"They had now warning?! Doesn’t say much about their air defensive systems.<
I'd be willing to bet the Turks have been lighting up every Russian aircraft that gets within twenty miles of the border ever since the Russians started flying these missions. That serves two purposes, 1) warns the Russians they're close the border and 2) lulls the pilots into not thinking about the warning after a while.
17 seconds . . . that's not enough time to warn an aircraft and have the aircraft react, PERIOD. Therefore this was preplanned by the Turks. They were waiting for someone to make a minor mistake or even to get within ten miles of the border since they claim a "buffer zone" ten miles deep within Syria.
JMHo
17 seconds . . . that's not enough time to warn an aircraft and have the aircraft react, PERIOD. Therefore this was preplanned by the Turks. They were waiting for someone to make a minor mistake or even to get within ten miles of the border since they claim a "buffer zone" ten miles deep within Syria.
It would be good to know if the Vipor's were routinely actively using their A/A radar without locking up any of the Russian aircraft. As you say this would give the Russians a false sense of security knowing where a threat was and what to look out for. In this case the Fenser's had no clue the Turkish fighters were up and a complete failure of Russian GC to warn their strike group of a nearby threat. The Vipor's laid a trap and took a boresight AIM-9 shot. This required Turkish coordinated GCI radar to direct the Vipor's to within VFR of the target. Similar to passive radar and or AWAC vectoring or even GCI through datalink direction. Don't know Turkish datalink capability.