Turks vs. Russians - what is going on?!?

[peacetraveler22]

Damn, what wildness in the world now! I awoke to news of the military incident with the Russian jet. Now, a news flash on RT that the pilots were shot dead in the air while trying to parachute. Who should we believe? Russia's version of the incident varies wildly from that of the Turks and the U.S., who claim 10 warnings were given before the jet was taken down. Now, there will undoubtedly be bans on yet another prime tourist destination for Russians. It is reported that there are already demands to evacuate tourists from Turkey and cancel the visa-free regime until Turkish officials issue an apology. Who and what should we believe? What is going on?? Nothing is clear, just like this blurry photo, where I photobombed a shot with a random Russian man in some remote town last winter. I don't even remember the name of the city, but when I look at this photo, I always smile. And we can all use some laughter and a brief moment of humor on this day.

I don't even know what to say, or how to analyze this situation, because I'm no expert in foreign or military affairs. How will Putin and NATO react? Who do you believe? Today the French flags are hanging in Washington, DC because Francois Hollande is visiting Obama. Now is a rare chance for you to express your opinions about the political and military situation in this blog. I know you are all experts! :) I will read all your comments, but don't have time to answer everyone...

Comments

[moebiuscat.livejournal.com]

Russian ministry of defense consistently and blatantly lies all the time. The funniest recent thing was that because of Russian air support in recent 3 weeks syrian army "освободила более 50 крупных населенных пунктов, около 350 кв. км территории" - meaning 50 major population centers on 350 square kilometers of land. That's about 96 square miles! A single major city won't fit in there - Washington metropolitan area is a whopping 5,564 square miles. Even 50 tiny villages won't ever fit into this area. So they lie all the time and nothing they say can be believed.

On the other hand Turks are not famous for being truthful either.

The Russian military maps that are shown on ministry of defense briefing are stunningly incorrect, there has been an Israeli analysis on that recently: the whole sections of Israel and nearby territories have borders and demarcation lines at the wrong places, towns missing or incorrectly called etc.

Occam's razor principle tells us that NATO is correct: Russians probably flown into Turkish airspace, either on purpose (testing NATO air defense radars etc. - Russians do it for decades) or because of poor navigation, maps and avionics. They did it many times before - Turkey repeatedly warned Russians about that, they told then they will shut Russian planes down if it keeps happening. They did shot down Russian drone before.

Turkey has no reason to escalate and shoot down Russian plane that haven't flown into their airspace. And the fact that it actually fell into Syria makes perfect sense: any single pilot reaction when being attacked like this would be immediately turning back under maximum thrust. And Turkish air force once given command to shoot it down will do it, even if slightly over Syrian border by that time. Add to that time needed for the missile to intercept - and we're talking about tens of seconds - a lot of distance at those speeds. If it would fall within Turkey it would mean it went very deep, which would make no sense.

Update:



Here's the radar map. No wonder it fell into Syria, it clearly shows how it entered Turkey and where it was intercepted.