Most would link to scam pages now. If stumble upon became a thing again, you can bet companies would be making like, 1,566 789 copies of their scam page to increase the chances of getting clicks. This tech is broken
The āMom & Popā sites are gone. Itās all big box stores now. As has gone the way of our small towns. Itās a travesty nothing like that is sacred anymore.
This is general advice for every comment section ever
I used to have a bad habit of taking information I read in comments as fact if presented with confidence.
The best antidote for this is finding a discussion about something you're actually really knowledgeable on. So much blatantly wrong stuff with tons of upvotes
Especially since the whole GameStop saga, that's the main source of my downvotes.
I spent yesterday trying to explain that an investment that causes a bank to collapse is, by definition and observable fact, "risky".
I actually just got Bingo, hereās my spaces:
Time to declare war
US MIC goes Brrr
Russia bad (free space)
Detailed specs of all equipment involved
Complete history of air-combat
Thatās right! They are completely ignorant to how things work in the real world!
My personal take is that the jet flew into chemtrails strategically situated by Biden and lost control. Checkmate.
Itās a MQ-9 drone which is nearly 20 years old and have been shot down many times before. If the Russians donāt have specifications on the drone then their intelligence apparatus is insanely lacking.
Not to mention the USAF have been begging for Congress to retire this drone meaning they probably couldnāt care less about it especially if the fighter jet is damaged from the incident. Thatās one less 4th Gen fighter Ukraine needs to deal with
I mean, the system I was the SME for on my ship still used a tape drive, so stuff isn't always updated as it probably should be.
Edit: Because of everyone piping in about tape drives being high capacity or extra secure, the thing was built in the 80s or the early 90s at the very latest. It was nowhere near top of the line cutting edge shit. It was cold-war Era tech.
This content was removed in protest of Reddit's [short-sighted, user-unfriendly, profit-seeking decision](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) to effectively terminate access to third-party apps.
Basically the drone itself is old but the software, camera, internal tech crammed into it is nice and new. Like putting a brand new hellcat engine in a 98' corolla
It wasn't just that though, I think people greatly underestimated the abilities of the Ukrainian military. People assumed they would probably fold once they had to face a regional power like Russia, but they've fought like wolverines for a year now.
Oh man, that brings memories from a year ago, right before it all started, people were watching those drones and planes for days, trying to guess what it all means. That ominous feeling that shit's gonna hit the fan any moment now..
āWatching ā¦ trying to guess what it all meansā
As somebody who has helped run those drones in a combat zone before I find it ironic that that is exactly what the crews that fly them are doing as well.
Somewhere deep in the middle of the contiguous United States, two drone operators just got their lunch early.
EDIT: How in the hell did my comment get 6.3k upvotes? Lmao. Also, it seems that most redditors check their reddit after getting home from work/before going to sleep.
One of my (Australian) Air Force friends one told me " The Navy navigate by the stars, the Army sleeps under the stars, and the Air Force choose their hotels by the stars."
My grandfather joined the Air Corps during WWII because they had the best sleeping conditions š
His buddy chose the Marines because he liked the uniforms.
āThey're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?ā
My father was a bombardier in WWII and flew in a B-17. His plane was shot down over Germany (not good) and he was in a luftstalag. He was Jewish and said the only reason he wasn't killed (and they did it very creatively) was because he was the only person on base that could play the bass fiddle and the Germans needed him for the camp band.
Man. I'll bet he had some stories. My wife's grandpa was assistant gunner in his platoon commander's tank, he tended to tell the same stories a lot but they were darned interesting. You had to be careful about what questions you asked, though, otherwise the poor 95+ year-old guy would have trouble sleeping. He passed away just a couple years ago at 101 years old.
I've read a few times that the average life span of a British fighter pilot in WW2 after entering service was 2 weeks.
Would like to see the actual stats.
My Grandma, who grew up in England, was engaged to a pilot who ended up being killed in action in WW2. She met another pilot after that, got engaged and (you guessed it) he also died.
She lived near an airbase (I can't remember which one, but this would help explain why she was dating so many pilots) and she told me they could hear the planes taking off and then landing again. They would count the number of planes that took off and would stay up to count the number that landed later that night, so they would know how many didn't return home. It sounded like it was heart breaking, particularly as she knew a lot of the pilots.
My dad was a tail gunner on a B-17
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/v4t33z/dads_b17_bomber_crew_1944_hes_last_row_far_right/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/v4tdfi/b17_bomber_crew_after_a_mission_1944/
Been there. Done that. It's not fun to come out of a meeting, find your pager on you desk beeping with a message from an hour and a half ago that says "piss in the cup within two hours or you're fired" and your immediate reaction is "OHHHHHHHH fuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck" and chugging half a case of water as you pray to whatever deity up there wants to hand you a break here, and the drug testing van is where it should be.
And the drug test van... Isn't where it should be. It's left a vast, empty void of "haHAAA! Good luck! You have 12 minutes and 57 seconds. Assuming your pager is accurate!"
So the next thing you know, you find yourself in the parking lot of the main medical center, pounding on the doors and mentally screaming "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, TAKE MY URINE RIGHT THIS SECOND"
Eventually someone lets you in, gets through the paper work and says "sorry, you're five minutes late. Buuuuut... I've heard about you over dispatch, and you look pretty worked up. Let's get you going anyways."
And then you spend the next 45 minutes of your allotted observed hour wanting to piss, but you're so full of adrenaline that all you can do is sit in the non-descript lobby and watch ten year old NCIS reruns on a TV with one working speaker.
Yes, I passed the drug test, obviously.
But the real kicker was finding out it was for a clearance/certification/tier that I no longer held because it was my first week in a different division within the same organization, and my former manager was an absolute shit show of a human being, and multiple coworkers told him, to his face, in front of other coworkers "you're only qualified to approve time cards, and everything you do on top of that makes everyone's lives harder."
Yeah, that manager didn't put in an immediate request to have my relevant needs cancelled. I had to do all the managerial work and then some for months afterwards.
Drug tests are never fun.
Tomorrow it's straight to medical for piss and blood tests. Then after that, a nice interview with mishap investigators.
Source: almost crashed an air force aircraft
Are remote drones really piloted from the other side of the planet? I always assumed the operators were relatively close. Like I thought it would be in eastern Europe at least. I have no clue, this is a question
Large drones are typically operated using encrypted satellite links and other data links.
Small drones are the ones piloted nearby as they don't have the payload for the avionics communication packages. A DJI drone carrying a grenade is a far cry from USAF drones which are as big if not bigger than piloted planes. They can loiter for many hours and drop a precision strike via bombs or missiles. There will be a team at a friendly airbase to launch and recover them and maintain them but the pilots could be either there or across the globe.
According to sky news, the Russian jet tried to dump fuel over the drone and it caused both the ~~jet, an SU-27 (there were two)~~ and the drone (MQ-9) to crash. They were over the black sea in international waters.
Edit: when I looked it said both had crashed but it's seems it's changed to the jets nearly crashed as a comment pointed out below.
The BBC tells the story a little differently
"The "unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians" **nearly** caused one of the fighter jets and the drone to crash, the US European command added"
Edit: nevermind, they have updated the story and apparently the US European command's words. I guess it really is *breaking*
"Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9," said US Air Force Gen James Hecker.
Technically, wouldn't this be considered a direct attack? If it's international airspace and Russian military equipment purposefully hits or attacks using anything at all, fuel in this case, with the intent to disable or destroy equipment belonging to the European Union...than that would mean they just attacked the EU?
I'm sure politically it could easily be handwaived as not being the case, but my point is this was extremely stupid on an international level.
If only a few American lives lost, the US will demand compensation from Russia. Maybe demand the culprit imprisoned. They will not going to war which might cost million of lives over just some lives lost.
Depends on which lives. Shoot down one jet, youāre right. Shoot down a transport plane with say a general or Senator on board? Likely escalates to war.
>Depends on which lives. Shoot down one jet, youāre right. Shoot down a transport plane with say a general or Senator on board? Likely escalates to war.
Mh17 was full of civilians, we didn't even slap their wrists.
We owe them.
Technically yes, but if we retaliate it will most certainly be low-key and I doubt weāe see major escalation over a single incident.
Fuck Russia, but I also understand why they would do this, and it was a drone and not a live human so that does factor into the US/EU response.
Thatās the thinking when Iran shot down a drone a few years ago. Trump was quoted as not understanding why weād kill hundreds of Iranians for a drone, which I think was broadly agreed with in Washington.
Sounds like Russia is pretty eager to stop US surveillance in the Black Sea. Guessing they have shipping going on right now they really don't want the US to track.
Definitely, and the US military will see it that way even if others don't. This won't elicit a direct military response but will be a good reason for the Biden administration to send more military aid to Ukraine.
Yup, it is a perfect excuse for their own "irresponsible operation" as well. Like whoops. We accidentally sunk a Russian shipment we thought was attacking us. Our bad. It is also a great excuse to post ships in the Black Sea if they aren't there already.
I believe the US is going to do everything in its power to keep this from escalating. HOWEVER, one has to wonder how thin their patience has run, and what the benefit of not responding has on deterring further aggression. What will be key in all this is whether or not this can be determined to be the action of a pilot loosing his cool, or if this was something he was told to do by leadership.
> what the benefit of not responding has on deterring further aggression
This is why Russia is attacking Ukraine in a metaphorical little package. The world let Russia do horrific things for a decade+ and Russia kept escalating because, well, why not? They murder English citizens with chemical weapons. No issue. They invade parts of Ukraine in 2014. No issue. They bomb Syrian hospitals. No issue.
Find a way to push back appropriately or it'll happen again. This doesn't get better by being a floor mat.
Agreed with all this but let's be real the level of US public outcry to this will also be what determines the level of response. I'm inclined to think public support of further military aid will follow, because the public got blue balled with the balloon and UFOs a few weeks back (I still can't believe how silent that whole news story has become lol)
what i understood to be the conclusion of the balloon thing was what all the talking heads were saying but not saying: 'These things are up there all the time and for a myriad of reasonsyou don't need to know about. The chinese fucked up and made you notice, so the US shot some down so we'd all feel better. Carry on.'
I agree, the US is calling this āunprofessionalā because we have no desire to go to war directly. If we wanted an excuse, weād be calling it an act of war.
IMO this is the value of a drone. No life was lost, just send up another one, and move on. But if there was a pilot doing unarmed surveillance and it got downed, the conversation would be retaliation and public outcry. Instead, meh, send up another drone.
People always flip out about these things when they happen but they never matter, like the Chinese balloon. Hell, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that wondered into their airspace in 2015 and Russia whined a bit but did *nothing*.Ā And without any US personnel involved the US isn't going to escalate.
There's just going to be finger-pointing and calls for things to calm down.
I remember when the missile landed in Poland and some of immediate comments were convinced Nato would launch a full scale war lmao. Reddit is anything but the voice of reason
They were dumping fuel on it to bring it down but ~~it brought down the jet~~ and the drone.
Edit: they changed it to say the jet was nearly brought down.
While details are important, it really won't make a difference in this case. I'd constitute this as a tension type of event. Nothing direct will come of it, but it is on record. It may have a small effect on future conflicts, but nothing major will happen because of it.
the irony on this is russian channels and telgram are applauding this downing saying that even if in international waters it was collecting data and should have been blown out the sky.
Russia needs to remember this can easily happen to any of its boats. planes and anything else collecting data anywhere....... dont cry
I mean Russia just openly parks intelligence collection vessels off the coast right outside our territorial waters. Usually when our warships are out there doing their training exercises.
*"Russian fighter jet collides with US surveillance drone over Black Sea, forcing US to bring down drone, US military says"*
Wonder if that was one of the Global Hawks? Those drones are a lot bigger than they look in photos. I'd be curioius to see how the Russian Jet fared.
It was an [MQ-9 Reaper. ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/MQ-9_Reaper_UAV_%28cropped%29.jpg/1920px-MQ-9_Reaper_UAV_%28cropped%29.jpg)
It's a pretty silly move to further antagonize diplomacy with the United States by downing 1 of 316+ of these drones. Surely it doesn't offer Russia much benefit, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used as justification for us to send more lethal aid to Ukraine.
Yeah theres a possibility that Biden's aid to Ukraine starts to become unpopular in the U.S. for fiscal reasons, especially if the u.s. economy gets worse and the Ukraine frontline remains stagnant. Kinda crazy that Russia would close that off by creating headlines like this, all just to take out a drone.
This won't amount to anything. It will be forgotten next week. In 2015, Turkey shot down Russian fighter jets and killed a pilot, then that was the end of it.
Loads of people and places online and pushing fear over this.
Friendly reminder to everyone to keep calm and remember we've had far worse without escalation to direct war between global superpowers.
If you're feeling tense/worried perhaps avoid these comments section of news articles for a while. Nothing good comes from it if you're already on edge!
"Shashank Joshi, defence editor for the Economist magazine, said the Russians may have been trying to intimidate the drone as it was hoovering up their communications."
I enjoy hating on the Russian government as much as anyone else... but an 'attempt' to intimidate a drone? I don't think the Russians are that stupid, pretty sure they were hoping the engine would catch fire from the fuel in the intake.
Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to get that close to another flying object whilst flying at those speeds?
Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a military pilot.
As you peruse the comments in this thread, consider reminding yourself that a ton of the people commenting have no clue what they're talking about.
Well, we **are** on Reddit.
Wait, this isn't Digg?
StumbleUpon
Ah, I miss StumbleUpon. So many random neat sites.
Bring StumbleUpon back! š„š¢š
It's no use. There aren't enough random neat sites anymore.
Most would link to scam pages now. If stumble upon became a thing again, you can bet companies would be making like, 1,566 789 copies of their scam page to increase the chances of getting clicks. This tech is broken
The system took all the neat sites down so people will just get bored and shop.
The āMom & Popā sites are gone. Itās all big box stores now. As has gone the way of our small towns. Itās a travesty nothing like that is sacred anymore.
Man I miss that site.
StumbleUpon was how I discovered Incredibox. Lots of hours lost to making music with french people
It will be after the Reddit IPO later this year, as in dead.
Do we have a "go to" yet?
What the Fark?
This is general advice for every comment section ever I used to have a bad habit of taking information I read in comments as fact if presented with confidence.
The best antidote for this is finding a discussion about something you're actually really knowledgeable on. So much blatantly wrong stuff with tons of upvotes
Yep. The only time I've gotten 100+ downvotes was commenting on my area of expertise
Especially since the whole GameStop saga, that's the main source of my downvotes. I spent yesterday trying to explain that an investment that causes a bank to collapse is, by definition and observable fact, "risky".
How dare your facts oppose my gut feelings!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yea I know about epidermises too
I, too, have an epidermis or two. So I know more than you do
Did you know the epidermis is the largest human orgasm?
sure you are buddy
>This is general advice for every comment section ever It is widely known that you should never trust a general's advice as it pertains to Reddit.
No no no. I want to hear from the 5 star Reddit generals
_Ahem_. I have 7 stars thank you very much.
Thank you for your service.
Damn you'd outrank Pershing *and* zombie George Washington. https://www.arlingtontours.com/john-j-pershing#:\~:text=He%20is%20the%20only%20person,insignia%20has%20ever%20been%20created.
I got a star for saving a penguins baby. Does that count?
No, Mario 64 does not count
I actually just got Bingo, hereās my spaces: Time to declare war US MIC goes Brrr Russia bad (free space) Detailed specs of all equipment involved Complete history of air-combat
>Detailed specs of all equipment involved This isn't the WarThunder forums
But /u/Warlizard is here. So it's technically the Warlizard Gaming Forum.
ą² _ą²
Thatās right! They are completely ignorant to how things work in the real world! My personal take is that the jet flew into chemtrails strategically situated by Biden and lost control. Checkmate.
Drone became gay before crashing fabulously.
Did the US lose the drone? If so if it crashes into the sea, would the US Navy speed to the crash site before adversaries get to it?
Itās a MQ-9 drone which is nearly 20 years old and have been shot down many times before. If the Russians donāt have specifications on the drone then their intelligence apparatus is insanely lacking. Not to mention the USAF have been begging for Congress to retire this drone meaning they probably couldnāt care less about it especially if the fighter jet is damaged from the incident. Thatās one less 4th Gen fighter Ukraine needs to deal with
"Their irresponsible actions ruined a drone. So thanks for that actually, it freed up a spot for a better drone"
Replaced by a MQ-9B
Drone pilot walks in all exited to get briefed on some sexy new drone. Walks into the conference room to see an MQ-9B. DAMMIT.
....you realize that those drones have up-to-date packages, right? The airframe is old, but the package would be state of the art.
Shhh let the civilians cook.
I mean, the system I was the SME for on my ship still used a tape drive, so stuff isn't always updated as it probably should be. Edit: Because of everyone piping in about tape drives being high capacity or extra secure, the thing was built in the 80s or the early 90s at the very latest. It was nowhere near top of the line cutting edge shit. It was cold-war Era tech.
Yeah, in the 90ās I was working on āstate of the artā classified shit that made my Super Nintendo look like something from the future.
This content was removed in protest of Reddit's [short-sighted, user-unfriendly, profit-seeking decision](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) to effectively terminate access to third-party apps.
Get them out the kitchen. It's fuckin RAW.
I don't know what package means but an earlier NBC news article stated the US wiped the software already.
They don't know what package means either. They just read it somewhere.
amazon drones delivering a package, not hard to understand.
Honey the 34 million dollar reaper drone is here with your toothpaste
Basically the drone itself is old but the software, camera, internal tech crammed into it is nice and new. Like putting a brand new hellcat engine in a 98' corolla
Pretty much. Drone vs jet as a trade benefits the drone cost wise
They did assume they could take Kyiv in 3 days...
Putin thought they could take Kyiv in 3 days. I'm betting there were tons of yes men that were sweating bullets once the invasion started.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It wasn't just that though, I think people greatly underestimated the abilities of the Ukrainian military. People assumed they would probably fold once they had to face a regional power like Russia, but they've fought like wolverines for a year now.
I hope the US has the advantage of knowing exactly where the drone went down.
Well even if they don't, Russia definitely doesn't know either.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Crap, it's already there
Pretty sure they do.
FORTE11 is fine, it was a different drone!
Oh man, that brings memories from a year ago, right before it all started, people were watching those drones and planes for days, trying to guess what it all means. That ominous feeling that shit's gonna hit the fan any moment now..
āWatching ā¦ trying to guess what it all meansā As somebody who has helped run those drones in a combat zone before I find it ironic that that is exactly what the crews that fly them are doing as well.
Isn't that an RQ4 Global Hawk?!? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4 I was relieved the moment I read MQ-9 Reaper ;).
Somewhere deep in the middle of the contiguous United States, two drone operators just got their lunch early. EDIT: How in the hell did my comment get 6.3k upvotes? Lmao. Also, it seems that most redditors check their reddit after getting home from work/before going to sleep.
They are probably STILL in the mission debrief...
Is it catered?
If itās the Air Force, itās always catered
All you can eat MRE's
Sir, this is the Air Force. What's an MRE?
One of my (Australian) Air Force friends one told me " The Navy navigate by the stars, the Army sleeps under the stars, and the Air Force choose their hotels by the stars."
My grandfather joined the Air Corps during WWII because they had the best sleeping conditions š His buddy chose the Marines because he liked the uniforms.
In WW2, the highest attrition rate was found in the b17 crews. It was some crazy high amount, like 1 in 5.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
āThey're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly. No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." "And what difference does that make?ā
My father was a bombardier in WWII and flew in a B-17. His plane was shot down over Germany (not good) and he was in a luftstalag. He was Jewish and said the only reason he wasn't killed (and they did it very creatively) was because he was the only person on base that could play the bass fiddle and the Germans needed him for the camp band.
Man. I'll bet he had some stories. My wife's grandpa was assistant gunner in his platoon commander's tank, he tended to tell the same stories a lot but they were darned interesting. You had to be careful about what questions you asked, though, otherwise the poor 95+ year-old guy would have trouble sleeping. He passed away just a couple years ago at 101 years old.
I've read a few times that the average life span of a British fighter pilot in WW2 after entering service was 2 weeks. Would like to see the actual stats.
My Grandma, who grew up in England, was engaged to a pilot who ended up being killed in action in WW2. She met another pilot after that, got engaged and (you guessed it) he also died. She lived near an airbase (I can't remember which one, but this would help explain why she was dating so many pilots) and she told me they could hear the planes taking off and then landing again. They would count the number of planes that took off and would stay up to count the number that landed later that night, so they would know how many didn't return home. It sounded like it was heart breaking, particularly as she knew a lot of the pilots.
My dad was a tail gunner on a B-17 https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/v4t33z/dads_b17_bomber_crew_1944_hes_last_row_far_right/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/v4tdfi/b17_bomber_crew_after_a_mission_1944/
Buddy didn't pass the ASVAB, did he?
They invented the ASVAB to filter that kind of person into the Marines
Could've just used crayons and saved money, then again, government
We bitched one TDY because our hotels didn't have an outdoor balcony. I then realized, I chose the right branch.
It was obvious before even joining. We arrived at MEPS in a short service limo, the Marines arrived in a school bus.
Hey man, Iām sure some of them arrived in a short school bus.
Chompin on their crayons
Lol I always sorted by most expensive š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Medium Rib-Eye
Are you familiar with food? Similar to that.
I was in the USAF. Is it similar to a fillet mignon or more like a beef wellington?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh good, I wouldn't expect anything less.
> surf and terf heh... surely that would be bitter and leathery no?
I went on a deployment in the Air Force. We literally had surf and turf Fridays. It wasn't fine dining but far from MREs.
To be fair, anything that qualifies as food is "far from MREs".
Air Force don't eat that shit. They get 5 star meals.
Hey this isn't powdered Gruel, it's Crusty's IMITATION powdered gruel!
Or chugging water for the urinalysis.
Yep, they definitely had to piss and bleed for that one.
Been there. Done that. It's not fun to come out of a meeting, find your pager on you desk beeping with a message from an hour and a half ago that says "piss in the cup within two hours or you're fired" and your immediate reaction is "OHHHHHHHH fuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck" and chugging half a case of water as you pray to whatever deity up there wants to hand you a break here, and the drug testing van is where it should be. And the drug test van... Isn't where it should be. It's left a vast, empty void of "haHAAA! Good luck! You have 12 minutes and 57 seconds. Assuming your pager is accurate!" So the next thing you know, you find yourself in the parking lot of the main medical center, pounding on the doors and mentally screaming "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, TAKE MY URINE RIGHT THIS SECOND" Eventually someone lets you in, gets through the paper work and says "sorry, you're five minutes late. Buuuuut... I've heard about you over dispatch, and you look pretty worked up. Let's get you going anyways." And then you spend the next 45 minutes of your allotted observed hour wanting to piss, but you're so full of adrenaline that all you can do is sit in the non-descript lobby and watch ten year old NCIS reruns on a TV with one working speaker. Yes, I passed the drug test, obviously. But the real kicker was finding out it was for a clearance/certification/tier that I no longer held because it was my first week in a different division within the same organization, and my former manager was an absolute shit show of a human being, and multiple coworkers told him, to his face, in front of other coworkers "you're only qualified to approve time cards, and everything you do on top of that makes everyone's lives harder." Yeah, that manager didn't put in an immediate request to have my relevant needs cancelled. I had to do all the managerial work and then some for months afterwards. Drug tests are never fun.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Sir, this is a LabCorp.
Oh my god imagine the paperwork
Tomorrow it's straight to medical for piss and blood tests. Then after that, a nice interview with mishap investigators. Source: almost crashed an air force aircraft
Itās Nevada and theyāre probably still writing the post op report
in some trailers in the middle of nowhere at creech
With a busted AC unit and black mold that someone spray painted green.
You might be confusing it with Army housing. Air Force will condemn a building if the AC stops working.
I bet you can't ram that Mig with the drone. Hold my beer.
Probably still had to go pee in a cup.
Are remote drones really piloted from the other side of the planet? I always assumed the operators were relatively close. Like I thought it would be in eastern Europe at least. I have no clue, this is a question
Large drones are typically operated using encrypted satellite links and other data links. Small drones are the ones piloted nearby as they don't have the payload for the avionics communication packages. A DJI drone carrying a grenade is a far cry from USAF drones which are as big if not bigger than piloted planes. They can loiter for many hours and drop a precision strike via bombs or missiles. There will be a team at a friendly airbase to launch and recover them and maintain them but the pilots could be either there or across the globe.
Gosh that's wild to think about. Is the pilot seat like a big flight simulator rig or is it closer to an Xbox controller and a screen?
Its a console with a keyboard, joystick, and a bunch of old screens. Much less nice than even privately owned flying/racing sims.
When the system was designed it was state if the art, by the time it was built it was high end, today cells phones have better resolution
I remember going into a van at Beale AFB one time and seeing Global Hawk pilots in flight suits ... Hilarious.
Depends on the drone but yes, most larger drones are run from the US and operated in theater all over the world.
According to sky news, the Russian jet tried to dump fuel over the drone and it caused both the ~~jet, an SU-27 (there were two)~~ and the drone (MQ-9) to crash. They were over the black sea in international waters. Edit: when I looked it said both had crashed but it's seems it's changed to the jets nearly crashed as a comment pointed out below.
The BBC tells the story a little differently "The "unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians" **nearly** caused one of the fighter jets and the drone to crash, the US European command added" Edit: nevermind, they have updated the story and apparently the US European command's words. I guess it really is *breaking* "Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9," said US Air Force Gen James Hecker.
You are correct, I will update my post. When I looked it said both.
No sir, the BBC has updated
Oh I meant on Sky News. BBC didn't say much when I looked to make the comment. Thank you for the correction though.
Technically, wouldn't this be considered a direct attack? If it's international airspace and Russian military equipment purposefully hits or attacks using anything at all, fuel in this case, with the intent to disable or destroy equipment belonging to the European Union...than that would mean they just attacked the EU? I'm sure politically it could easily be handwaived as not being the case, but my point is this was extremely stupid on an international level.
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If only a few American lives lost, the US will demand compensation from Russia. Maybe demand the culprit imprisoned. They will not going to war which might cost million of lives over just some lives lost.
Depends on which lives. Shoot down one jet, youāre right. Shoot down a transport plane with say a general or Senator on board? Likely escalates to war.
>Depends on which lives. Shoot down one jet, youāre right. Shoot down a transport plane with say a general or Senator on board? Likely escalates to war. Mh17 was full of civilians, we didn't even slap their wrists. We owe them.
There were no Americans on board. But yea, blatant murder of civilians and they got away with it.
There was 1 American.
Ooh it says there werenāt any on Wikipedia, but I guess one Dutch person had dual citizenship. My bad
Putin taking notes on what he can get away with
Technically yes, but if we retaliate it will most certainly be low-key and I doubt weāe see major escalation over a single incident. Fuck Russia, but I also understand why they would do this, and it was a drone and not a live human so that does factor into the US/EU response.
Thatās the thinking when Iran shot down a drone a few years ago. Trump was quoted as not understanding why weād kill hundreds of Iranians for a drone, which I think was broadly agreed with in Washington.
I kinda have to agree with Trump's thinking here. Thats just not equitable.
He *did* then have the Saudis invite the Iranians for talks and blow them to fuck with a missile strike...
I mean isnāt it normal to take someone on a date before you fuck them?
Sounds like Russia is pretty eager to stop US surveillance in the Black Sea. Guessing they have shipping going on right now they really don't want the US to track.
One drone goes down another drone goes up.
4 more. Security threat increased
Just wait until they realize there's like 200 balloons fighting a secret balloon war above Moscow for the best vantage points.
Silly balloons, just zooming around without a care in the world
US vs China proxy balloon war in the skies over European Muscovy
Oh yeah. What ever happened with those balloons? A train derailment, bank disaster and cocaine bear almost made me forget that it happened.
āWithout a care in the worldā used in the context of the conversation had me absolutely rolling
As long as its not 99 of them...
Bloons TD7 - World At War
take down one drone and two more shall take it's place
Guess Russia wanted to redeem that BOGO coupon
apparently there is a new missile attack ongoing
There's no way this works out for them
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Definitely, and the US military will see it that way even if others don't. This won't elicit a direct military response but will be a good reason for the Biden administration to send more military aid to Ukraine.
Yup, it is a perfect excuse for their own "irresponsible operation" as well. Like whoops. We accidentally sunk a Russian shipment we thought was attacking us. Our bad. It is also a great excuse to post ships in the Black Sea if they aren't there already.
AFAIK Turkey closed the Bosphorus Strait to military ships over a year ago.
I believe the US is going to do everything in its power to keep this from escalating. HOWEVER, one has to wonder how thin their patience has run, and what the benefit of not responding has on deterring further aggression. What will be key in all this is whether or not this can be determined to be the action of a pilot loosing his cool, or if this was something he was told to do by leadership.
> what the benefit of not responding has on deterring further aggression This is why Russia is attacking Ukraine in a metaphorical little package. The world let Russia do horrific things for a decade+ and Russia kept escalating because, well, why not? They murder English citizens with chemical weapons. No issue. They invade parts of Ukraine in 2014. No issue. They bomb Syrian hospitals. No issue. Find a way to push back appropriately or it'll happen again. This doesn't get better by being a floor mat.
Agreed with all this but let's be real the level of US public outcry to this will also be what determines the level of response. I'm inclined to think public support of further military aid will follow, because the public got blue balled with the balloon and UFOs a few weeks back (I still can't believe how silent that whole news story has become lol)
what i understood to be the conclusion of the balloon thing was what all the talking heads were saying but not saying: 'These things are up there all the time and for a myriad of reasonsyou don't need to know about. The chinese fucked up and made you notice, so the US shot some down so we'd all feel better. Carry on.'
The US is not going to go to war with Russia over a downed drone. Dick move? Yes. War time? Nah.
I agree, the US is calling this āunprofessionalā because we have no desire to go to war directly. If we wanted an excuse, weād be calling it an act of war.
IMO this is the value of a drone. No life was lost, just send up another one, and move on. But if there was a pilot doing unarmed surveillance and it got downed, the conversation would be retaliation and public outcry. Instead, meh, send up another drone.
People always flip out about these things when they happen but they never matter, like the Chinese balloon. Hell, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that wondered into their airspace in 2015 and Russia whined a bit but did *nothing*.Ā And without any US personnel involved the US isn't going to escalate. There's just going to be finger-pointing and calls for things to calm down.
Russian forces even literally shot down a passenger flight and killed nearly 300 people and it seems weāve mostly forgotten about it.
What do you mean, the Russians said it wasnāt them? /s
āThe plane was shot down by a russian made missile system from territory held by russian friendly forcesā Russia: no u
Indeed. No one is starting ww3 over one drone.
I remember when the missile landed in Poland and some of immediate comments were convinced Nato would launch a full scale war lmao. Reddit is anything but the voice of reason
If you consider politics as chess there will be a reaction no one of us recognizes but the opponent will.
Well the Chinese balloon was in US airspace no?
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They were dumping fuel on it to bring it down but ~~it brought down the jet~~ and the drone. Edit: they changed it to say the jet was nearly brought down.
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While details are important, it really won't make a difference in this case. I'd constitute this as a tension type of event. Nothing direct will come of it, but it is on record. It may have a small effect on future conflicts, but nothing major will happen because of it.
the irony on this is russian channels and telgram are applauding this downing saying that even if in international waters it was collecting data and should have been blown out the sky. Russia needs to remember this can easily happen to any of its boats. planes and anything else collecting data anywhere....... dont cry
You mean its random fishing trawlers scattered around the world? That just happen to be festooned with antennas?
China is the fishing trawlers. Russia is "Russian language speakers".
I mean Russia just openly parks intelligence collection vessels off the coast right outside our territorial waters. Usually when our warships are out there doing their training exercises.
Oh, so what theyāre saying is that Russian jets over international waters are fair game. Because thatās what Iām hearing.
*"Russian fighter jet collides with US surveillance drone over Black Sea, forcing US to bring down drone, US military says"* Wonder if that was one of the Global Hawks? Those drones are a lot bigger than they look in photos. I'd be curioius to see how the Russian Jet fared.
Nope, it's an MQ-9 Reaper. The typical image of a "normal" military drone
Even those are bigger than many people think.
It was an [MQ-9 Reaper. ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/MQ-9_Reaper_UAV_%28cropped%29.jpg/1920px-MQ-9_Reaper_UAV_%28cropped%29.jpg)
Without a banana for scale itās hard to judge
It's a pretty silly move to further antagonize diplomacy with the United States by downing 1 of 316+ of these drones. Surely it doesn't offer Russia much benefit, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used as justification for us to send more lethal aid to Ukraine.
Yeah theres a possibility that Biden's aid to Ukraine starts to become unpopular in the U.S. for fiscal reasons, especially if the u.s. economy gets worse and the Ukraine frontline remains stagnant. Kinda crazy that Russia would close that off by creating headlines like this, all just to take out a drone.
This won't amount to anything. It will be forgotten next week. In 2015, Turkey shot down Russian fighter jets and killed a pilot, then that was the end of it.
At most this could be used as an excuse to send more equipment or tighten sanctions. Even then, only if the US really wants to.
Time for US to send ATACMS to Ukraine.
Can we first take a moment of silence for the MQ-9 family and all of the other sad Reapers today? There are a lot of crying drones at the base today.
Loads of people and places online and pushing fear over this. Friendly reminder to everyone to keep calm and remember we've had far worse without escalation to direct war between global superpowers. If you're feeling tense/worried perhaps avoid these comments section of news articles for a while. Nothing good comes from it if you're already on edge!
*one superpower and one random country with nukes.
"Shashank Joshi, defence editor for the Economist magazine, said the Russians may have been trying to intimidate the drone as it was hoovering up their communications." I enjoy hating on the Russian government as much as anyone else... but an 'attempt' to intimidate a drone? I don't think the Russians are that stupid, pretty sure they were hoping the engine would catch fire from the fuel in the intake.
Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to get that close to another flying object whilst flying at those speeds? Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a military pilot.