Ukrainian media is reporting the shoot down of a VKS A-50 AEW&C and a Il-22 Coot ELINT plane over the Sea of Azov.
Russian signals intelligence warnings shut down the Kerch Bridge earlier in the day, thinking the PSU sorties were a Su-24 strike.
🧵 1/ rbc.ua/rus/news/zsu-p…
I think it likely the PSU gave off the signals of a Su-24 Storm Shadow strike and actually sent out Su-27's hunting, tricked out with 100(+) km range AIM-120C's.
Think of the WW2 "Operation Vengeance" P-38 raid that killed Adm. Yamamoto.
It would give a single Ukrainian PSU Su-27 a chance to break within 100 km and blarf a volley of lock on after launch AMRAAM against these converted cargo & airliner planes.
5/
The US fighter pilots don't like 'pitbulling' the AMRAAM when they "Fox 3."
That is, firing a AIM-120 seeker in the lock on after launch (LOAL) with missile seeker doing autonomous homing at range.
This is because there tends to be more US fighters than enemy fighters.
6/
To use ~2008 fighter pilot slang:
"Shake a pitbull up in a sack and when you let out. It's goes for the first thing it sees.
In which case, you have a 'mad dog' event."
A PSU Su-27 fighting one on many doesn't have this issue.
7/
Ukraine could only pull this AMRAAM Ambush once.
They decided to make a high operational risk/high operational pay off poker bet and won the pot.
8/8 End
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The RS-28 Sarmat was to replace the Ukrainian built/maintained SS-18 SATAN.
Russia had to reverse engineer SATAN's Ukrainian missile technology to make Russian knock-off tech and supposedly uprated engines for 3 Avangard HGV or a FOBS payload. 3/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sar…
The "Western Military Experts" that Politico talked to in early 2023 were made fools of by the information on Ukrainian maintainer performance in the @ralee85 post above.
The False Promise of Ukraine’s Deep Strikes Into Russia By Stephen Biddle, Foreign Affairs:
“Hitting Faraway Targets Will Not Tip the Balance of the War”
The combination of technological/logistical incompetence, economic ignorance, and military-historical illiteracy as Stephen Biddle dropped in that article makes me despair about the competence of the US national security experts versus drone airpower.
NASA FIRMS data shows anything up to 22,080 tons of Russian munitions were just lost to a cheap OWA-drone swarm that had 50(+) distinct desired mean points of impact (DMPI). 3/
...typically with power higher than the original signal, to confuse enemy navigation. Consequently, aircraft or ground stations are given inaccurate bearings."
A more technical explanation of Meaconing is at the link below⬇️
The multichannel Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) technology in most US GPS guided munitions were designed to render avionics systems immune to direct electronic attack from GPS jammers or other methods of interference.
This extreme careerist narcissism is what motivates DC elites.
@JakeSullivan46 and his NSC faction will be a dysfunctional leadership case study for future textbooks, like Robert Strange McNamara was for Vietnam, for the same reasons.