Probably won’t work, Reapers are remotely piloted and the flight computers are pretty good. However, there is only so much you can do when you lose your propeller. I also suspect that given the altitude they’re at, the Su-27 is close to it’s stall speed. Maybe next time they’ll attach a giant rod to the Flanker’s nose to stick in the spokes?
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The broken propellor story sounds about as credible as the little group of anti-Russian Ukrainian amateurs (with no connection to the Zelensky regime) renting a yacht and destroying 3 deep subsea gas lines. The fact that the DC Swamp Creatures are pushing both tales suggests they are both untrue.
All we know for sure is that the Russian jets returned safely to base and the Russian navy recovered at least part of the US spy plane. Tough to see how a jet could take sufficient damage to stop a propellor without itself crashing. Interestingly, the Russian report makes no claim about how they downed the US spy craft.
We are being lied to — again!
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The Su-27 has what appears to be an air data probe extending from the nose cone, under which is probably the radar.
(Photo by By Dmitriy Pichugin - Sukhoi Su-27SKM - Russia - Air Force | Aviation Photo #1014282 | Airliners.net, GFDL 1.2, File:Sukhoi Su-27SKM at MAKS-2005 airshow.jpg - Wikimedia Commons)
If the Su-27 can fly fly sufficiently slowly to match speed with the MQ-9 Reaper (cruise speed 313 km/hour) and approach from behind, it could probably poke the propeller with the probe and damage it enough to bring down the drone. The probe would be lost, but likely do no serious damage to the Su-27.
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Slim probe versus tough fast-rotating propellor? Much more likely that the probe would be sheared off and the propellor would keep turning with no more than a nick in one of the blades.
And unless the US spy drone has a backwards-looking camera, how would Our Betters know what happened to the propellor at the rear?
Naw! We are being lied to!
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The incident according to the Russian Defense Ministry:
https://tass.com/defense/1588735
“On 14 March 2023 in the morning, the Russian airspace control systems have detected an American MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle flying over the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said. “The drone flew with its transponders off, violating the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace, and published in accordance with international standards.”
According to the ministry, following abrupt maneuvering the drone “went into an unguided flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface.”
“The Russian aircraft did not use on-board weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield,” it added.
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Could it be that SU-27 pilot used a technique to generate enough turbulence, similar in nature to this?
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The result of physical contact between aircraft of any kind in midair is extremely unpredictable and dangerous. I doubt the Russians would try that. I’m inclined to go with @smagor ‘s hypothesis. A well-executed pass just in front of the smaller drone by a MiG configured to create maximum turbulence and jet wash, could likely do the trick, with less risk to the MiG.
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Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.
environmentally unsound
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Looks like the MiG approached at low speed, went to afterburner and pitched nose-up as it got close. Just the kind of maneuver which would maximize turbulence. Naturally, the propaganda reassures us that the surveillance drone was peacefully just minding its own business operating in international waters 4800 miles from the US. Never mind it was operating in an exclusion zone and that the US is acting as a belligerent - providing not only weapons, but also real-time intelligence and targeting information to Ukrainian forces.
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The plume coming from the SU-27 didn’t look like an afterburner light to me. Usually, when an afterburner lights you see only the flame extending from the nozzle (which may not be obvious in full daylight). This looks like a fuel dump, which is what was reported by the U.S. European Command. You can probably dump fuel very rapidly by turning on fuel flow to the afterburner without activating the igniter. (The heat of a turbofan engine’s exhaust is insufficient to ignite the fuel by itself, as was explained the in the post here on 2022-07-01, “Adding an Afterburner to Your Home-Built Jet Engine”.)
The ability to control afterburner fuel flow and igniter separately is what allows the “dump-and-burn” maneuver so popular with airshow audiences.
At the very end of the video, it does appear that one of the blades of the propeller has been damaged, indicating some kind of impact.
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Ward Carroll pausing on the damage at the end of the video:
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The implication of the video is that the Biden Regime’s spy balloon (sorry, drone) was transmitting data in real time to … maybe a satellite? Sort of odd for a drone that just happened innocently to be flying towards a war zone half a world away from the US borders with its transponders turned off, doing no harm to anyone (we are assured).
Sadly, in these days when we can no longer trust the US government, one has to ask if the bent propellor is a photoshopped addition to the video? So easy to do that these days – and it might explain why it took some time for the US MalAdministration to release the video. Trust no-one in government!
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Mea Clupa. You are surely correct and it makes much more sense that unburned carbon (gasp!) smoke indicates a fuel-rich condition. Sometimes, my initial impressions - shot from the hip - are off the mark. I nonetheless believe an actual physical contact is not require to explain physical damage to the drone. Turbulence suffices to break airplanes or parts thereof.
Also interesting is the Predator’s ability to see, track, record and relay its own airborne predator. Pretty versatile for a craft whose primary function is presumably observation and destruction of stuff on the ground. One must wonder as to its full complement of sensors.
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Something was niggling me about that video.
Looking at it again – before the alleged “collision”, when the camera turned back to look towards the rear of the drone (presumably to avoid the fuel dump messing up the camera), the propellor is seen turning clockwise from the camera’s perspective. Then, after the alleged “collision”, the propellor is still shown turning clockwise – with the tip of one blade of the propellor bent towards the direction of rotation.
Surely if a propellor blade hit something robust enough to bend the blade, that blade would be bent opposite from the direction of rotation?
Certainly, a damaged propellor blade would result in serious vibration because of the unbalanced masses and put the airframe at risk. But think about those WWII movies of heavily damaged propellor-driven bombers returning to base after flights of hundreds of miles. In comparison, this case seems like a trivial amount of damage to have resulted in the drone being unable to keep flying.
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OK – here is some pure speculation, based on the historical incident of the War of Jenkins Ear. England declared war on Spain in 1739 over a bar fight in Havana in which an English sailor’s ear was cut off by a Spaniard. Of course, no-one in England really cared that much for Jenkins’ amputated ear – simply the rulers of England were looking for an excuse to start a war with Spain.
So the Biden MalAdministration sends a drone towards the Crimea with its responders turned off, expecting/hoping that the Russians would shoot it down – thereby giving the Biden crew an excuse to graduate from proxy to all-out war. But instead of shooting the drone down, the Russians dumped fuel upon it – equivalent to issuing a radio warning to a piloted aircraft. Logically, the drone should have turned around (360 degrees, as that German warmongering woman says) and flown away from Crimea. But it did not, since the whole aim was to create another Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The Russians dumped more fuel on the drone. At that point, realizing that the Russian might not shoot down the drone, the Biden crew dumped it into the Black Sea – and got some existing video of a drone with a damaged propellor to try to put out the story that it was all Russia’s fault.
We are already seeing Senate Republicrats demanding that the US shoot down Russian planes. Unfortunately, both the War of Jenkins Ear and the Gulf of Tonkin turned into very costly affairs for all sides. Let’s hope that sanity prevails in this occasion, and the Biden crew stop their dangerous provocations.
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Frame rate of the camera often makes revolving things seem to rotate in the wrong direction and at wrong speed.
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Or sometimes not rotate at all….
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Right off Crimea:
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If we put depleted uranium tips on the propeller blades, would the Flanker have been taken out?
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