Russian Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber shot down by F-16: reports
Russian Su-34 supersonic fighter-bomber shot down by F-16: reports
A Russian military blogger said that a Sukhoi fighter plane had been downed while it was dropping air bombs.
One of Moscow's fighter jets has been shot down by Ukrainian forces, according to a military blogger with links to the Russian air force. Another pro-Moscow milblogger said that the Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft had been downed by a Western-supplied F-16.
Pakistan proved AIM-120s are still king in the air for MRAAMs back in 2019 against India's Su-30s.
Obviously there's a lot of skill and technique involved, but you get a pretty nice edge with the range. Apparently the IAF said that the pilots couldn't get a shot off without first entering the no escape zone, or at the very least felt uncomfortable getting locked up before they could lock the F-16s.
Although now that China has brought back LRAAMs, it'll be cool to see what the USA makes as the successor to the AIM-54.
The aim260 is in opeval, it's basically a smaller Phoenix (except, you know, with a good seeker).
Also they have the aim 174 (I think that's the number), which is an sm6 upper stage strapped to an f18, basically like shooting a telephone pole at someone from 200km+ away.
We were slow getting started, but we're getting there.
Once they use those F-16s to establish air dominance someone needs to give them a few A-10s to help them speed up retaking their territory.
If the USAF doesn't want to deal with the A-10s supply chain, there's a good chance Ukraine doesn't either.
The only thing that keeps the A-10 flying is Congressional mandates from a few jobs-oriented congressmen.
That would be super helpful. Everyone always says that the A10s would be too vulnerable to AA but I’m guessing it’s survivability in the skies of Ukraine will probably be higher than helicopters and they are still flying those. A10s will absolutely decimate Russian lines if they can get close.
Helicopters can loiter better, fly closer to the ground, and resupply close to the front.
Even so, attack helicopters are not really used in anything other than ATGM sneak attacks from terrain cover (which the A10 can't do, being a plane), or UGM "artillery" strikes. Most helicopter usage is about utility transport or troop transport in Ukraine. The primary CAS platform in Ukraine is drones. For tactical strikes, it's glide bombs and cruise missiles, but that's in short supply, no point in having a bunch of platforms if they have nothing to shoot.
The A10 is not really useful in near-peer engagements. At least not as useful as an equivalent value amount of SAMs or drones. And aid is passed by congress by value, so it absolutely matters how much something costs, they have to package the best stuff they can in the dollar limits.
The A-10 is vulnerable to AA and to fighters, that's why establishing F-16 patrols first is important. I'd also prefer that the A-10s either be escorted by or fly in mixed formations with Ukraine's Soviet era fighters.
Yea the a-10 is on the us chopping block. Could be their next step.
BBBRRRRRRRRRRTTTTT
As a Russian, I have nothing against this. Actually, screw it, just send all of them. Russian MoD's probably going to put bounties on them, like they did with Leopards. This way, the US finally get to decommission that meme of an aircraft, some AA crew is going to get an easy payday of like $10k each, and the MoD gets to report that they've inflicted $20mil worth of damage for only pennies, while in reality only lifting the burden of maintenance from the US budget. Sounds like win-win-win to me. The only losers here are those few poor Ukrainians who will have to pilot the damn thing.
Russia was getting spanked by Bradleys, f16s would glory over the battlefield, and it would open the door to unsealing real weapons.
We need to train their best on f35s.
I assume the bomber has to slow down to subsonic speeds to drop it's payload. Don't want to think about the forces acting on the payload if it were to drop at supersonic speeds.
I predict upcoming NonCredibleDefense mecha musume memes.
EDIT: Apparently they're way ahead of me. This is 12 hours old as of this writing. Just hasn't made it to Threadiverse !NonCredibleDefense@sh.itjust.works yet.
Years it's been and i still have no idea what that place is about
NonCredibleDefense is a recreation of a reddit community.
The following is an oversimplification but its all so ridiculous it is still going to be long:
This probably won't make any sense, internet community drama history is ridiculous
Basically, after years of debates on reddit (and really just the internet in general) revolving around military history and precise technical and operational capabilities and effectiveness of various weapons and vehicles (think the kind of discussions that lead people to leak classified documents on warthunder forums), a number of 'camps' basically formed.
You had 'wehraboos', a modification of weeaboo, but absolutely fanatical about the superiority of the German Wehrmact, 'conmieboos', same thing but for the Soviets, and on and on.
Combined with that, you had a whole lot of people criticizing modern US equipment and its cost, a lot of them looking up to a group of people sometimes referred to as 'the reformers' and also sometimes referred to as 'the fighter plane mafia'.
These people basically claimed to be ex US military or designers of older US weapons/vehicles, who claimed their notions of how to do military stuff more along the lines of 'cheap enough to get the job done, producible in large numbers' as opposed to 'immensely expensive, technologically dependent and technologically superior, but fewer in number'... that these notions made them the sort of dark horse, cool kids version of the correct way the US military should have proceeded, that they'd been ignored and blackballed by corrupt and ignorant US Military and Political higher ups.
These people often went on RT and other foreign media platforms, and podcasts, to basically play up every technological problem and budget overrun or project delay in US military equipment.
At this same time, both the wehraboos and commieboos were basically radicalizing politically, and becoming more ingrained with any talking points from 'the fighter plane mafia' types badmouthing the US.
NonCredibleDefense originally formed as a response to the insanity of all of this, making fun of a whole bunch of people who were making absolutely ludicrous claims which could often be fairly easily proven to be nonsense.
... Then Russia invaded Ukraine and everything went completely nuts.
The wehraboos had basically become Nazis, the commieboos had basically become either Tankies or hated NATO so much that they sided with Putin.
You ended up with ... basically NonCredibleDefense aligning themselves with Ukraine, but also still being very critical of modern Western domestic and foreign policy in general... and getting into tons of spats with any military enthusiast that supported Putin... or hated LGBTQ people.
So... what NonCredibleDefense is, is a mixture of military enthusiasts who are pro Ukraine, pro modern western / NATO involvement in its defense, but also politically left of center, and also very often gay or trans.
And also very into anime, and esoteric internet memes, and video games. Because of course.
The lemmy community is an offshoot of this.
EDIT: Maybe a better way to explain this would be to present the example of the youtuber LazerPig, as basically my best approximation of condensing all of NonCredibleDefense into one person.
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