At that moment the SAAF did learn, that the weaponary of the Angolan Floggers had a new head-on engagement capability.
The SAAF had to change its former tactical behavior and to add similar capability AAMs to deny the Angolian that tactical advantage. It is not the aircraft to blame about that, but the lack of SAAF intelligence to be surprised by that. 😀

They were Cuban MiGs 🙂 and while better intelligence may have addressed some tactical issues, they would still have been sitting with a performance disparity to address.

I mean whats to stop some nutter crashing his plane into the white house tomorrow?

Professional courtesy? :diablo:

Hmm – as an alternative – I would have said buy some ex-USN/USMC late-model F-4s and perhaps develop a joint upgrade/modernisation programme with another operator (Germany perhaps).

The fact that the Predator was carrying Stingers is irrelevant. The Predator would conduct its primary mission of monitoring within the NFZ and if engaged had the potential capability to retaliate. Predators also conducted their mission with Hellfires in order to engage ground air defence units if the need arose. Predators would hang about and goad those ground air defence units to show themselves. Is that illegal in your rule book? Remember that those ground air defence units shouldn’t have been operating below the 33rd. Iraq aircraft also attempted to engage any UAV where ever they could, including Hellfire carrying ones. What is so hard for you to understand?

Dude.You.Seriously.Need.To.Read.The.Posts.Properly.Before.Responding.

1) I, in none of my posts have made an issue of the Predator carrying stingers versus hellfires, or even a potato gun no 10 – it is irrelevant (so we actually agree on something – hooray!) what it was armed with.

2) For the last time, because life is too short to go around in circles, I don’t mind if the Predator tried to engage an Iraqi aircraft in the NFZ – (now here’s the important bit) – as long as the USAF did not behave (deliberately and with forethought) in such a manner as to entice Iraqi assets that are outside the NFZ into the NFZ for the purposes of the destroying the assets. And by “deliberately and with forethought”, I don’t mean conducting patrols in the NFZ, I mean “straying” into Iraqi airspace outside the NFZ with the express aim of provoking a reaction.

3) In March 2003, GWB launched an illegal (in every possible connotation) invasion of Iraq, so when a member of the USAF says that they were “baiting” the Iraqis four months before the invasion, please forgive me if I take it him at his literal word, especially when it gels so well with all the other illegal acts that the US has performed over the last four years.

4) Even if the Iraqi was “baited” (using my interpretation as opposed to impi’s interpretation) – it does not excuse the Iraqi actions – they should have stayed out of the NFZ – but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t wonder about exactly what the Coalition air forces were doing in the NFZ, instead of just believing everything we see on TV.

Um, that’s exactly what they did. The Predator was armed with Stinger missiles, it was fired upon and it fired back. I think you’re being confused by the way the term ‘baiting’ is being misused here, since the Predators were on legitimate surveillance missions designed to keep an eye on military activity within the NFZ, particularly the setting up of anti-aircraft positions. Conceptually, it was no different to manned Coalition fighters patrolling the NFZ, which is why I fail to see what was so objectionable about this story.

I know I am going to regret this, but here I post again :

Firstly, the term “baiting” is a quote from Maj. Mark Lilly of the Air Force 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron in the article on cbsnews.com mentioned earlier in the thread. Baiting is a word which has a very limited scope and that scope, under these circumstances, is synonymous with provocation. I would be interested to find out whom you think is ‘misusing’ the term.

Secondly, the issue is not that the Predator shot at the MiG, the issue was that, according to the public info available, they went looking for trouble – which definitely exceeds their mandate. If the USAF was using F-16s to provoke an Iraqi reaction, I would still have an issue with their irresponsible behaviour.

Thirdly, while the USAF did use Predators on legitimate missions within the NFZ, there is nothing in the article that suggests that this particular Predator was just flying along minding its own business (see my first point about baiting). So, what evidence is currently available would seem to suggest that they were doing more than just patrolling the NFZ. In fact, if they were just minding their own business, why not emphasize the fact, and add fuel to the fire that was GWB’s war effort?

Could you not have worked it out for yourself after watching the video?

Coords from the start of the clip – roughly 32 21 48N 46 03 18E
Coords from part of the clip during Stinger launch – 32 22 13N 46 03 03E

From 1996 the 33rd Parallel was the northern limit for the Southern No Fly Zone.

Ok – so the event was apparently within the NFZ. Again, we do not know what the extent of the preceding baiting was.

On several ocassions the Coalition struck targets north of the Southern No Fly Zones in direct retaliation for firing on aircraft.

And I have no problem with such retaliation. This is well within the realms of their mandate. What I take issue with is the fact that they, over a number of days, lured the Iraqi’s into a very clever ambush (even if it did fail). This, I feel, lies outside the scope of their mandate. They were running the very real risk inflaming the situation – but then again, viewed through Dubya glasses, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing ;).

As for Iraqi’s dodging the patrols – why, the solution would seem to be obvious. Either improve the level of intel wrt their operations, so that you can catch the Iraqis and toast them in flagrante delicato, or make the patrols harder to predict, or step up the sortie rate. All of these I feel are perfectly acceptable alternatives and would lose no sleep if a/c were nailed while violating the NFZ – and yes, they would (in the long run) cost more and make for a less-impressive sound byte than nailing a MiG with a UAV!

I think part of the issue here is not so much fairness, as the fact that this incident happened in Dec 2002, before the invasion of Iraq (i.e when everybody was technically at peace). What if the Stinger had hit the MiG, and killed the pilot? Or what if the wreckage of the MiG had landed on a school or a hospital? Would we see the pilot of the UAV in the Hague facing charges – or how about his superior officers?

What was also quite interesting was the CBS commentary – emphasising how mismatched the encounter was – good grief.

The behaviour was quite frankly irresponsible and criminal.If you ask me, this was somebody looking to start a war.

Damn 😡 … see, I had these screaming kids to attend to and must have just missed them. Oh well, I did see them the next day from home though.. Did you take any pics Kukri?

🙂 – you see that’s why I went twice – my family lack the required “enthusiasm” to spend the whole day – took Mrs K, and Miss K on Sunday. Miss K insisted on standing in the queue for 30 mins so that she could sit in the gripen! For a four-year old, that’s quite impressive! Today she went to school wearing a Gripen sticker….

Took 200-odd pics – only one halfway decent pic of the lightnings – combo of small zoom lens and even smaller photographer skill set…

Will probably sift through them and post over the course of the week…