Enough. Start a new thread.

Some guys are just so easy 😉

I’m always eager to respond to such a friendly invitation, you should know by now 😀 I’m always a tad disappointed to find out that my on-topic comment never seems to inspire a similar response from certain not-quite-so-easy guys.

What do you want to hear? Although Putin is definately no stranger to macchiavellian schemes both inside Russia and across his borders and he is a staunch supporter of Yanukovich, pointing fingers to Moscow for Yushchenko’s poisoning is pure speculation. Ukrainian politics haven’t been clean for the last few years either. Current president Kuchma has been linked to a number of intimidations, molestations and even killings as well. If either one of you had actually been reading up on Ukraine, you would have known.

As for the comment-provoking remark

Here’s an indication that democracy won’t come easily to a region that didn’t have any for most of the 20th Century.

, do you want me to apply this to Iraq and Afghanistan 😉 ?

Belarus’ Su-25s? Nothing special about those, except maybe that they carry their bort numbers on the tail as well.

There is a late WAPJ with Georgian L29s.

Syria does not have Su-27s, although one was demonstrated in Damascus with -reportedly- Syrian markings.

Yemen doesn’t have Flankers either.

I agree with that in general. But the advertised and shown performance of PVO was very erratic. “The intercept” of Rust and his landing on the red square was hardly one. The Cessna did not carry kyrillic signs, all western flights at that time had to follow preset flight routes, flight levels, a russian “navigator” and reporting points. General sectretary Gorbatschov asked for the “head” of the defence minister after that successfull intercept!!! 🙂

After the outcry after KAL007, it isn’t too hard to imagine that there was reluctance to shoot down an obviously civilian intruder like a C172. There also was a little more room for personal initiative in the PVO than is often claimed – although i don’t know all the details, the decision not to shoot was probably taken at quite a low level. Even more so, it’s very likely that the non-threatening nature of Rust’s Cessna was the reason why the alert and interception of this intruder was kept inside the lower echelons of the PVO rather than a full alert throughout the Baltic and Moscow TVDs.

One of the other “successfull” intercepts. How did the PVO pilots manage that with their AAMs? Just two pax killed and landing the 707 on a frozen lake.

It was an R60 hit on an outer engine. KAL007 was hit by a radar-guided R98R in the rear fuselage/tail.

Did Israeli F-4E’s have CCIP bomb aiming at the time? I’m asking because even in the USAF only very few F-4E’s in the active USAF (the last ones with 4TFW/Seymour Johnson AFB in fact didn’t) ever got CCIP bombing but relied on dive toss/CCRP targeting.

“Originally Posted by Arthur
Rust got company twice during his flight over Russia: once by two Hinds, and once by MiG-23s.”

Hinds maybe. But Floggers? The Cessna 172 traveled near the ground at 100 knots!!!!!

That’s why the Hinds eventually joined the Cessna: the Floggers couldn’t keep up, they had to circle around. Remember that one of the changes made in the Soviet PVO after the Rust incident was that Hinds were given a minor job in air-defense against slow-moving targets. Remember that hot-air balloon shot down over Belarus by Hinds in 1995?

Didn’t the crew of the AEGIS ship screw up by going full auto with the AEGIS system, which then proceeded to blow away the unidentified (and therefore classified as hostile) aircraft?

Yes, but there was a human operator visually keeping contact with the Airbus. For some reason this operator got so confused he read the aircraft’s altitude as the distance of the aircraft to the cruiser.

There was something on TV here about that incident a few weeks back. Is it true that there was a large lack of bodies recovered from the crash site?

Hardly any bodies were found. But as the 747 appearantly desintegrated before impact, the bodies were completely exposed in the water which made them easy food for bait eaters. Plenty of spider crabs in those waters.

I thought Rust’s Cessna was trailed by a few Hinds at one point and it was decided that the guy obviously wasn’t a threat?

Rust got company twice during his flight over Russia: once by two Hinds, and once by MiG-23s.