Posted on 07/26/2023 9:47:55 PM PDT by aught-6
Russian fighter jet strikes another American drone over Syria in the sixth incident this month
(Excerpt) Read more at yourcentralvalley.com ...
Looks like they’re trying to provoke us into shooting them down. Reckless.
When a Russian plane gets close, the missiles on the drone should self-destruct.
Just change the rules of engagement for the drone operators and within one or two Russian jets crashing, this nonsense will stop.
What the hell are Russian aircraft doing in Syrian airspace without the Syrian government’s permission? /MAJOR LEAGUE SARC!
Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet for much less.
Wtf are we doing in Syria? Bueler? Bueler?
“Just change the rules of engagement for the drone operators and within one or two Russian jets crashing, this nonsense will stop.”
The reason remotely controlled drones make bad fighter jets is engagements take place at close quarters and milliseconds count. The drone sends a signal to a satellite. The satellite sends the signal to another satellite. That satellite sends the signal to the ground. Even at the speed of light you’re talking seconds for this pathway and an equal amount of time for a responding command. In those seconds the two planes may have moved thousands of feet.
Likely the drone has not positively identified the approaching plane but only has a physical image or a radar return. So, whose plane are you shooting down? Is it even a military plane? When “the facts” are presented in an article the answer to shoot or not seems plain. But in the heat of the moment, I assure the answer is not obvious and the results might have ramifications the US would rather not deal with.
(Bueller?
Bueller?)
Hey! It’s my Day Off!!
C’mon man!!!
Destabilizing the middle east even further.
I worked at a satellite internet provider for a while back in the middle 2000’s.
We provided internet service (and VOIP) to oil rigs in the Gulf of Texas, Army Corp of Engineers, and other remote/mobile units.
It was literally half second delay up and half second delay down - one full second round trip. Anything more and we would violate some of our service level agreements (SLA), etc.
I cannot imagine trying to remotely control an aircraft in Syria from Las Vegas (Nellis), etc. I would imagine the controller has to be at the FOB to get decent response time.
Provoke? Hah. The Pentagon is bending over once again and saying, hit me again, sire.
Hope they get many more — because the Biden regime’s military has no business being there. Syria is not our enemy in this undeclared war.
Simple solution: Proximity fuse on a major explosive. Warn all nations, get too close and you blow up.
May as well keep messing around with our Drones, because we won’t do anything about it.
Thank you. You raise good points.
The following article is a little “blue sky” but indicates that drones once (unsuccessfully) fought back and there are concepts that could be added to drones to allow them a better chance to fight back.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/yes-the-mq-9-can-defend-itself-with-air-to-air-missiles
“Simple solution: Proximity fuse on a major explosive. Warn all nations, get too close and you blow up.”
There are several issues to think about. For the MQ-9 Reaper the typical missile costs around $700,000. The drone itself costs $28,000,000 and flying at a cost $3,624 per hour. I don’t know if that includes the satellite time and the pilot, who is (or was) located in Langly, Virginia.
Every pound that you fly costs you money. This is why planes and drones are made as light as possible. A significant explosive that would take down a plane at, say a few hundred yards, might weigh as much as the entire drone. The way an external explosion takes down a plane is it creates a pressure wave, and the wave propagates down the plane’s body hopefully tearing off parts as it goes. A missile has a very small explosive and has to detonate pretty close to damage a plane. The reason the explosive isn’t very large is the missile needs to be light weight both for the plane to carry it and for the missile to have the necessary performance and range to reach a kill radius, which, as I mentioned is very small.
The other problem is, the Reaper and any other drone we would use are VERY expensive. As soon as the opposition realizes that they can make them explode they’ll figure a way to threaten the plane to cause it to self-destruct without losing their plane.
Anything that you or I would consider a simple solution that easily fits on an FR post would be easily gamed by the opposition and we’d soon be losing lots of drones for no cost to the Russians. The answer is going to lie elsewhere. The Iranians gave up shooting down drones when the US sent a fighter escort along with them. That’s one solution. Another is to figure out other means of performing the mission. Stealth drones are a possibility, but the price would likely double.
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