Another Flanker launches a ramming attack on Earth at an airshow

RIP to those two men

What is it with Sukhois and airshow crashes...?

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POS aircraft with probably piss poor maintenance and less than stellar pilot training.

Remember what they say about the lethality of antiaircraft fire.

AAA-Anti Aircraft Artillery- 10% effective
SAM-Surface to Air Missiles- 30% effective
G- Ground 100% effective

Only tangentially apropos, Navy submariners sometimes defend the safety of submarines with the following quotation, "There are more planes in the sea than submarines in the sky".

Ah, I see the Russkies rolled out the new Su-27 Lawn Dart.

"Is not fighter jet. Is new and improved Earth-seeking missile."

Forget the Sukhoi. Who was that robo-babe in the newscast?

I'm sick of news programs that cover the bottom 1/3 of the screen with so many useless graphics that you can't see the damn video.

"A bird that flew into the engine is believed to have also crashed."

Look to :00:17. in the video...

Why are they flying a British flag in poland?

I knew you would!

LOL what a peice of shit. I would not buy a fucking lawn mower from those retards.

Yeah, so Russian equipment has a spotty record at best, but the fact that it was a BELORUSSIAN jet probably has more to do with it.

Be fair.

Remember all the Thunderbirds deadly crashes.

Remember when four of them crashed all at once killing all four pilots after something broke in the leaders control stick and he couldn't pull out of a dive?

The other three pilots had their eyes glued to the leader waiting for him to pull out and they simply followed him into the ground.

It's also somewhat ironic that a long unbroken string like that breaks up the page tabling.

Problem right there. Shit like that doesn't happen to the Angels.

I always attribute that to having to be carrier certified.

I hate to bring this up, but the Angels' safety record took a pretty big hit a couple of years ago and it didn't have anything to do with a broken control stick.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/21/blueangels.crash/index.html

I wanna say this was caused by the pilot blacking out while pulling around 6 g's, but I don't remember the exact details.

F/A-18's...

They should have been flying F-14's like an adult.

F-14's are awesome, but the F/A-18 might as well have been invented for these types of demos.

Bah!

F-14's? They need to retrieve their A-4 Skyhawks. Nothing moves like a Scooter, bitches!

From wiki:

What do you think of the SU-27, Marso?

It's dated as the 27, but the design has been vastly improved and upgraded.

The badasses these days in the Sukhoi family are the 30-35 and their variants. The best of them are better than anything currently in our air arsenal with the sole exception of the F-22. The latest Sukhoi variants are Gen 4.5, more advanced and with comparable to better missiles than our aging fleets of Hornets, Falcons, and Eagles. Our only real edge right now is in radar technology, but radar itself can't shoot down airplanes. The Super Hornet isn't a contender in any regime, and the F-35 was designed primarily for CAS, not air superiority.

Canceling the F-22 was an inexplicably shortsighted thing to do, but in the long run it may not matter so much because UCAV is the wave of the future and it's coming on fast.

That's my opinion in a nutshell.

I've heard that one of the things holding back UAVs from really taking off is the requirement that they be operated by pilots* and not just any old schmo. What are your thoughts on this?



*They probably just meant the big boys with weapons like the Predators and Reapers, cuz the Army has now pushed Ravens down to Company level.

Since UAVs that would replace fighters would have to navigate through all sorts of controlled airspace, you'd probably NEED a pilot to fly it, if for nothing else than to handle communications.

A UCAV with live weapons, sensors, jammers, etc on it is an expensive (and let's not forget dangerous) piece of hardware. Bear in mind that it will have to operate in all the environments and conditions manned aircraft operate in now, not just combat, and it has to be landed in such a manner that it can be used again.

Now. Would you rather have someone like me fly it or some goob with 10,000 hours on his XBOX and a six week military school? Not sayin' it can't work either way, I'm just sayin'. Y'know? Who knows; since nobody dies when they crash one, maybe the latter option actually ends up being more cost effective in the long run.

I definitely see the need for keeping a human being in the loop (no autonomous drones with weapons thank you very much), and even that that person be a member of the armed forces (not a big fan of contractors when it comes to offensive operations), but actually be a pilot? Maybe for fighters, but for tactical strikers and bombers, I'm not sure I see the need. Seems we would to have someone specifically trained for that role, but not necessarily a full fledged pilot.

I read an article where they are starting to ramp up training of non-pilots but it is difficult. These things aren't a video game and the planes themselves are not yet capable of some difficult maneuvers. Make a mistake and lose the bird.