

 

A lot of good it'll do him, if you're going to showboat, put the other guy into the killzone, not yourself 😒

[Giorgio N]

Nothing surprising here, there have been several close calls of that kind over the last few years and even more during the cold war era.

The Russian pilot here went a bit too far, although I believe the video likely makes the two aircraft look closer than they were.

Have to say that during the Cold War generally there were tacit rules that were mostly followed, all to prevent accidents. Reports of encounters with Russian aircraft over the last few years seem to show a more aggressive stance from the Russians.

In general anyway I'm rarely shaken by videos like these, as said it's nothing surprising. What is a bit more surprising is the reaction of many: this is seen (and rightly so) as dangerous manouvering while other similarly dangerous stunts are seen with admiration for the courage of the pilot...