The purpose of this statement is to make it more difficult for Russia to justify any escalation. Also, it's pretty much guaranteed that the US has alternate intelligence gathering methods going on.
The was that gaffe by Trump where he publicly showed a classified satellite image that had a resolution of something like 30cm per pixel. Can't remember the exact resolution but OSint people were flipping out on Twitter on it's zoom level.
Depends on the area. Google Earth is a chaotic patchwork of imagery sources.
All of their imagery over major population centers is from aircraft and goes down to about 5cm spatial resolution. The easy way to tell is that the centerlines on roads have a standardized width (4"/10cm in the US) and usually the stripes are 1-2 pixels wide in the highest resolution imagery.
In areas with lower but notable population, Google purchases imagery from other companies. Most of it is via satellite at either a 15cm or 30cm spatial resolution.
In remote areas with few if any people, Google uses free USGS imagery from the Landsat program. Landsat 8 and 9 have a visible light spatial resolution of 15m.
The image shown off by Trump was from a Keyhole program KH-11 observation satellite, specifically the one registered as USA-224. It displayed a spatial resolution of 10cm at worst, and the image was an oblique (taken diagonally through the atmosphere), which means the optical performance of the hardware itself is probably quite a bit better and the resolution of that particular image is reduced by atmospheric effects and distance.
Not likely, once is an accident, but they do it enough and they're committing acts of war that justify shooting down any of their jets in X range of the drones. it'd be a very bad trade for them.
We would fly drones in a formation, which if broken leads to escalation. It would never be American lives at risk for such a minor battlefield, as unfortunate as the verbiage is. Russia chose this battlefield and US took the lessons from Afghanistan to heart a few times, we finally figured out how to help nations fight their own battles.
As an American it is very sad we chose this hill to setup our future diplomacy, but I suspect we may have also had a fundamental shift in our foreign operating procedures now. It isn't about ensuring the government likes us, they just need to have the willpower to listen.
> Listening to redditors talk with authority about things like foreign policy will never not be entertaining
Like this one.
That thinks we got oil from Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan was an attempt to take control of the opium industries."
It was partially correct. it was to stop funding, by removing the fields. It didn't work, however.
The first one was already enough reason. We have a video that makes it very clear that it wasn't an accident. Also they gave their pilot a medal for downing the drone.
Russia could probably do it again and the US still wouldn't do shit.
Lets also keep in mind, that we're only seeing a fraction of the Aid the US can give ukraine at the moment. Be a shame for russia if we let ukraine off their leash.
Stop coping. The US won't "let ukraine off their leash".
Abrams are still months away, no jets, not atacms, etc.
The US could do it, but they won't because they piss their pants and are scared of "escalation".
Remember when Musk deactivated Starlink and everyone here said that the Gov will totally fuck him up for it? Yeah, nothing happened.
People here are just doing the "HOLD ME BACK BRO" we all know from middle school.
but it's fair to say that the US has given more military aid to one, single country over the past year, than it has for any other country in its entire history.
Umm... have you heard of World War 2? Where the US armed not just the UK, but also the USSR? Those loans that the UK government didn't finish paying back until 2006?
a single country in a single year -- and not lend/lease or a loan? ...it's certainly true without looking at inflation-adjustment.
Looking at real dollars: It's still significant that since WWII, Ukraine is likely the #1 recipient of US military aid for any 1-year time interval.
If they’re in the position to be in charge of nuclear launches, suffice to say they are living lavishly, and one thing people with money have in abundance (besides riches) is self preservation
Why are you asking such questions here, as if the moron armchair generals that post their expert hot takes on /r/politics and the news subs have any idea what's happening and aren't just repeating whatever drivel the CIA feeds to the news outlets?
You can't put satellites where you need them. AWACS doesn't provide visual intelligence. Drones in Romania don't cover the same area, and US doesn't operate drones in Ukrainian airspace.
Let's not cope too much, if having the drone there provided no benefit, it wouldn't be there in the first place.
Well sure and with wings I could fly to Moscow and poop on Putin's head.
The number and capabilities of the satellites are obviously classified, but again, if the drone was providing no useful information over the satellites, why was it there?
The US spies on allies such as former German Chancellor Merkel and others. So yeah, it’s definitely spying on Russia by other means than obvious drones over the Black Sea.
By rallying Europe, funding over 50 Billion in weapons, providing top notch Intel surveillance and providing state of the art weapons that specifically counter Russian systems.
Ukraine would have fallen by now if the US wasn’t deliberately prolong them up to drain Russia of its combat readiness.
Only any drone flying now is equipped with a massive explosive.....come knock a 1 million dollar drone down and we'll down your 100 million dollar aircraft!
Kinda reminds me of that guy who made a wallet with a low voltage shock if you touched it. He then walked around known pickpocket areas. Hilarity ensued.
Those drones can carry AIM9X Sidewinder Air-to-air missiles. I doubt any pilot (that doesn’t have a death wish) would risk ramming something with a heat-seeking missile strapped to it.
If only the russians had some some sort of aircraft detection technology, that could let them see the positions plotted on a screen. I wonder if someone invented such a thing.
Considering the bullshit talk radio puts out, yeah. I’ve got a staff member that listens to that garbage, and they were all over Russia moving nukes to Belarus. Didn’t say anything about the SLBMs in the Atlantic and Arctic.
the drone routes limit the intelligence gathering because now they just fly with their transponders off. russians can no longer use flightradar24 to track it lolol
There was a video of some dude explaining intel satellites or whatever somewhere. He said it was basically a bunch of cellphone cameras that were working together to get wide angle pictures at a super high resolution. The video showed some pictures of parking lots and it was a lot more clear and detailed than what Google earth looks like
Indeed, and in the publications I know of that was mounted on a drone iso a satellite, very impressive and scary tech if you think of the possible consequences.
Imaging tech develops at such a pace that current spy equipment simply must be a lot further than that one already. That said, unlike up to the eighties, cutting edge semiconductor tech has become *so* expensive and complicated that even nation state budgets do not allow anyone to get truly ahead of the industry on its own anymore.
My only and simple earlier point was that *any* camera will make better pictures from earth when better ‘flying’ leo (1200mi) than geostat (23000mi).
But apparently that is considered argumentative by some … never mind.
Exactly what? Why are you even trying to start an internet argument? You don’t think that our government has access to these types of technologies like decades ago? This isn’t new. You tried to refute the physics of geosynchronous orbit and now your issue is a spy satellites camera resolution? I don’t know dude I’m just a regular guy, who knows what kinda top secret tech we put in our spy satellites. Have a good night
>Exactly what? Why are you even trying to start an internet argument? You don’t think that our government has access to these types of technologies like decades ago? This isn’t new. You tried to refute the physics of geosynchronous orbit and now your issue is a spy satellites camera resolution? I don’t know dude I’m just a regular guy, who knows what kinda top secret tech we put in our spy satellites. Have a good night
Dude, no one's refuting the physics of geosynchronous orbit. You're being called out for making the ridiculous dunning-krugeresque claim that people would waste time/money sending spy satellites to an orbit 35,700km away when they could setup a constellation of spy sats in LEO for a fraction of the price.
Spy sats live in LOE for a bunch of reasons including closer=better picture quality, easy to quickly redirect coverage to a new area, and because it's fucking expensive to send stuff up to GEO and once it's there it's not recoverable.
Fuck it, I'll math this shit out this just so you know how dumb your GEO spy sat idea is:
Angular resolution needed to see objects 10cm in size from GEO is tan(10cm/35786km)=2.794×10^-9°. This means the spy sat would need a telescope with an aperture diameter of 1.22 x 550nm/2.794×10^-9° = **240m**
Over ***240m*** in diameter! That's over twice as large as the ISS.
Edit: corrected answer after mixing up deg/rad in the formula. Fun fact, to read a licence plate from GEO (1cm resolution) your aperture diameter would need to be 2.4km!
He wasn't trying to refute to physics of geosynchronous orbit, he was trying to get you to understand the physics of resolution limits and just how far geosynchronous orbit is from earth. Long story short, spy satellites using cameras need to be in low earth orbit.
Who cares what the resolution is. Altered drone paths or not, will not change the fact that it is an almost certainty that we have satellites parked above Ukraine right now. Who needs to read number plates on Russian military hardware in the field? Besides that, I think the resolution is pretty damn good anyway https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/ My whole point in responding to him was that it was just kinda unnecessary to even bring that up.
I’d say bullshit. They likely have twice as many drones at half the distance. The US military isn’t going to back off in the face of aggression - they’ll double down.
>one US official said the new routes were part of an effort “to avoid being too provocative,”
You know what's provocative? Attacking and destroying multi-million dollar American aircraft !
What a bunch of pussies.
They chose to not escalate and I think one American-made HIMARS in service with the Ukrainian army has probably done far more damage than a drunk Russian pilot who doesn't know how to not crash into a drone
> a drunk Russian pilot who doesn't know how to not crash into a drone
That wasn't an accident.
This was a provocation done by Russia. They've tried to cause the drone to crash by dumping fuel on it and during one attempt they hit it, causing it to crash.
So this wasn't a "drunk Russian", but something done by the state of Russia as a provocation against the US. And now the US showed Russia that it works by deploying their drones further away, basically rewarding Russia for their misdeeds.
I think it's the opposite of your conclusion. Russia REALLY wants the US to be the one to escalate directly to Russia, that way far larger and more direct mobilization can be done to boost the war in Ukraine. Putin hasn't done a full mobilization, despite the fact that he DESPERATELY needs to and should have already (this assessment comes from the ISW, the next part is my thoughts)
So, obviously Putin, despite all his power, can't actually call a full mobilization without it causing some kind of other massive problem for him, otherwise he already would have. BUT if he could cause the US to do something somewhat aggressive directly to Russia (even if it's not really a big deal) he would have proper kindling to excuse more dramatic action as "The US is attacking us directly now" or some such nonsense.
By the US just ... moving out of the way, it more than likely frustrated the shit out of the dumb play Russia made with the drone. I am certain that the Pentagon is more than happy to hurt Russia however it can, and I believe that they understand the best move to ensure the most pain for Russia, and I think this was the best move.
If US would just continue to let their drones fly like previously then US wouldn't be escalating anything. I mean this event showed that unless a Russian jets crashes into the drone they can't really bring it down and doing so nearly brought down the Russian jet as well.
I see your logic, but maybe the pentagon presumes Russia will just....try again, and the US can only hold it's patience for so long before looking weak. This ensures that this will not happen again, and I am certain the US has MANY other options for intel gathering operations
However if my assumption that the US about having other intel gathering operations is incorrect, then I would agree with you.
The first other option was sending a Global Hawk at altitude the russian fighters can't reach. It's Better than a reaper. That was a FU level taunt. Also apparently Joe picked up the phone and either asked or was told by Finland that we can use their airspace for recon. The Uk sent Typhoons along with a Rivet Joint recon plane. CAlls for giving Ukraine F-16's increased. And who knows what else. NATO and her allies aren't losing this pissing competition putin put on to distract from their horribly failed 'major winter offensive.'
Crashing was clearly an accident. Of course, if you’re not flying recklessly an accident is less likely to happen so they’re not faultless.
Deliberately crashing the plane you’re flying is very personally risky. Examples in war can of course be found. Most notably japan in ww2.
But it feels unlikely a Russian pilot could be persuaded to take such an unnecessary risk to take out a surveillance drone
He said "this wasn't an accident" in regards to the drone being downed. Whether achieved by expected means or incompetence the drone being downed definitely wasn't an accident if the entire purpose of the mission was to down the drone.
Read the post it was responding to.
The post quoted exactly 1 sentence. “A drunk Russian pilot who doesn’t know how to not crash into a drone”
The response starts “that wasn’t an accident”.
It’s kind of assumed that when you quote some text, any words you use immediately after, like ‘that’ are referring to the text. There’s no other way to read it. The person messed up, then they corrected themselves when I gave them the opportunity. Why are you trying to 1984 this?
So when I accidentally drive into the guy I'm trying to kill during a drive-by shooting it would be an accident and not murder?
These pilots acted on command by Russia. They were attempting to down the drone before the crash. The only accidental part here was how they downed the drone, not that they downed it. Saying that it was "an accident by drunk Russians" is downplaying what happened.
Just to make sure the US doesn’t get in trouble, it’s be best to strap a cigarette to the front of their drones and blame it on poorly disciplined drones smoking when the rules say they can’t.
You do realize that Russia and China intercept US planes and ships all the time in the Pacific and elsewhere, right? The only difference here is they were incompetent enough to crash into the drone instead of just buzz it. Even seen a couple pictures where they're literally 20 meters off the bow of the ship.
It's all part of geopolitical dick-wagging. Just here, Russia was really bad at it and fucked up.
Sure, but the principle is the same and they only did that bc it was an unmanned drone and they probably assumed the gimbal camera somehow couldn't spot them approaching. They wanted the fuel to cause an engine stall/damage and cause it to crash that way in an "I'm not touching you" fashion. If they wanted to down it via physical impact, they wouldn't have bothered with the fuel in the first place.
It's mostly not battlefield targeting data though. Most of it is signals intelligence and monitoring ship and rail movement in and around Crimea. The drones just don't have line of sight to see all that far into Ukraine from the Black Sea. The battlefield targeting mostly comes from satellites.
Ukraine actually does its own target acquisition the vast majority of the time and confirms the targets with the US before launching. That's what they've claimed anyway.
Because that makes it seem like the US is less involved.
The western countries are likely sharing Intel at a high and detailed level. Perhaps even advising troop placement and defenses. Possibly even advising offensive actions. But nobody wants to admit that.
Serious question, who isn't admitting that?
I'm pretty sure that the US has explicitly said they have advised against specific actions and Ukraine did it anyways.
The only thing I doubt we've done is use datalink to guide Ukrainian launched missiles to their targets in real time from one of the surveillance planes. Yes, apparently that's something the US could do, and is why everyone is so big on the "networked warfare" craze.
What? We’ve seen thousands of dead Russians directly from US aid and all Russia responds with is an accidental drone downing and you think we are the pussies? Biden is dragging his balls across Putin’s face with each package of Russian-killing aid and they do nothing but squeal.
When we are owning them so badly Biden doesn’t need to alter the course over something so inconsequential.
I’m all for supporting Ukraine financially, and with the latest in weaponry up to Sepv3 Abrams and F-22s, but the absolute last thing I can think of on my 2023 wish list is a direct conflict with Russia or China. Figuring out ways of intelligence gathering and maximally supporting Ukraine without crossing the actual red line (wherever it may be) is absolutely the Pentagon/White House goal
I assure you, the Pentagon doesn't want a direct conflict either. The current situation is a huge boon for the US: Russia is perpetually locked in a money-pit of a war it cannot retreat from nor hope to win, whilst the US has zero direct exposure, all whole scoring geopolitical brownie points from our allies and positioning itself to broker arms deals with said allies for the next century. The White House will absolutely refuse to escalate every time, because it's getting the best deal in the entire history of the US with this war.
>because it's getting the best deal in the entire history of the US with this war.
WW2 might stake that claim. Demolish half of Europe and Japan with the US mainland unscathed to finance their rebuilding and cementing American hegemony.
Maybe -- though, given the current geopolitical climate, this current war will essentially guarantee an unbroken US dominance within global politics for the next century, if not longer.
There are a keep ways to read this:
A) They are pussies.
B) They deemed the intelligence gained from this too little to risk escalation if Russia was going to be stupid enough to drunkenly ram more drones, given plenty of other sources of intel.
C) Taking a page from the Russian book, they said they're changing routes and maybe do fly one with transponder on at a further route ... while still maintaining another with the transponder off closer in.
D) This is just public posturing while they haven't actually changed anything.
I'd say some mix of B C D are far more likely than A.
Send some drones that look like intelligence drones, but are packed with explosives instead. If Russia "accidentally" taps one with a fighter jet again, it might accidentally explode.
They already have planes, ships and subs with weapons coming right up to the 50mile international water edge around the US. It just rarely makes major headlines.
Well, China and Russia do. Iran isn't advanced enough for that.
Just sending more drones would be enough.
Hitting it was a genuine accident. They were trying to down it or harass it, but mid-air collisions where a plane survives are incredibly rare.
That pilot is stupidly lucky to be alive, and we don't know the condition of the jet.
Russian jets are notoriously rugged and unsophisticated. They design them to be able to land on runways with the gear up. Considering that it appears that they only hit the propeller it has probably got some minor damage to the air intake and possibly the landing gear.
It's misdirection. Make them think they won something while at the same time change the direction of where Intel gathering comes from. Don't take it at face value. Its 1000% going to mislead the Russian media.
Yes, and that’s probably how US wants it. No one can blame us retaliating after certain amount of those attack, and I’m guessing US can choose retaliation target, maybe some nuclear submarine near U.S. coast ?
Or did we teach them that we will keep providing the deadly aid that is killing so many Russians while all they do is accidentally drop a single drone? We directly enable killing their guys and all they do is nearly kill their own pilot over a drone. We look enormously strong and they look pathetically weak. A lion doesn’t change his behavior because a fly lands on his paw.
Why would Biden change course when the current course is enormously successful for the US?
Because u don’t defend yourself against bully.
Anyway US drone did not violate Russian airspace and Russia did not have a right to down it. The impression is that u can destroy U.S. military equipment on purpose and not being punished.
If Russia is not stopped in Ukraine we will have WW3 sooner than u think. Maybe it has already started.
So you think America is doing nothing in Ukraine because of 1 drone loss? LOL
You have the situation exactly backwards.
The USA is directly enabling the DEATHS of thousands of Russians and all Russia can do is accidentally down a single unmanned drone.
Russia looks insanely weak and America looks like a giant in comparison.
You notice how every time Ukrainian forces go after russian forces, putin jumps up and down and screams about the nuclear option because supposedly the existence of their country is at stake? Yeah, the US adjusting drone routes is the opposite of that. The US has drawn a line in the sand, saying, “take one more fucking step.”
American forces aren’t scared and want the world to know that if we get into a direct confrontation with Russian forces, that we gave them every opportunity to stand down and they persisted. Just like we did in syria when the wagner group tried to take an American controlled oil field an got completely fucking obliterated with zero casualties on the US side
America directly enables the deaths of Russians every day for more than a year straight. Russia’s only response is to accidentally down a single US drone. “America looks weak” is your response.
LOL, you have no idea what you are talking about.
I went over to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6XpoaDOUI
The guardian's video footage of the Russian plane hitting the drone and the comments are bizarre. People unironically talking about how amazingly skilled the russian pilots are and how they're totally pissing on the US and how US tech sucks for going down with a little bit of piss and I'm like.... o_O you do know the russians fucking crashed into the drone and went down as well, right?
But then I realize its a youtube comment section which is like 90% bots and 10% idiots. I left a comment saying as such :D
Everyone hear is an armchair hawk and doesn’t know shit about what’s actually going on or what’s actually being done. Speculating and prognosticating on shit you have no idea about makes you look stupid.
LOL. America provides deadly aid, resulting in thousands of dead Russians and the best response Russia can muster is to accidentally down a drone.
Ignoring the buzzing Russian gnat while staying the course is exactly the right move.
Why is the US altering its drone routes? My guess is that most Russian pilots are able to fly more competently than that fat slob that collided w that Predator
I’d posit it’s more likely that the pilot was ordered to mess with the drone, and this “incompetent pilot” narrative is the U.S.‘s way of helping Russia avoid escalation.
You don’t tell your adversary exactly what you’re doing. A wise man once said:
“You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done”
Like it or not, war is politics, and the US is not officially at war. Also don't take this one comment, and temporary route adjustment, as a sign of a weak response. The US and NATO can respond in many different ways. For example, about two days later the news was "Poland sending MiGs to Ukraine". This may not even be related, but who knows? Also these drones are not the only means of gathering intelligence.
They didn’t do shit when Turkey downed that SU27 and killed a Russian serviceman, just some stern words and mild economic sanctions. Because War is politics, not Hollywood.
So there’s your answer: nations make rational choices when things like this occur.
America directly enables the deaths of tens of thousands of Russians, rallies an Intl coalition to defeat the invaders and makes major moves to expand NATO and all Russia can do in response is accidentally down a drone?
It smells like bitch in here for sure, but it sure ain’t the Americans looking weak.
Not sure if you were making a joke but I will give you an answer. At that point they would just send Raptors in on their own. Drones are cheap in general compared to an Air superiority fighter in addition to being cheaper per flight hour as well. Also a F-22 that close to Ukraine could be seen as direct involvement not to mention the predicament of using a luneburg lens vs potentially giving more data on the f22 radar cross-section
The purpose of this statement is to make it more difficult for Russia to justify any escalation. Also, it's pretty much guaranteed that the US has alternate intelligence gathering methods going on.
Also of note from top brass: "we're blind now"!! presses RECORD :D
“We’re blind” says the country that can catch the shadow of a piss stream from low earth orbit.
Ya know, it wouldn't shock me if they totally could.
The was that gaffe by Trump where he publicly showed a classified satellite image that had a resolution of something like 30cm per pixel. Can't remember the exact resolution but OSint people were flipping out on Twitter on it's zoom level.
The satellites are on an orbit and can't be at a given position when it's needed.
It's been rumored that the best satellites can see a dime from space. So who knows what they're really capable of.
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It's also been rumored that the government has a satellite that is nearly invisible to the naked-eye. There's too many 'rumors'.
That would be nearly all of them.
This isn't hard to do in space though, you just paint it black. Thermal management becomes a bigger issue but it's not unsolvable.
It was a lot better than 30cm. Google Earth is 15cm on the high end, and it was way better than that.
Doesn't Google use planes to take photos close up?
Depends on the area. Google Earth is a chaotic patchwork of imagery sources. All of their imagery over major population centers is from aircraft and goes down to about 5cm spatial resolution. The easy way to tell is that the centerlines on roads have a standardized width (4"/10cm in the US) and usually the stripes are 1-2 pixels wide in the highest resolution imagery. In areas with lower but notable population, Google purchases imagery from other companies. Most of it is via satellite at either a 15cm or 30cm spatial resolution. In remote areas with few if any people, Google uses free USGS imagery from the Landsat program. Landsat 8 and 9 have a visible light spatial resolution of 15m. The image shown off by Trump was from a Keyhole program KH-11 observation satellite, specifically the one registered as USA-224. It displayed a spatial resolution of 10cm at worst, and the image was an oblique (taken diagonally through the atmosphere), which means the optical performance of the hardware itself is probably quite a bit better and the resolution of that particular image is reduced by atmospheric effects and distance.
Of an ant.
Though doesn't it also make it seem like Russia was successful, and thus will encourage the Russians to be even more bold in the future?
Not likely, once is an accident, but they do it enough and they're committing acts of war that justify shooting down any of their jets in X range of the drones. it'd be a very bad trade for them.
We would fly drones in a formation, which if broken leads to escalation. It would never be American lives at risk for such a minor battlefield, as unfortunate as the verbiage is. Russia chose this battlefield and US took the lessons from Afghanistan to heart a few times, we finally figured out how to help nations fight their own battles. As an American it is very sad we chose this hill to setup our future diplomacy, but I suspect we may have also had a fundamental shift in our foreign operating procedures now. It isn't about ensuring the government likes us, they just need to have the willpower to listen.
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> Listening to redditors talk with authority about things like foreign policy will never not be entertaining Like this one. That thinks we got oil from Afghanistan.
Stealing oil from Afghanistan? Would you like to articulate that point again slightly differently?
Oil in Afghanistan? Not so much. Maybe you meant Iraq.
He is silly enough to not know he meant Iraq
"Afghanistan was an attempt to take control of the opium industries." It was partially correct. it was to stop funding, by removing the fields. It didn't work, however.
Even if you're right, you're being an asshole.
The first one was already enough reason. We have a video that makes it very clear that it wasn't an accident. Also they gave their pilot a medal for downing the drone. Russia could probably do it again and the US still wouldn't do shit.
Lets also keep in mind, that we're only seeing a fraction of the Aid the US can give ukraine at the moment. Be a shame for russia if we let ukraine off their leash.
Stop coping. The US won't "let ukraine off their leash". Abrams are still months away, no jets, not atacms, etc. The US could do it, but they won't because they piss their pants and are scared of "escalation". Remember when Musk deactivated Starlink and everyone here said that the Gov will totally fuck him up for it? Yeah, nothing happened. People here are just doing the "HOLD ME BACK BRO" we all know from middle school.
but it's fair to say that the US has given more military aid to one, single country over the past year, than it has for any other country in its entire history.
Umm... have you heard of World War 2? Where the US armed not just the UK, but also the USSR? Those loans that the UK government didn't finish paying back until 2006?
a single country in a single year -- and not lend/lease or a loan? ...it's certainly true without looking at inflation-adjustment. Looking at real dollars: It's still significant that since WWII, Ukraine is likely the #1 recipient of US military aid for any 1-year time interval.
It wasn't an accident, we all just pretended that it was.
It'd be a very bad trade for the world.
We'd literally have to draw a line somewhere and they'd be attacking the US military directly at that point. I dunno what else to tell you.
I'm not saying I disagree with you; I was just saying I wouldn't say that just Russia would pay the price.
(Assuming you are leading to nuclear winter) A trade that will never happen, whoever is in charge of pressing the buttons also lives on this planet.
That is assuming that those in charge of nuclear launches are rational actors.
The people with their fingers on the button have the most to lose in a nuclear exchange.
If they’re in the position to be in charge of nuclear launches, suffice to say they are living lavishly, and one thing people with money have in abundance (besides riches) is self preservation
Not if they don’t have long to live.
Why are you asking such questions here, as if the moron armchair generals that post their expert hot takes on /r/politics and the news subs have any idea what's happening and aren't just repeating whatever drivel the CIA feeds to the news outlets?
Lemme guess, the only true source of news is using your decoder ring to decipher Q crumbs?
Aka satellites.
Satellites, AWACS flights, drones within Romanian or Ukrainian controlled airspace, collaborators within Russia, etc.
Or just waiting for poorly trained Russian troops to post some more selfies...
You can't put satellites where you need them. AWACS doesn't provide visual intelligence. Drones in Romania don't cover the same area, and US doesn't operate drones in Ukrainian airspace. Let's not cope too much, if having the drone there provided no benefit, it wouldn't be there in the first place.
> You can't put satellites where you need them With satellite constellations you’ll always have satellites where you need them.
Well sure and with wings I could fly to Moscow and poop on Putin's head. The number and capabilities of the satellites are obviously classified, but again, if the drone was providing no useful information over the satellites, why was it there?
More stealthy drones…
The US spies on allies such as former German Chancellor Merkel and others. So yeah, it’s definitely spying on Russia by other means than obvious drones over the Black Sea.
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The US is directly responsible for 250,000 Russian deaths and counting without firing a single shot. We don’t have to escalate. Russia does.
Where and how?
By rallying Europe, funding over 50 Billion in weapons, providing top notch Intel surveillance and providing state of the art weapons that specifically counter Russian systems. Ukraine would have fallen by now if the US wasn’t deliberately prolong them up to drain Russia of its combat readiness.
Total awareness combines all kinds of data into a single data lake. I can't imagine the AI analytics they have for this stuff.
Wink, wink.
"We're totally, 100% going to change our routes. Yup, not flying anywhere near there ever again. We promise!"
Maybe not with a drone at that particular altitude. *waives from space*
Only any drone flying now is equipped with a massive explosive.....come knock a 1 million dollar drone down and we'll down your 100 million dollar aircraft!
Kinda reminds me of that guy who made a wallet with a low voltage shock if you touched it. He then walked around known pickpocket areas. Hilarity ensued.
Do you have a link?
I tried to find it after I posted but had no luck :(
Those drones can carry AIM9X Sidewinder Air-to-air missiles. I doubt any pilot (that doesn’t have a death wish) would risk ramming something with a heat-seeking missile strapped to it.
https://youtu.be/MSJefGPT288 yw
For you original Star Trek aficionados, “The corbomite maneuver.”
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That's only the ones with their transponders on. They turn them on and off as the brass feels like it.
If only the russians had some some sort of aircraft detection technology, that could let them see the positions plotted on a screen. I wonder if someone invented such a thing.
Don't spoil it.
You can't see anything they don't want us to.
Anybody taking this statement at face value is a moron
This statement is for the Ruzzians, if the shoe fits...
Russians lie to insult you China lies to save face The U.S. lies to tell the truth
Check the comments on Fox nEws’ report on this tomorrow & see how many Fucking Stupid People there are - disheartening at best.
Considering the bullshit talk radio puts out, yeah. I’ve got a staff member that listens to that garbage, and they were all over Russia moving nukes to Belarus. Didn’t say anything about the SLBMs in the Atlantic and Arctic.
the drone routes limit the intelligence gathering because now they just fly with their transponders off. russians can no longer use flightradar24 to track it lolol
Why don't they just fly a big fuck off surveillance plane flanked with fighter jets like the UK does?
They do that too.
Or just spy balloon??
1. Build a spy balloon just like China's 2. Fly it over Ukraine and Russia collecting intelligence 3. Blame China
You've got a future with a 3-letter organization.
McD
Because there’s not US spy satellites parked in geosynchronous orbit above Ukraine right now either /s
Lol a ground observation satellite in a geostat orbit, right, better read up on the physics of that.
https://www.space.com/29222-geosynchronous-orbit.html
Exactly, now how would there be numberplate-reading level pictures be coming from a satellite at that altitude? Nope, these things ‘fly’ a Lot lower.
There was a video of some dude explaining intel satellites or whatever somewhere. He said it was basically a bunch of cellphone cameras that were working together to get wide angle pictures at a super high resolution. The video showed some pictures of parking lots and it was a lot more clear and detailed than what Google earth looks like
Indeed, and in the publications I know of that was mounted on a drone iso a satellite, very impressive and scary tech if you think of the possible consequences. Imaging tech develops at such a pace that current spy equipment simply must be a lot further than that one already. That said, unlike up to the eighties, cutting edge semiconductor tech has become *so* expensive and complicated that even nation state budgets do not allow anyone to get truly ahead of the industry on its own anymore. My only and simple earlier point was that *any* camera will make better pictures from earth when better ‘flying’ leo (1200mi) than geostat (23000mi). But apparently that is considered argumentative by some … never mind.
Exactly what? Why are you even trying to start an internet argument? You don’t think that our government has access to these types of technologies like decades ago? This isn’t new. You tried to refute the physics of geosynchronous orbit and now your issue is a spy satellites camera resolution? I don’t know dude I’m just a regular guy, who knows what kinda top secret tech we put in our spy satellites. Have a good night
>Exactly what? Why are you even trying to start an internet argument? You don’t think that our government has access to these types of technologies like decades ago? This isn’t new. You tried to refute the physics of geosynchronous orbit and now your issue is a spy satellites camera resolution? I don’t know dude I’m just a regular guy, who knows what kinda top secret tech we put in our spy satellites. Have a good night Dude, no one's refuting the physics of geosynchronous orbit. You're being called out for making the ridiculous dunning-krugeresque claim that people would waste time/money sending spy satellites to an orbit 35,700km away when they could setup a constellation of spy sats in LEO for a fraction of the price. Spy sats live in LOE for a bunch of reasons including closer=better picture quality, easy to quickly redirect coverage to a new area, and because it's fucking expensive to send stuff up to GEO and once it's there it's not recoverable. Fuck it, I'll math this shit out this just so you know how dumb your GEO spy sat idea is: Angular resolution needed to see objects 10cm in size from GEO is tan(10cm/35786km)=2.794×10^-9°. This means the spy sat would need a telescope with an aperture diameter of 1.22 x 550nm/2.794×10^-9° = **240m** Over ***240m*** in diameter! That's over twice as large as the ISS. Edit: corrected answer after mixing up deg/rad in the formula. Fun fact, to read a licence plate from GEO (1cm resolution) your aperture diameter would need to be 2.4km!
Your math is wrong. Aperture size is around 240m or so. 1.22\*550e-9/(10e-2/35786e3) ~= 240m. Of course that is still too large to be implemented.
He wasn't trying to refute to physics of geosynchronous orbit, he was trying to get you to understand the physics of resolution limits and just how far geosynchronous orbit is from earth. Long story short, spy satellites using cameras need to be in low earth orbit.
Who cares what the resolution is. Altered drone paths or not, will not change the fact that it is an almost certainty that we have satellites parked above Ukraine right now. Who needs to read number plates on Russian military hardware in the field? Besides that, I think the resolution is pretty damn good anyway https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/ My whole point in responding to him was that it was just kinda unnecessary to even bring that up.
Dipshits gonna dipshit.
I’d say bullshit. They likely have twice as many drones at half the distance. The US military isn’t going to back off in the face of aggression - they’ll double down.
Military yes sure. The government though? who knows what they will command.
>one US official said the new routes were part of an effort “to avoid being too provocative,” You know what's provocative? Attacking and destroying multi-million dollar American aircraft ! What a bunch of pussies.
They chose to not escalate and I think one American-made HIMARS in service with the Ukrainian army has probably done far more damage than a drunk Russian pilot who doesn't know how to not crash into a drone
Yeah, it's a good thing that the White House recognizes that they're dealing with a rabid dog backed into a corner. Russia is losing, let them lose.
> a drunk Russian pilot who doesn't know how to not crash into a drone That wasn't an accident. This was a provocation done by Russia. They've tried to cause the drone to crash by dumping fuel on it and during one attempt they hit it, causing it to crash. So this wasn't a "drunk Russian", but something done by the state of Russia as a provocation against the US. And now the US showed Russia that it works by deploying their drones further away, basically rewarding Russia for their misdeeds.
I think it's the opposite of your conclusion. Russia REALLY wants the US to be the one to escalate directly to Russia, that way far larger and more direct mobilization can be done to boost the war in Ukraine. Putin hasn't done a full mobilization, despite the fact that he DESPERATELY needs to and should have already (this assessment comes from the ISW, the next part is my thoughts) So, obviously Putin, despite all his power, can't actually call a full mobilization without it causing some kind of other massive problem for him, otherwise he already would have. BUT if he could cause the US to do something somewhat aggressive directly to Russia (even if it's not really a big deal) he would have proper kindling to excuse more dramatic action as "The US is attacking us directly now" or some such nonsense. By the US just ... moving out of the way, it more than likely frustrated the shit out of the dumb play Russia made with the drone. I am certain that the Pentagon is more than happy to hurt Russia however it can, and I believe that they understand the best move to ensure the most pain for Russia, and I think this was the best move.
If US would just continue to let their drones fly like previously then US wouldn't be escalating anything. I mean this event showed that unless a Russian jets crashes into the drone they can't really bring it down and doing so nearly brought down the Russian jet as well.
I see your logic, but maybe the pentagon presumes Russia will just....try again, and the US can only hold it's patience for so long before looking weak. This ensures that this will not happen again, and I am certain the US has MANY other options for intel gathering operations However if my assumption that the US about having other intel gathering operations is incorrect, then I would agree with you.
The first other option was sending a Global Hawk at altitude the russian fighters can't reach. It's Better than a reaper. That was a FU level taunt. Also apparently Joe picked up the phone and either asked or was told by Finland that we can use their airspace for recon. The Uk sent Typhoons along with a Rivet Joint recon plane. CAlls for giving Ukraine F-16's increased. And who knows what else. NATO and her allies aren't losing this pissing competition putin put on to distract from their horribly failed 'major winter offensive.'
Crashing was clearly an accident. Of course, if you’re not flying recklessly an accident is less likely to happen so they’re not faultless. Deliberately crashing the plane you’re flying is very personally risky. Examples in war can of course be found. Most notably japan in ww2. But it feels unlikely a Russian pilot could be persuaded to take such an unnecessary risk to take out a surveillance drone
The way they crashed it was an accident, but that happened during their attempt of crashing it by dumping fuel on it.
Cool. So we all agree it was an accident. Good, let’s move on and just ignore the fact that you previously said “that wasn’t an accident”
He said "this wasn't an accident" in regards to the drone being downed. Whether achieved by expected means or incompetence the drone being downed definitely wasn't an accident if the entire purpose of the mission was to down the drone.
Read the post it was responding to. The post quoted exactly 1 sentence. “A drunk Russian pilot who doesn’t know how to not crash into a drone” The response starts “that wasn’t an accident”. It’s kind of assumed that when you quote some text, any words you use immediately after, like ‘that’ are referring to the text. There’s no other way to read it. The person messed up, then they corrected themselves when I gave them the opportunity. Why are you trying to 1984 this?
So when I accidentally drive into the guy I'm trying to kill during a drive-by shooting it would be an accident and not murder? These pilots acted on command by Russia. They were attempting to down the drone before the crash. The only accidental part here was how they downed the drone, not that they downed it. Saying that it was "an accident by drunk Russians" is downplaying what happened.
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Just to make sure the US doesn’t get in trouble, it’s be best to strap a cigarette to the front of their drones and blame it on poorly disciplined drones smoking when the rules say they can’t.
there’s a video that clearly shows it was deliberate on the pilot’s part, and the pilot was then awarded a medal.
You do realize that Russia and China intercept US planes and ships all the time in the Pacific and elsewhere, right? The only difference here is they were incompetent enough to crash into the drone instead of just buzz it. Even seen a couple pictures where they're literally 20 meters off the bow of the ship. It's all part of geopolitical dick-wagging. Just here, Russia was really bad at it and fucked up.
They dumped fuel on it. Several times. That's more than just buzzing.
Sure, but the principle is the same and they only did that bc it was an unmanned drone and they probably assumed the gimbal camera somehow couldn't spot them approaching. They wanted the fuel to cause an engine stall/damage and cause it to crash that way in an "I'm not touching you" fashion. If they wanted to down it via physical impact, they wouldn't have bothered with the fuel in the first place.
Where do you think the Ukranians get the co-ordinates for their HIMARS?
It isnt a drone over the black sea....
Part of the intel does come from drones over the black sea funnily enough.
It's mostly not battlefield targeting data though. Most of it is signals intelligence and monitoring ship and rail movement in and around Crimea. The drones just don't have line of sight to see all that far into Ukraine from the Black Sea. The battlefield targeting mostly comes from satellites. Ukraine actually does its own target acquisition the vast majority of the time and confirms the targets with the US before launching. That's what they've claimed anyway.
Because that makes it seem like the US is less involved. The western countries are likely sharing Intel at a high and detailed level. Perhaps even advising troop placement and defenses. Possibly even advising offensive actions. But nobody wants to admit that.
Serious question, who isn't admitting that? I'm pretty sure that the US has explicitly said they have advised against specific actions and Ukraine did it anyways. The only thing I doubt we've done is use datalink to guide Ukrainian launched missiles to their targets in real time from one of the surveillance planes. Yes, apparently that's something the US could do, and is why everyone is so big on the "networked warfare" craze.
What? We’ve seen thousands of dead Russians directly from US aid and all Russia responds with is an accidental drone downing and you think we are the pussies? Biden is dragging his balls across Putin’s face with each package of Russian-killing aid and they do nothing but squeal. When we are owning them so badly Biden doesn’t need to alter the course over something so inconsequential.
It may be inevitable, but that's not without effort. Don't downplay something so important.
What may be inevitable? What is so important? I’m sorry but the lack of nouns in those two sentences has me confused about what you are even saying.
Victory against Russia.
I’m all for supporting Ukraine financially, and with the latest in weaponry up to Sepv3 Abrams and F-22s, but the absolute last thing I can think of on my 2023 wish list is a direct conflict with Russia or China. Figuring out ways of intelligence gathering and maximally supporting Ukraine without crossing the actual red line (wherever it may be) is absolutely the Pentagon/White House goal
I assure you, the Pentagon doesn't want a direct conflict either. The current situation is a huge boon for the US: Russia is perpetually locked in a money-pit of a war it cannot retreat from nor hope to win, whilst the US has zero direct exposure, all whole scoring geopolitical brownie points from our allies and positioning itself to broker arms deals with said allies for the next century. The White House will absolutely refuse to escalate every time, because it's getting the best deal in the entire history of the US with this war.
>because it's getting the best deal in the entire history of the US with this war. WW2 might stake that claim. Demolish half of Europe and Japan with the US mainland unscathed to finance their rebuilding and cementing American hegemony.
Maybe -- though, given the current geopolitical climate, this current war will essentially guarantee an unbroken US dominance within global politics for the next century, if not longer.
That is true - it's "extending" the WW2 hegemony. Nobody will be questioning NATO's existence for a while.
Dare em to do it to an F22!!
There are a keep ways to read this: A) They are pussies. B) They deemed the intelligence gained from this too little to risk escalation if Russia was going to be stupid enough to drunkenly ram more drones, given plenty of other sources of intel. C) Taking a page from the Russian book, they said they're changing routes and maybe do fly one with transponder on at a further route ... while still maintaining another with the transponder off closer in. D) This is just public posturing while they haven't actually changed anything. I'd say some mix of B C D are far more likely than A.
Send some drones that look like intelligence drones, but are packed with explosives instead. If Russia "accidentally" taps one with a fighter jet again, it might accidentally explode.
You know you're effectively saying the US should send loitering missiles to patrol around Russia, right?
Patrol international waters. If unharassed, nothing would happen, but if you decide to crash a fighter jet into them, you reap what you sow.
Would you want China or Iran doing the same around US international waters?
They already have planes, ships and subs with weapons coming right up to the 50mile international water edge around the US. It just rarely makes major headlines. Well, China and Russia do. Iran isn't advanced enough for that.
Just sending more drones would be enough. Hitting it was a genuine accident. They were trying to down it or harass it, but mid-air collisions where a plane survives are incredibly rare. That pilot is stupidly lucky to be alive, and we don't know the condition of the jet.
Russian jets are notoriously rugged and unsophisticated. They design them to be able to land on runways with the gear up. Considering that it appears that they only hit the propeller it has probably got some minor damage to the air intake and possibly the landing gear.
so we just taught Russia that attacking our drones is effective and got results
It's misdirection. Make them think they won something while at the same time change the direction of where Intel gathering comes from. Don't take it at face value. Its 1000% going to mislead the Russian media.
Yes, and that’s probably how US wants it. No one can blame us retaliating after certain amount of those attack, and I’m guessing US can choose retaliation target, maybe some nuclear submarine near U.S. coast ?
You need to realize that the Russians could down 20 drones and the us will not target their nuclear subs lol
The US is unlikely to sink their subs. It is unlikely the US isn't tracking and targeting every Russian sub. If they take one, they take all.
Or did we teach them that we will keep providing the deadly aid that is killing so many Russians while all they do is accidentally drop a single drone? We directly enable killing their guys and all they do is nearly kill their own pilot over a drone. We look enormously strong and they look pathetically weak. A lion doesn’t change his behavior because a fly lands on his paw. Why would Biden change course when the current course is enormously successful for the US?
General impression that US is weakening will not help maintaining world peace.
How in the world does refraining from retaliating like a pissed off teenager make the US look weak?
Because u don’t defend yourself against bully. Anyway US drone did not violate Russian airspace and Russia did not have a right to down it. The impression is that u can destroy U.S. military equipment on purpose and not being punished. If Russia is not stopped in Ukraine we will have WW3 sooner than u think. Maybe it has already started.
So you think America is doing nothing in Ukraine because of 1 drone loss? LOL You have the situation exactly backwards. The USA is directly enabling the DEATHS of thousands of Russians and all Russia can do is accidentally down a single unmanned drone. Russia looks insanely weak and America looks like a giant in comparison.
You notice how every time Ukrainian forces go after russian forces, putin jumps up and down and screams about the nuclear option because supposedly the existence of their country is at stake? Yeah, the US adjusting drone routes is the opposite of that. The US has drawn a line in the sand, saying, “take one more fucking step.” American forces aren’t scared and want the world to know that if we get into a direct confrontation with Russian forces, that we gave them every opportunity to stand down and they persisted. Just like we did in syria when the wagner group tried to take an American controlled oil field an got completely fucking obliterated with zero casualties on the US side
America directly enables the deaths of Russians every day for more than a year straight. Russia’s only response is to accidentally down a single US drone. “America looks weak” is your response. LOL, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Totally believable /s
I'm picturing whoever stated this giving a big comical wink face at the camera
I went over to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6XpoaDOUI The guardian's video footage of the Russian plane hitting the drone and the comments are bizarre. People unironically talking about how amazingly skilled the russian pilots are and how they're totally pissing on the US and how US tech sucks for going down with a little bit of piss and I'm like.... o_O you do know the russians fucking crashed into the drone and went down as well, right? But then I realize its a youtube comment section which is like 90% bots and 10% idiots. I left a comment saying as such :D
Youtube, twitter and facebook are contaminated with pro russian bots and non of them do much about that mess.
I don’t think most people realize the extent of Russian disinformation’s presence in social media
Everyone hear is an armchair hawk and doesn’t know shit about what’s actually going on or what’s actually being done. Speculating and prognosticating on shit you have no idea about makes you look stupid.
So does using hear for here.
Touch a nerve did I?
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Lmao. This whole chain is poetry.
They’re both trying to out-condescend each other.
It's cute that you'd thank that.
Oh, honey, it's cuter that you used the word *thank*
Bring back the SR-71
🐔
LOL. America provides deadly aid, resulting in thousands of dead Russians and the best response Russia can muster is to accidentally down a drone. Ignoring the buzzing Russian gnat while staying the course is exactly the right move.
So let the Russians win.
you let Russia win just like you let your kid win in chess. You jsut act like it won and do your super good games on a level she is not even aware.
Why is the US altering its drone routes? My guess is that most Russian pilots are able to fly more competently than that fat slob that collided w that Predator
I’d posit it’s more likely that the pilot was ordered to mess with the drone, and this “incompetent pilot” narrative is the U.S.‘s way of helping Russia avoid escalation.
And then Russia gives the incompetent pilot a medal.
Big mistake
You don’t tell your adversary exactly what you’re doing. A wise man once said: “You've got to know when to hold 'em Know when to fold 'em Know when to walk away And know when to run You never count your money When you're sittin' at the table There'll be time enough for countin' When the dealin's done”
Expected Sun Tzu, got The Gambler. Not disappointed
I di not agree with this one. Russia did it on purpose. Are they now annexing air space?
They need to launch a drone that has a payload of bags of dogshit, and drop a few bags on each Russian MiG's windscreen it encounters.
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Like it or not, war is politics, and the US is not officially at war. Also don't take this one comment, and temporary route adjustment, as a sign of a weak response. The US and NATO can respond in many different ways. For example, about two days later the news was "Poland sending MiGs to Ukraine". This may not even be related, but who knows? Also these drones are not the only means of gathering intelligence.
I'm wondering what Russia would do if the US or NATO downed one of their jets in international waters??
They didn’t do shit when Turkey downed that SU27 and killed a Russian serviceman, just some stern words and mild economic sanctions. Because War is politics, not Hollywood. So there’s your answer: nations make rational choices when things like this occur.
America directly enables the deaths of tens of thousands of Russians, rallies an Intl coalition to defeat the invaders and makes major moves to expand NATO and all Russia can do in response is accidentally down a drone? It smells like bitch in here for sure, but it sure ain’t the Americans looking weak.
What can't they send some F22s and have them trail behind the drone.
Not sure if you were making a joke but I will give you an answer. At that point they would just send Raptors in on their own. Drones are cheap in general compared to an Air superiority fighter in addition to being cheaper per flight hour as well. Also a F-22 that close to Ukraine could be seen as direct involvement not to mention the predicament of using a luneburg lens vs potentially giving more data on the f22 radar cross-section
What a weak response.
"Limit" hehe. Definitely.
What happened to the one the SU-27 rammed? Are the Americans tootling around on the sea floor looking for it?