If those SU-27 pilots show up around here in San Diego, this ex-Navy pilot is buying the drinks.

Posted by: Chazz | Mar 16 2023 21:43 utc | 103

Posted by: Figleaf23 | Mar 16 2023 15:35 utc | 34 and Posted by: Bill Smith | Mar 16 2023 21:34 utc | 101
I’ve only been able to find two videos of the drone incident – one taken by the pilot/co-pilot of one of the Su-27s and the other the short one from the Americans showing two Su-27 passes and a momentary loss of video. Is there a second, longer video from the US?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 16 2023 22:07 utc | 105

Also still a little perplexed about how the propeller of the drone could be bent in the direction of rotation. Has anyone seen a good explanation for this? I seriously doubt that enough fuel was dropped to as dense as needed and even that would seemingly defy the laws of physics. Even the tailhook/exhaust nozzle strike wouldn’t explain it being bent in that direction, would it? Sorry to bother the thread with minutiae but that kind of thing is of much interest to me.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 16 2023 22:11 utc | 107

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 16 2023 22:07 utc | 105
The US only released that two pass video. It is said that there were 19 passes in total. But we have only seen 3. One from the Russians and two from the US.
As a guess, the Russian pilots tried dumping fuel, missed a number of times or didn’t get the desired effect while getting closer and then got too close.

Posted by: Bill Smith | Mar 16 2023 22:27 utc | 109

Posted by: Dalit | Mar 16 2023 22:34 utc | 110
LOL, I made a similar quip in yesterday’s thread. The reason the US took so long to release it was that they first had to de-classify video edit the footage.
didn’t get the desired effect while getting closer and then got too close.
Posted by: Bill Smith | Mar 16 2023 22:27 utc | 109
Still, I can’t see how the blade would get bent in that direction.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 16 2023 22:40 utc | 111

@104 Richard Steven Hack

Meanwhile, the only issues Greenwald actually cares about are veganism and animal rights – two issues that are literally bullshit.

I am a subscriber to Glenn Greenwalds journalism. In two years did not receive any post on veganism nor one on animal rights. Just great take-downs of Establishment Propaganda, and analysis of censorship by Big Tech in cahoots with the three letter agencies.

Posted by: Ronald Portier | Mar 16 2023 22:50 utc | 113

What kind of prop is on those drones, Is there a chance the heat from a jet engine can bend them?
Seems like flying a jet into a large object would be way too risky.

Posted by: OohCanada | Mar 16 2023 22:57 utc | 115

Posted by: Ronald Portier | Mar 16 2023 22:50 utc | 113
You should follow Greenwald on Twitter – there’s a lot more on animal rights there. In any event, my point stands, as your post proves. All he cares about is MSM censorship and MSM personalities. He was late to coverage of Ukraine and almost never discusses US foreign policy in general.
Frankly he’s boring now given the high stakes over Ukraine and Taiwan which he mostly ignores.
In my view, the only journalist worth following these days is Aaron Mate and the Grayzone. They were a little late on Ukraine, but have been covering the neo-Nazis there for some time, if not as a main issue. Aaron “made his bones” on Syria. He’s one guy who seems to have a certain amount of intellectual integrity. Can’t say the same about Greenwald.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 16 2023 23:05 utc | 117

Trolls showing up on the drone issue…on cue…

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 16 2023 23:07 utc | 119

When is an impact not an impact? . . .When videos go “grainy,” that’s when.
. . .from the Stars and Stripes
Video shows Russian jet colliding with US drone

STUTTGART, Germany — Video footage released Thursday by U.S. European Command shows a Russian fighter jet buzzing past a U.S. Reaper drone above the Black Sea multiple times, before colliding with the aircraft.
The 42-second video depicts a Russian Su-27 aircraft trailing an unmanned MQ-9 aircraft that was operating within international airspace. The incident, which occurred Tuesday morning, involved two Russian Su-27s, one of which struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to bring the drone down in international waters.
The video was recorded by a camera angled at the rear of the surveillance aircraft, which captured the incoming Russian fighters dumping fuel on the drone as it passed on two occasions. The video then goes grainy after the second pass, indicating some kind of collision. . . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Mar 16 2023 23:28 utc | 121

Western journos have become novelists. Simple as.

Posted by: HERMIUS | Mar 17 2023 0:26 utc | 123

Posted by: OttoE | Mar 16 2023 22:50 utc | 114
Show me the proof for the submission of target information.
Circumstantial evidence is more than sufficient in this case.
– means: check
– motive: check
– opportunity: check
A weapon with the sole purpose of providing military intelligence to a hostile party in active conflict was found within an active war zone.
No further proof is required.
However, when the Russians recover the drone, decrypt (or simply copy) all the communication history from the drone (some of which will be lying unencrypted in the various buffers, caches and memory registers scattered among the various control units on the drone), and this “proof” you speak of is revealed, then would it convince you? Of course not.
Day is night and night is day to those who fear the light.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 17 2023 1:02 utc | 125

Can’t say the same about Greenwald.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 16 2023 23:05 utc | 117
Before one ascends to the Godhead as you have done Richard, learning and awakening occurs in stages.
Hating animals and vegans is pretty low on the scale though, maybe you missed a couple of lessons on your way up?

Posted by: K | Mar 17 2023 1:09 utc | 127

Expecting the nyt to stop doing what it does is akin to insanity – what reason would they have to stop it is the reason they exist and the means. The problem is the people who refuse to see that. Are we going to express disapointment that Lindsay Graham does not think it is time to seek peace, as well?
Yes, children, the nyt exists to promote the agenda of the wealthy and influential. Did you think the mak money from subscrptions? Now can we move on?

Posted by: jared | Mar 17 2023 1:36 utc | 129

There will be no Ukrainian Spring ofensive.
Ukraine is on the ropes and the knockout punch will come in a few weeks.

Posted by: Anton Gorbatow | Mar 17 2023 1:46 utc | 131

“Make it sing, make it dance, but above all make it up”. I don’t remember who said that about the ‘press’; sums it up for me tho’.

Posted by: Red | Mar 17 2023 2:20 utc | 133

Interesting that this last weekend, one Greta Thunberg deleted her tweets from 5 years ago that based on a leading (yet still unnamed) climate scientist, humanity will end in 5 years. The press ran with it. She was the millennial messiah, the 16 year old guru child who was wise beyond her years. Acclaim (and money, especially money) followed.
Of course 5 years later, humanity hasn’t ended, but it has taken a giant step backward, and with nothing to do about using fossil fuels.
And just today, I heard the David Bowie song “Five Years”. A good song, from a good album. He wrote that song after hearing the then popular proposition that the earth’s resources would be depleted, due to massive overpopulation in five years. The press at the time had many articles on this philosophy. Sorry, I can’t recall the leader of that cult.
The point is that many in the press will simply run with whatever sounds good, and will “sell copy”. Whether it is right or wrong is immaterial. They know many in the audience won’t remember anything in 2 years. Trends, fads, the key is to be in the front of them for (used to be) eyeballs, but now are clicks.

Posted by: BroncoBilly | Mar 17 2023 2:38 utc | 135

Our source reports that literally everyone is already trumpeting about the spring-summer offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Everyone knows that the Western lobby demands this.
According to our data, the plan will be something like this:
The Armed Forces of Ukraine will wait for a drought, when the water in the rivers will fall (a hint of the Dnieper) and at that moment will try to strike at the Kherson-Kakhovka-Nikopol-Zaporozhye direction. There is an option that the arc will end at the eastern edges where the Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions touch.
Now the APU has one problem. Lack of manpower for such a wide maneuver. Mobilization breaks down, as there are almost no people left who want to go to die.

https://t.me/legitimniy/14959

Posted by: Down South | Mar 17 2023 3:01 utc | 137

Bankova leads Ukraine to famine to accuse the Kremlin of another famine – source.
Colleagues, you are right that for Ukraine the grain deal was situationally an excellent stream of replenishment of the budget. Having sold stocks worth billions of dollars, but not caring about tomorrow.
The strategically massive and uncontrolled export of grain from the country threatens that, as usually happens in our country, we will get food shortages and signs of famine, which, as we understand it, will occur due to the actions of the Office of the President, but Zelensky will want to push it onto the Russians, whom he will accuse of that they staged Holodomor 2.0 again.
Here’s a hack.
For Ukrainians, this is bad news, as they are hostages of the situation and those “guinea pigs” in the big game.

https://t.me/legitimniy/14962

Posted by: Down South | Mar 17 2023 3:04 utc | 139

Speaking of media lies etc:
Buddhist Scholar Graeme MacQueen does deep dive into 9/11 and other false flags in occupied USA in a book entitled “The Pentagon’s B-movie Looking Closely at the September 2001 attacks.” The author’s blurb:

Suppose our imaginations can embrace the possibility that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by elements in the U.S. government. In that case what do we do next? There is no mystery. Once the imagination stops filtering out a hypothesis and allows it into the realm of the possible, it can be put to the test. Evidence and reason must now do the job. Imagination cannot settle the question of truth or falsity any more than ideology, morality, or “common sense.”
—Graeme MacQueen, 2017

Conclusion of the introduction at https://edwardcurtin.com/graeme-macqueen-the-indispensable-9-11-writers-latest-book/ :

In conclusion, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how Graeme uses the concept of imagination as a probe to understand how it can be used to manipulate images by propagandists, particularly through moving images, but also how it can be used as a first step in undermining those official narratives. In this regard his castigation of leftists — Noam Chomsky Alexander Cockburn, Chris Hedges, et al. – and leftist media for their acceptance of the official lies of the JFK assassination and September 11, is significant. These people, by their overt or covert support of the government’s propaganda, have been key cogs in its success. Graeme writes:
Indeed, much of the Western left leadership and associated media not only trusted the FBI while ignoring Furtado, Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly and Fidel Castro; they also, through silence and ridicule, worked to prevent serious public discussion of the 9/11 controversy.
Among the U.S. left media that kept the silence, partially or wholly, are:
Monthly Review
Common Dreams
Huffington Post
Counterpunch
The Nation
The Real News
Democracy Now!
Z Magazine
The Progressive
Mother Jones
Alternet.org
MoveOn.org
Thus all these leftists, no matter what they say in their defense, bear great moral responsibility for the so-called War on Terror, the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, the deaths of Muslims, etc., all of which emanate from the insider attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. With leftists like these, the CIA’s courting of “the compatible left” (a term coined by the CIA’s Cord Meyer), begun in the 1950s, has achieved its greatest success. The pacification of the liberal/left bourgeoise has been extremely successful and continues to the present day.
There is no need for me to tell you more about the material in this great book. Just read it. As an adjunct to Graeme’s fundamental book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, this work tears off the veil of lies that has become the normative order for so many over the past few decades.
Whether this work frees many from the official lies or not, it is clear that Graeme has fulfilled his destiny to set us all free, if we so choose.
He pulls no punches and shows how September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks are an integrated inside job, serving to reinforce each other. You can ask no more of anyone.
He is an exemplar of a beautiful human being and a writer of profound importance.
This collection confirms that.

The ebook address:
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Sep11PentagonsBMovie/Contents.html#ToC
Note: Have not read yet, but don’t believe the book’s main thrust is anti-left particularly, this was for whatever reason a point the author of the introduction thought worth stressing at the conclusion of his piece. (Perhaps because many of their readership leans left?) In any case, given his background as a Buddhist scholar, expect he has done a very good job of digging into details and exposing many media lies, the warp and weave of which increasingly determine what most people think is going on in the world, and therefore what world it is they think they live in. (Sad!)

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 17 2023 3:10 utc | 141

From the postscript written by Dave Ratcliffe, an excellent few paragraphs about how the Intelligence networks use chaos to maintain their hegemony over the US body politik:

Today’s (2020-2023) ongoing three-year psychological operation Fear and Chaos takes things a step beyond the 2001 scenarios, implementing what Vincent Salandria explained over a half-century ago in 1971:
[S]ecret elitist police organizations such as the CIA do not thrive on peace, democracy, and a contented and informed people. The power of intelligence agencies increases in direct proportion to the degree of sickness of a nation. A healthy and united people can localize the cancer of a power-usurping intelligence agency and eventually extirpate its malignant cells from the nation’s political life. Therefore, the intelligence apparatus which killed Kennedy has a need to keep our society in turmoil. It has—in order to maintain its power—to generate a high degree of chaos. Chaos is required to make a people willing to accept such strong medicine as is administered by the secret police in order to restore order and to stabilize a disintegrating society. It takes an acutely sick society to be able to accept as palatable the terrible cure—totalitarianism.
The relentless 24/7 print, broadcast, and digital “programming” by corporate empire state press organs is a compelling and deadly soporific for humanity. Throughout my life, I am increasingly driven by a need to understand how our world actually operates. Not the fantasy projections of how and why things are the way they are which the system of corporate governance hands down from on high, but rather the living, genuine past that informs the present.

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 17 2023 3:20 utc | 143

The whole plan is bonkers. If they try it, they’ll run right in to heavy Russian forces and major Russian fortifications that Russia has been building for the last several months. It will be a mass slaughter that will make Kherson look like a barbeque.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2023 3:24 utc | 144
The much touted spring offensive is mostly for political purposes. As you note, militarily it will be a disaster. Sooner or later there will be a coup if these losses for no military value continue.

The conflict between the military and the office continues to grow, reaching the public plane.
The office of the President is trying to monopolize the entire vertical, making everyone obedient vegetables who must blindly implement the political situational decisions of Bankova. This leads to losses and irrational use of manpower and equipment in the army.
The next crisis may be brewing against the backdrop of the Bakhmutov meat grinder, when the Yermak/Zelensky plan fails and many interesting things begin to emerge. Many will start talking. That’s when the crisis in the state apparatus will intensify.

https://t.me/legitimniy/14953

Posted by: Down South | Mar 17 2023 3:47 utc | 145

Scorpion @141 & 143–
David Ratcliffe’s website I discovered in 1996 along with his Prouty collection. I explored it deeply but don’t go there as much I did 20+ years ago. There’s a very large amount of material archived there some of which is very illuminating outside of politics. This portion of the site I explored extensively at the time, Earthdance‘s copyright date gives its age away. From Sahtouris I graduated to the late Lynn Margulis who proved the existence of symbiosis and its role in evolution. Margulis’s book Slanted Truths can be downloaded for free here. Microcosmos and Symbiotic Planet can be checked out from that site as can some of her other writings. And as I said, the LifeWeb portion is only a small corner of ratical, a site every barfly should have bookmarked.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 17 2023 4:57 utc | 147

@ karlof1 | Mar 16 2023 16:20 utc | 44
Thanks for that important piece.

Posted by: too scents | Mar 17 2023 5:29 utc | 149

William Gruff @ 47
Posted by: circumspect | Mar 17 2023 5:44 utc | 150
Like most things, it’s not “either/or.” There is very little binary in the world, especially when dealing with humans (cue the transgender haters).
Some Americans voluntarily swallow the BS because it means the US keeps them in jobs that is the only thing they know how to do. An increasing number of Americans who don’t have good jobs or any jobs at all are starting to distrust what they’re told, at least about the economy. Most Americans are ignorant of foreign policy issues and can’t find major countries on a map.
The real problem is that people in most countries are too busy trying to survive the dysfunctionality of their country to concern themselves about foreign policy until their country is invaded or otherwise suffers from those foreign policy failures.
And the real problem below that is most people believe in the state because most people are too weak, uneducated and incapable of fending for themselves in a society which is organized entirely around the state.
And the real problem below that is…they’re human. And thus barely functional at surviving at all, because their cognitive abilities are weak and easily derailed by emotions. “Civilization” has rendered this situation vastly worse over the last 10,000 years.
There is only one solution to this overall problem. I won’t bother discussing it here as it’s off-topic. Eventually I’ll deal with it on my Substack which is why I have a Substack.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2023 6:11 utc | 151

Sorry to all who answered me, but 1) the video of the propeller blade being bent in the opposite direction is not an optical illusion – none of the other blades appear as such and the speed of those blades at the time of (or after) impact of rotation isn’t fast enough to cause issues with fps digital video equivalents. I’ve been on turboprop passenger planes, including some top notch ones flying into Hill AFB, UT and when the blades appear “bent” it’s all of them. Uniformly.
Something else is going on with that video. No way a fuel dump (whether 900x denser than the air at that altitude or not) caused a blade to bend forward rather than backward. My bet is that the American video has been manipulated. Perhaps incompetently and in contradiction to the story that came out immediately. They took a whole day or more to release it for a reason.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 17 2023 6:28 utc | 153

Regarding whether USA Americans believe everything they are told:
Where is the personal incentive to doubt? You just get in trouble expressing doubts, you can’t change anything, 99% of the time you can’t use your skepticism for personal benefit. I have a stake in knowing the truth about Ukraine, because I have ties to Kyiv, so i need to make plans, so i need to know what the future holds. But for those with no personal stake in Russia or Ukraine or other countries nearby (Moldova, Georgia, Poland, etc), why bother questioning the mainstream view? Your time and energy would be better spent in other ways.
And this goes for other issues. 99% of the time, straying from the herd costs you more than it benefits you.

Posted by: Revelo | Mar 17 2023 8:08 utc | 155

I have yet to see my first convincing Russian influencing item.
It gives one pause to think that such a ubiquitous meme, which is paraded daily by MSM and politicians in Europe & US alike, can be launched without a single substantiating exhibit for the court.

Posted by: Webej | Mar 17 2023 8:57 utc | 157

Note that US operators obviously stayed in contact with, and and maintained command over, the drone throughout. They had time and opportunity to turn around.
Thanks for your “official” take on matters. How are things in Ramstein ?
https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/important-judgment-germany-obliged-to-scrutinize-us-drone-strikes-via-ramstein/
In March 2019, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster, Germany, ruled that the German government must take action to ensure the US respects international law in using the Ramstein Air Base………………The government appealed the decision. In November 2020, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, overturned the previous decision. It argued that German diplomatic efforts would suffice with regard to possible issues relating to international law. The plaintiffs submitted a constitutional complaint.
https://www.ecchr.eu/fileadmin/Q_As/QA_Drones_Yemen_Nov2020.pdf
The transfer of data that is used to control the drones occurs via Ramstein. First, fiber optic cables route data from the US, where the drone pilots are stationed, to Ramstein. From there, data travels via satellite to the drones in the relevant operational area. Similarly, data coming from the drones, including real-time surveillance photographs, is routed back to the operations teams though Ramstein. The curvature of the earth means that it is not possible to establish a direct connection between the US and the drones flying in Yemen and neighboring countries. The only US satellite relay station within the range of the operational areas is at Ramstein. US drone attacks are thus impossible without Ramstein.
In addition, Ramstein hosts one of five centers where enormous amounts of data are collected, assessed and passed on to the drone operation teams. This makes Ramstein the biggest hub for the global drone program outside the US.
or as they say – Paul Celan or Punk Band “Slime”. ——–der Tod ist ein Meister aus
Deutschland

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Mar 17 2023 9:00 utc | 159

@ Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 17 2023 6:28 utc | 153
My bet is that the American video has been manipulated. Perhaps incompetently and in contradiction to the story that came out immediately. They took a whole day or more to release it for a reason.
First, the Reaper is designed for military operations and not intended to operate among crowded airline traffic or anywhere near it.
I am sure this video has been manipulated in a way that will show RF SU-27 as being aggressive. It is also stated that it is a cut-up of events that took place over the 40 minutes since the interception.
It has no timestamp on the drone’s camera, while it also has erased speed, heading, pitch and roll indicators that are usually shown on a downlink’s monitoring screen.
Drone’s cam(s) pod is on an active steady-cam gimbal, so it is not really shaking or moving much.
I am also pretty sure it is not the only camera on board with a downlink to a home base as this article in Wikipedia claims it is essentially 368 five-megapixel smartphone cameras clustered together and peering through four telescopic lenses.
It should give almost 360° half-spheric view. A real-time latency is about 1.5 seconds. It outputs gigabytes of data.
On the prop issues, it might be very well bent from a collision with a fuel mass – it is air push type and not designed for water propulsion.
And sure, it could also be bent by the SU-27 tailbone that is between the two engines, but I doubt that there was a collision, as USA wants to claim and us to believe.
It is most probably from a jet blast – at that spinning speeds and jet output pressure power it can be like prop hitting a brick wall.
I think such drone has, at least for crucial systems, an auto-destruct feature. Also, all those critical systems have anti-tamper devices that explode, fry or melt its components.
What I am a bit suspicious is that it could be a “cuckoo’s egg” event where such drone is deliberately offered to draw attention from something else more critical. Or a possible techno-deception, where false electronic systems could be offered.
We do not really know anything, but assuming possible reasons is a healthy approach.
Soon something else will happen and this drone will be forgotten.

Posted by: whirlX | Mar 17 2023 9:09 utc | 161

Slovakia to send 14 MIGs to Ukraine
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-17/slovakia-will-send-13-soviet-era-fighter-jets-to-ukraine
Poland to send 4 MiGs to Ukraine
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/03/16/poland-could-launch-mig-29-deliveries-to-ukraine-within-days/
“The Polish Air Force has between 11 and 19 MiG-29s in its fleet, according to the president.
Duda said Poland’s military will replace the Soviet-made fighters with FA-50 aircraft the country’s Ministry of National Defence ordered from South Korea last September. Warsaw signed two contracts to buy 48 light attack aircraft, with the first 12 jets to be supplied in 2023, and a further 36 aircraft between 2025 and 2028.”
Also:
“Last December, Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Rastislav Káčer declared the government was preparing to transfer an undisclosed number of MiG-29s to Ukraine in coordination with the United States.
Meanwhile, Slovakia is awaiting the delivery of 14 F-16 Block 70/72 fighters that are to safeguard the nation’s airspace, with deliveries expected to begin next year.”

Posted by: Melaleuca | Mar 17 2023 10:18 utc | 163

BBC World service had a Scottish thus reliable reporter telling us at 4am from Bakhmut that for every 3 Ukie dead, RF take 7 losses. Oh, and Wagner are all ex-convicts who pillage and rape. Presumably viagra is being saved for the next stage of posh English outrage.
How did we ever get to believe a Scottish accent but a not a BBC accent ? Total tripe from start to finish.

Posted by: Giyane | Mar 17 2023 10:26 utc | 165

@whirlX | Mar 17 2023 9:09 utc | 161
@Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 17 2023 6:28 utc | 153
At the outset of the SMO, Russia announced an ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) for the area 200 km South of the Crimea. To enter this region requires pre-filing an IFR (Instrument flight rules) plan, adhering to the filed plan, maintaining a functioning altitude reporting transponder and obtaining permission from the duty controllers. Without satisfying any of the requirements, the US drone violated the region as their aircraft frequently have. This justifies an intercept, and an intercept was executed. It is certain that Russia executed a professional intercept using internationally>, recognized procedures – and I suspect were ignored or mocked by the US based operators. Most likely this escalated to the point where the interceptors determined that the drone should be arrested or destroyed.
We see none of this in the brazenly edited footage released by the USA. This was not accidental. The US deliberately omitted most of the footage from this event. We must conclude that, as with most spoliation, the evidence removed was done in an attempt to make their case look better.
If the strike was accidental, it probably left damage on the interceptor. If it was planned, it is very likely that the interceptor flying close passes deployed his aircraft’s arrestor hook before making a close pass, as if performing a touch and go on the drone. Which would not affect the interceptor but would give the drone a very bad day. I think that this is by far the most likely explanation for all the evidence we see (and do not see).
My partner is a retired Air force General (OF-6) and pilot who has deliberately flown turboprop aircraft through thunderstorms with large hailstones for meteorological research purposes. The sheet metal was beaten up, but the propellors were not damaged. So I think that it is really unlikely that fuel, which is usually softer than hail, bent the propellor, unless Geneneral Atomics/Honeywell/Hartzell really screwed up and specified a propeller weaker than used on historic transport aircraft.
The MQ-9 drone has a variable pitch metal propellor. As I noted previously, careful frame-by-frame examination of the damaged propeller shows that the damaged blade is in full retro-thrust, and the opposite blade is in full feather or near feather, where the blade produces no thrust. This left the drone with only two blades producing thrust and countered by whatever reverse thrust was generated by the damaged blade. I suspect that this means that the impact which damaged the blade also damaged the hub, which is designed to auto-feather when a blade loses the pressurized oil which rotates it on the hub.

Posted by: Hermit | Mar 17 2023 11:00 utc | 167

Posted by: Hermit | Mar 17 2023 11:00 utc | 167
I still tend to doubt that any interceptor pilot would allow a multi-ton drone to go out of control either in front of or alongside his plane.
What is the probability that the interceptor slowed down enough to come over the drone and then dropped down somewhat in altitude, in effect to “bang” the drone from the vertical, which I would assume would damage the propeller and probably shake up the innards of the drone enough to force it down? I don’t know if an S-27 can fly that slow but I’ve seen Russian pilots do some crazy stuff with their jets in air shows, including stalling them and then recovering. and even “flying backwards” to some extent. I would also assume that such a maneuver would be less likely to threaten the jet if the drone then went out of control as the jet after the strike would be ahead and above of the drone going faster than the drone.
Just a concept. I have no idea if this could work in reality.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2023 11:20 utc | 169

Richard Steven Hack @151: “…cue the transgender haters…”
Don’t be silly. Few people hate trannies. That would be like hating paraplegics, or more accurately hating victims of childhood genital mutilation. Trannies are tragic victims of a dying culture gone haywire with ridiculous delusions and denial of reality (encroaching mortality has that effect on some people and on whole societies as well). You, RSH, should be most familiar with that being that you live near ground zero of America’s delusion industry.
Trannies are victims of their culture and deserve compassion, but it is a mistake to imagine that compassion involves going along with and enabling those victims’ delusions. Indeed, people who enable or encourage emotionally wounded individuals to despise the reality of their own physical being are the real haters here.
Anyway, I use transexuals as examples not to hatefully pick on them, but to illustrate how absurd departure from reality can be in a culture that is descending ever deeper into delusion.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 17 2023 11:51 utc | 171

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 17 2023 11:51 utc | 171
This is another topic on which I can correctly state: “I don’t give a shit” – on either side.
As far as “absurd departures from reality” – I see most people in exactly the same way. From my vantage point, 99% of the human species is engulfed in absurd departures from reality.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2023 12:17 utc | 173

Arch Bungle | Mar 17 2023 0:49 utc | 124
What bothered me was the seemingly slow rotation of the propeller. And I have now come to the conclusion, that this ‘rotation’ is an illusion, produced not by photo shopping, but by a combination of propeller speed (in the range of 2,000 to 8,000 rpm is my guess) and the camera frame rate (50 or 100 Hz, i.e. 3,000 or 6,000 pics per min). And that this illusion is seemingly spinning in the opposite direction of the true propeller movement. Just look for videos with the search term ‘Why car wheels rotate backwards in movies’.

Posted by: Schwedenstahl | Mar 17 2023 13:03 utc | 175

President Biden Vows To Make It Illegal To Ban Thing We’ve Been Assured ‘Isn’t Happening’
Is the above from a real news site or is it just satire ( such as the Babylon Bee) ?

Posted by: Eighthman | Mar 17 2023 13:26 utc | 177

Richard Steven Hack @173: “From my vantage point, 99% of the human species is engulfed in absurd departures from reality.”
Me too! I’m so tight with reality that I’m practically rubbing shoulders with Buddha.
But keep in mind that delusion/departure from reality occurs in a spectrum. Certain life activities ground one closer to reality and other activities or conditions of life give one distance. Working for one’s survival brings individuals closer to reality while living from unearned wealth builds distance, for example.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 17 2023 13:37 utc | 179

@Down South #140
Sometime during the beginning of the war the Hungarian leader publicly stated that after the Bakhmut line falls Putin was going to make the west one final offer and show them hell if they refuse. I am not sure if that is still a thing or not but Zelensky might be worried about Kiev being the next target once that front line falls.

Posted by: OohCanada | Mar 17 2023 13:45 utc | 181

n my experience, it seems every American knows that government and media lie to them—but they believe the lies anyway.
Belief, especially when tied to a cherished self-image, is extremely difficult to modify, let alone eradicate, with rational thought. That’s why cognitive dissonance is a thing.
Posted by: malenkov | Mar 17 2023 6:26 utc | 152
I’ve been wondering a lot about this issue lately, why they believe the lies anyway. this makes sense.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Mar 17 2023 13:55 utc | 183

malenkov @182
That’s odd. Whenever I was in Thailand and katoey would flirt with me and I would reciprocate, locals would invariably approach me and, thinking I didn’t know, warn me that the individual was a man. Every last time. That doesn’t strike me as the sort of behavior to expect from people who actually believe the katoey are women.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 17 2023 14:08 utc | 185

Posted by: Schwedenstahl | Mar 17 2023 13:03 utc | 175
One thought: the speed of a prop is a function of distance from the center axis. In other words, the outside tip of a prop is moving faster than points inward. Giving that camera frame speed is constant, that may have something to do with the ‘bent’ appearance, although none of the other blades show this phenomena. Just spitballing here.

Posted by: Mike R | Mar 17 2023 14:10 utc | 187

Hermit | Mar 17 2023 11:00 utc | 167
and Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2023 11:20 utc | 169
I believe that the whole idea behind the fuel dump on the drone was to over-extend the Reapers engine. A jet turbine (Reaper has a torboprop engine – at gas turbine/gearbox/propeller) always operates on a large air to fuel ratio as part of the air is used to cool the blades of the turbine. It will therefore be capable of burning a lot of extra fuel injected via the air intake, without choking (like a piston engine using a more stochiometric fuel/air mix might do). When exposed to extra, uncontrolled fuel via the air intake, the turbine will likely overspeed dramatically. This puts heavy strain on the entire propulsion system. If overspeeding occurs, the operator or the RPM-controlling system of the turbine will shut down/reduce internal fuel injection, causing the opposite effect as the Reaper escapes the fuel sprayed by the planes. Repeating this will likely break down parts of the Reapers propulsion system.
Known crashes of commersial airplanes have been caused by leakage of lubricating oil into the combustion chambers of jet engines (Caused by leakage in off-standard piping). The oil leakage caused catastrophic failure of the jet engine due to overspeeding.
The wing configuration around the Reapers tail makes it virtually impossible to hit the propeller with a plane without simultaneously tearing off parts of its tail. No airplane pilot would attempt such a Kamikaze stunt. The images of bent propellers (in the wrong direction!!??) are therefore likely a “Hollywood production – Photo shop” in order to give traction to the US explanation of a reckless collision provoked by the Russian planes.

Posted by: Hans Konrad Johnsen | Mar 17 2023 14:28 utc | 189

@shadowbanned | Mar 16 2023 20:09 utc | 81
“what distinguishes this Reaper mission from earlier ones that Russia did not force down?”
As I understand it judging from other news items
The incident was preceeded by a B52 heading close to Russia turning around at the last moment
It was explained as protection for Finland.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 17 2023 14:38 utc | 191

Arch Bungle | Mar 17 2023 0:49 utc posted this:

The video ‘evidence’ indicating the drone propeller as deformed is utter rubbish.
I don’t see how two multi-ton objects flying at hundreds of km/h relative to each other can make contact, even slightly, and result in only mild deformation of the fastest spinning part on the drone’s body. The drone should have been completely wrecked by that kind of contact, with the propeller either gone or shredded.

Sure.
AND the attacking plane (armed, fuelled, and in the middle of a demanding aerial maneuver!) could’ve been substantialy damaged. No pilot in his right mind would try to do this. THE STORY IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
(HINT: see “Inelastic collisions” on Wikipedia and search for “The reduction of total kinetic energy” in the page. Or google for “midair collision Cesna and passenger plane”.)

Posted by: LongCovid | Mar 17 2023 14:45 utc | 193

Pilots who destroyed US Reaper drone are honoured by Russia as Putin’s Black Sea dolphins look set to win the race to recover it
The Russian pilots of two Su-27 fighter planes that destroyed an American drone have been honoured by Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. 
The $32 million MQ-9 Reaper drone crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday after being intercepted by the two Russian fighter jets, in what US officials have said was a deliberate act, possibly in an attempt to seize its data.
The US is in a race against time to recover the Reaper before it falls into Moscow’s hands. However, Russia looks set to win the race as dolphins associated with Russia’s Black Sea fleet are already operating off the coast of Crimea.
Telegram channels indicate the dolphins swam near the suspected location of the wreckage in the Black Sea. They remained in Russian territorial waters while the Reaper was reported to have fallen in international waters, according to the US. This comes after a source close to the Russian defence ministry reportedly told the Crimean publication ForPost that dolphins had found the drone at a depth of up to 2,953ft in the Black Sea. The deep-water branch of the South Stream gas pipeline runs not far from this area. However there was no official confirmation of the report.
Russia and NATO member countries routinely intercept each other’s warplanes, but Tuesday’s incident marked the first time since the Cold War that dolphins were confirmed to be involved. U.S. and European intelligence believe dolphins were involved in both the attack on the Nordstream pipeline and the car bombing of Darya Dugina in Moscow last year but have yet to offer conclusive proof.

Posted by: Tanya | Mar 17 2023 15:14 utc | 195

Can someone here explain to me why the MSM lie about so many things as you all point out anytime its against something you like, but why they wouldn’t lie about covid?

Posted by: Mr. House | Mar 17 2023 16:27 utc | 197

It’s called the “MOA dilemma”
”
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Mar 17 2023 16:33 utc | 198
Indeed. Naked capitalism is exactly the same. Makes one wonder who they get their marching orders from.

Posted by: Mr. House | Mar 17 2023 16:35 utc | 199