Curiouser and Curiouser

Below is a map (courtesy of The Guardian) released by the Russians of the path of the Su-24 shot down over Turkey or Syria today:

As you can see, this version of the flight path shows no violation of Turkish airspace by the Russian jet.

It differs significantly from the radar track made public by the Turks:

So someone is putting out disinformation. The question is: Who?

Numerous commentators are pointing out the parallels between today’s events and the shooting down of Flight MH-17 over Ukraine. However, in this case there is no percentage for the Russians to have engineered such an outcome. Either they made a mistake, and are trying to cover for it, or the Turks deliberately fudged the data when they created the radar map.

Take your pick. I have no idea which is more likely.

34 thoughts on “Curiouser and Curiouser

  1. The last was just after the USSR became the People’s Republik of Russia or whatever they are. They both suck.

    • And don’t forget the Polish plane a few years ago, carrying the top political leadership from Poland.

      • EXCUSE please. I had several cousins killed in the Katyn forrest in the 1940s. Also an Aunt and Uncle, BOTH doctors.

        Plus the Ukrainian Nazis killed hundreds of my Polish relatives in Eastern Poland in the area of the Dukla Pass in the Carpathian Mountains when the NAZI Germans were building up their defenses against Soviet tanks in that area. One Uncle was an officer in the Polish Army and was captured by Nazis near Warsaw and spent years in Auschwitz and German slave camps inside Germany before begin liberated by the American Army.

        In regard to that POLISH AIRCRAFT… The Russians warned the Polish pilot that it was TOO foggy to land where they wanted to land. Those on the plane wanted to land there, so they WOULD NOT be late to the memorial service.

        The pilot was told by POLISH govt. officials to land ANYWAY as he did NOT want to be late to the memorial event.

        THE plane crashed and the investigation BY POLISH officials determined that the pilot was “BULLIED” by the Govt. officials AND a military leader to LAND in the FOG and the were ALL destroyed.

        THE RUSSIANS were not to blame.

        LOOK IT up yourself. Do not tell tall tales.

  2. Assume that they did stray into Turkey, intentionally or otherwise.

    The Turks would have known full well that it wasn’t an attack on them.

    To shoot it down and then immediately start bleating for NATO makes me conclude that it’s the Turks that are up to something, and the Russians the “victims”, innocent or otherwise.

  3. I’m waiting to see when or if Vlad takes over as leader of the “western” world. Currently that position seems empty.

  4. According to the Russian map, their jet was supposedly operating only 1 km from the Syria-Turkey border. That’s equivalent to “we don’t care about the border at all”. No pilot flying a fast military jet will be able to pay attention to such a short distance during an intensive combat mission.

    It looks like the pilot has made a bombing run near the town called Jisr Ash-Shughur, down the black twisted line shown on the map (most likely a railroad pass near the town mentioned). Jirs Ash-Shughur is presently under Al-Nusra control, so it’s plausible. After the attack, pilot was egressing towards the Turkish border and then made a sharp turn to the left, in order to avoid it. Typical egress speed for such a jet is 400-500 knots, it takes only 4-5 seconds to cross one kilometer at such speeds. The radius of the turn looks far too small for such a high velocity – a military jet would have to fly impossibly slow (or be impossibly maneuverable) to make such a tight turn.

    Therefore, it’s most likely that the Russian jet has crossed the Turkish border during egress and that the Russian map was doctored with an impossibly sharp turn in order to conceal the transgression. It was almost certainly the “heat of the battle” thing and not an intentional provocation. Also, if the Russians are operating so close to the border, such transgressions have probably happened before. Like I said, in combat and at such speeds, it’s very difficult to pay attention to one kilometer – a pilot would have to keep a very close watch on a very precise GPS (or GLONASS) display in order to keep up such a minuscule distance. Needless to say, there are many other important things to do in combat and attacks on ground targets are mostly done visually, so it would be almost impossible to accomplish both.

    • Thank you very much for your informed analysis. Those, like me, who can’t fly jet aeroplanes (I flunked the port is left, starboard is right, stern is … component) now have a better understanding than they would otherwise.

      • Julius, you omitted “Stick go forward, ground get closer. Stick come back, ground go away”!

      • Turkish map looks like a printout of raw radar data. Such data is often erroneous – weak, cluttered or garbled radar reflections produce inaccurate or even completely false positions, especially when the monitored aircraft is flying close to the terrain. Those erroneous positions are often “sticking out” on the charts. If you interpolate all the dots displayed on the Turkish map into one median trajectory, the maneuvers are in accordance with the flight envelope of a military jet (like Su-24) and the radii of the turns are approximately the same as the radius of the wide turn on the Russian map.

    • 17 seconds according to the letter the TURKS themselves wrote to the UN today!!

      As Erdogan said back in 2012, small incursions should not cause a WAR!

      Those TURKMEN sold hundreds of YOUNG CHRISTIAN WOMEN AND GIRLS into sexual slavery into TURKEY!

    • Can yo help with a possible answer, please? It’s not possible from the Turkish radar to tell how big the land mass is over which the Russian jet is said to have strayed. Let’s say the Turkish radar map is accurate. Where would the aircraft be at the 17-second timescale when action was taken, and why would the Turks say they were warning the Russians for five minutes beforehand? I don’t understand this.

      • That’s probably not the first Russian action near the Turkish border. Very possibly, such incursions have happened before and Turkish aircraft were in the air 24/7, guarding the border continuously. Most likely, they started to transmit warning messages on emergency frequencies (121.5 and/or 243 MHz) as soon as the Russian aircraft were first observed on radar, after departure from Latakia. That would explain the five minutes window reported in the news, because Su-24 would need approximately that much to reach Jisr Ash-Shughur, which is only about 70 km from Latakia.

        The incursion trajectory through the Turkish airspace is approximately 3.5 km long. To cross that distance in 17 seconds, an aircraft would have to fly at a speed of approximately 410 knots. That’s a typical egress speed for a Su-24 aircraft in climb.

  5. If I may add, on the Russian map you can see another turn that was made by their jet (to the southeast of Jisr Ash-Shughur). That turn is much wider and that’s precisely how a typical jet turn looks like (i.e. you can’t fly at high speed and make tight turns). Compare it to the second turn (near the crash site), the radius of that second turn is at least five times smaller – impossible.

    We can only speculate why the Russians have decided to attack the town from the east. Most likely, most of the insurgent’s anti-aircraft defences are located west of Jisr Ash-Shughur (towards the frontline). In such a situation, it’s tactically sound to bypass the defences and attack the target from a less defended angle.

    • Let’s see the TURKS stop those RUSSIAN and IRANIAN CRUISE missiles from OFF SHORE… I would pay good money to see the Turks blasted into KINGDOM COME!

      Me and all of Greece!

        • I’d like a return to the 1919 situation where the Greeks held sovereignty over the city and region of Smyrna by the “Great Powers”. The re-instalment of the 1919 proposed “Pontic Republic” – Greeks and Armenians – along the southern coast of the Black Sea would be an excellent idea. It would additionally make a great deal sense for Greece to hold sovereignty over the entire Aegean littoral of the Anatolian peninsula not merely Smyrna. That way if one wants to visit the Ancient Greek cities of Miletus, etc one doesn’t have to enter a Muslim country to do so.

          In short it is high time the de facto territorial gains the Turks obtained – they drove out the Greeks, Jews and Armenians who formed ethnic urban majorities, collectively and in some instances such as Smyrna and the three biggest three cities on the Black Sea coast, individually, dozens of coastal cities and towns and had been there for millenia* – after World War 1 were reversed.

          * Unlike the Turks , who were not indigenous but invaded and progressively conquered the Anatolian peninsula from the distant north-east. Ever wondered why there was a Soviet Republic and now a country called “Turkmenistan”?

    • That is not true. You can gain altitude very quickly right past the bombing run in order to lose speed, then flip and go the other-way using the much slower airspeed (near stall velocity) to effect a much tighter turn. Obeviously if you keep the same altitude and speed your turn will be much wider.
      The real question is why is a Russian jet so easy to shoot down? What does it say of the Russian airforce and the level of pilots and electronics on the Russian fighters? And if Russian fighters are so vulnerable, how good is their air-defense system?
      Harking back to 1982, the densest air-defense systen in the world, far denser than the Warsaw Pact front, was deployed by the Syria-Russian complex vis-a-vis the Israeli airforce. Its was totally dismantled, totally jammed with no Israeli jets hit within a few hours.
      Israel will be happy to see the best the Russians can field close by so as to learn to defeat it around the Iranian nuclear sites.

      • The maneuver described by yuval (near vertical climb followed by a sharp turn) is possible, but the aircraft is very vulnerable to heat seeking surface-to-air missiles during such a steep climb-out, so it’s very rarely used in combat situations. Also, the aircraft would lose much of the gained altitude in such a sharp turn at a near stall velocity, but the reports apparently agree it was hit at an altitude of approximately 18 000 feet (180 is also displayed on the Turkish map, that’s almost certainly the altitude of the target in hundreds of feet).

        In my opinion, it’s very unlikely that the Russian aircraft could have been so high, after such a sharp turn. That altitude (18 000 feet) could have been reached only with a straight, full throttle climb-out without any turns whatsoever and that type of egress is much more common in real combat situations.

      • To further elaborate on yuval’s reply, I think it’s a bit unfair to say that the Russian aircraft was shot down easily. Comrade Putin probably sent them to Syria with very little or no support, so they are operating there without any electronic warfare or early warning capabilities. On the other side, Turkish Air Force is well-equipped and is probably harassing them all the time with their own electronic warfare units. With proper air and ground support, the Turkish missile guidance systems could have been jammed and pilot given a better chance to avoid the attack. A lone aircraft, without any support, will always be an easy target.

  6. Erdogan, Obama, McCain, Cameron and all the other little people with the hi-jabs and the feminist follies. I get a sense of at least some integrity from Putin. So called western higher education and the equal opportunity liars turned out to be lousy losers. Imagine an unstable ex-con and a community organizer from a radical anti-western “church” getting to preside over the dhimmi world and dreamy almost sexually overtired photo ops with a Muslim turkey. How passively we all accept occupation.

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