Posted on 10/16/2018 7:58:57 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Details about the mishap are still limited, but a Su-27UB Flanker combat jet from Ukraine's Air Force has crashed in that country, killing its Ukrainian pilot, as well as reportedly a member of the U.S. Air National Guard. The jet had been flying a training sortie as part of Exercise Clear Sky 2018, which began on Oct. 8, 2018.
The accident occurred at around 5:00 PM local time on Oct. 16, 2018, near the village of Ulaniv, which is situated approximately 185 miles southwest of the Ukranian capital Kiev. Ukraine's military immediately launched a search and rescue operation that unfortunately found that there were no survivors of the crash.
"We regret to inform that, according to a report by the search and rescue team, the bodies of two pilots were found," the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement on social media on Oct. 16, 2018. "One is a Ukrainian air force pilot, and the second is a U.S. Air National Guard pilot."
Neither the Ukrainian nor the U.S. military has identified the American aviator in question or their unit. Confusingly, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has already taken down its post that stated the nationalities of the two individuals onboard the Flanker, raising the possibility that the initial report may have been in error.
However, members of the California Air National Guard's 144th Fighter Wing have brought some of their F-15C Eagle fighter jets to join in Exercise Clear Sky 2018, the unit's first-ever deployment to Ukraine. California's National Guard is heavily involved in training and other activities with Ukraine's military broadly through the National Guard Bureau's State Partnership Program.
If it's true that a pilot from the U.S. Air National Guard was in the Su-27 at the time of the crash, it is important to note that it is not uncommon for members of foreign air forces to get a chance to conduct familiarization flights in each others aircraft during multi-national exercises. American military aviators would be particularly interested in riding in a Flanker, a family of fighters that is in widespread service around the world and that the U.S. military could easily find itself facing in any potential large-scale conflict against near-peer opponents, such as Russia or China.
Though we don't yet know the exact reason why the U.S. pilot was flying in the Flanker, Approximately 950 personnel from Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States are taking part in the drills. The stated objective is to improve cooperation between NATO air arms and Ukraine's air force.
“This is the largest exercise in the last four years. It involves more than 50 aircrafts from eight NATO member-states and our planes - of the Ukrainian Air Forces," Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko said on Oct. 11, 2018. "The purpose of the exercises is to increase the level of interoperability of our combat aircrafts with the air forces of the United States and other member states of the [NATO] Alliance."
UKRAINE MOD
The official logo for Clear Sky 2018.
Update: 1:20pm EST—
U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), the top Air Force command in the region, has confirmed that a U.S. service member was involved in the incident, but has no made an official announcement as to their status. USAFE also said that mishap is already under investigation.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
Do Russian jets still suck a lot of gas or did they finally steal enough technology to solve the problem!!!
They’re going to lose a lot of planes if this is their plan to take out our pilots one at a time.
Sukhoi, that is a BIG airplane. If you don’t look closely, your eyes tend to scale it down in relationship to the cockpit. But, look INSIDE the cockpit and you see two tiny pilots.
Soviet/Russian propaganda and disinformation alert.
Old time Soviet apologist and possible KGB/GRU Disinformation asset, Prof. Steven Cohen (formerly Princeton, NYU) was on the John Batchelor Show tonight. I only caught part of it re the plane crash in Ukraine but Cohen, true to his pro-Soviet/Russia format, made some claims about this being a provocation by Ukraine/US on the Russian border and could lead to a further deterioration of their ties.
Cohen is now blaming everything in Russia and the outside assassinations/attempts on rogue elements of the Russian criminal/ex-KGB crowd, just as he is blaming lots of old events on a rogue CIA, including the “deliberate” flying of the U2 plane with Francis G. Powers over the Soviet Union just before the US-Soviet Summit between Eisenhower and Krushchev. (However, K knew about these flights for months or years before they were able to shoot down the U2 and never said a thing).
Cohen also, in an article in his wife’s The Nation, a far-left, always pro-communist magazine, said (1983) that the Soviet economy was very strong and in no danger. A couple years later he was doing the KGB 2 step around his former disinformation mouthings.
Batchelor is enchanted with Cohen despite his good observations on other subjects so while Cohen says he doesn’t believe in conspiracies, he is one of the biggest conspiracy buffs in the US, only they are against America and almost always in support of the Soviet Union/Russia.
The length of the SU-17 is 72 feet, which is just two feet less than the length of the B-17 bomber. It's wingspan, however, at 48 feet, is less than half that of the B-17's 104 feet. The B-17 carried a crew of 10; the SU-17 can function with a crew of one.
Military fighters are not airliners, they have stress on them beyond what most expect out of airplanes.
We lost a F-4B right off Laguna Beach after takeoff. Lost both crew. They "thought" the cause was a wing fire from the BLC not closing off after the flaps were raised.
Scale models:
IMO the Su-27 is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built.
India is not happy and do not trust their engines. China tried to make its own engines and they are even worse.
I love how the best article about the imminent Soviet collapse was published in Playboy by John Clancy at the time when commies like Cohen were still praising their strength.
Beautiful photograph. Thanks for sharing it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.