The facts tend to support the Russians. In any event, there is no justification for a shoot down of a non-threatening plane that for the sake of argument at most spent 17 seconds in Turkish airspace. Anyone who takes a contrary view would be supporting Breshnev’s shootdown of KAL 007, which was a sustained incursion in Soviet (not Russian) airspace. It seems there are a lot of McCainiac Neocons commenting on this story (not referring to you).
General Mcinerny was on Fox yesterday...he has experience and credibility in this arena, as he was responsible for airspace near Russia/Alaska during one of his commands.
He said that the Russians strayed into our airspace many times...and obviously we never shot one down. He mentioned some factors that aren’t being mentioned in the public debate about this. First, it was very important to him that the plane’s heading made it obvious that it was not directed towards a target in Turkey...but instead merely scraping in and out of their airspace. Also, he implied this was a planned/lie in wait affair. It happened so quick, the Turkish pilot had to have been patrolling this finger of airspace, with orders to shoot, no permission needed. Way outside of how nations (that are not at war with each other) traditionally interact in these types of situations.
I too remember KAL 007...seems many (some here) don’t.
I was stationed in Alaska in the mid to late 70s and the Russians/Soviets approached very close to and, on a few occasions, penetrated well into US/Alaskan airspace. Even though we had F-4s and F-15s and three Nike Hercules batteries, we never shot down a Russian aircraft. On most occasions, they were warned and escorted out of our airspace.
KAL 007 was a pretty different situation that was instigated by the Soviets. Unfortunately, all the details of that situation are still classified.