Yea, my thoughts too......Just like a 200 ft. balloon flying at 68,000 feet being propelled by a propeller and a photo which shows neither a propeller or the enormous gas tanks needed to fuel it for the 8 + days it was aloft......
The drone is driven by a two-blade, variable-pitch pusher propeller. Pusher-propeller means it’s located on the rear of the craft and is flanked on 3 sides by the stabilizers and rudder. Max speed is around 140mph. Russkie fighter jets, just a bit faster.
US claims the prop was ‘broken off’ by a russkie jet. Using a wing? The electronics filled nose-cone? If hit from behind as it must have been for this story to make sense, how did the rest of the jet not fly right through the much slower moving drone?
No jet pilot would intentionally collide with a propeller on a craft flying at 1/5 the jet’s speed, unless he was suicidal.
Russkie jet apparently did piss all over the drone.
Funny, no video from the drone which uses video for navigation, targeting, observation...
All happened over the Black Sea - russkie’s back yard, btw, also bordered by Uke, Rom, Georgia, Turkey. Like having russkies flying drones off 12 miles off NYC.
I believe a drone crashed and two russkie jets were in the area. The rest of the details make no sense and are a cover story. Did drone take a shot? Fly into the much, much faster moving jet’s path?
Yea, my thoughts too......Just like a 200 ft. balloon flying at 68,000 feet being propelled by a propeller and a photo which shows neither a propeller or the enormous gas tanks needed to fuel it for the 8 + days it was aloft......
MSNBC finally has their Moscow Pee-tapes.
Most likely, the Russians just shot the drone, or dropped ball bearings into its path and damaged it so severely that it could not return, so the controllers made the call to ditch it.
We have plenty more drones where that one came from. Forty million dollars per unit is pocket lint as the current war expenses go.
This is Russia taking out an unmanned US asset that was being used to assist Ukraine forces in the war against Russian forces. Not quite the same thing as shooting down an AWACS plane.
We are not going to escalate to WW-3 over a drone. Maybe not even over an AWACS. The Russians will do what they can to stop the US from assisting the Ukraine. I expect they will shoot down more of our drones. They might even start harassing AWACS in some way. Maybe with laser blinding shots from "unidentified militia forces" in ground locations.
The Russians will get much more aggressive against us if Russian forces start losing in a Ukraine counterattack. So far, that has not happened.
The question is not how fast the jet can fly, but how slow it can fly and remain controllable. That speed can be as low as 100 knots or less. And if you are a high enough altitude you have plenty of space to recover speed and control of the aircraft.