Was rear seater someone who could have grabbed the ejection handle by accident?
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Lieutenant Arutiunian, who uses the military call sign Doc — a reference to the doctorate in data mining he holds from Kyiv Polytechnic — commands four teams in the unmanned aerial vehicle service of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, operating on the southern front. They deploy a variety of propeller-driven drones and planes to track Russian forces for the Ukrainian military and are constantly adjusting tactics and equipment to evade Russian interceptors. […]
Ukrainian volunteers, many of them entrepreneurs and computer and technology professionals, were quick to exploit the use of cheap, commercial drones in the first months of the war. This gave the Ukrainian Army an advantage over Russian forces, which struggled with poor communications during the battle for Kyiv in March last year. […]
This was an area that the Russians had abandoned after recent fighting, said a soldier using the call sign Gremlin, 23, who was a software developer before the war. She was comparing the new footage with an earlier satellite map of the area. “The Russians come back to positions they have left,” she said.
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Don’t know how this Mig was set up, but American 2-seat jets have the ability for command ejection by the back-seater. However, that authority is usually selected by the pilot, and by-and-large pilots do not give their back-seaters this ability. I would be surprised if it were so set-up in this jet ride. Don’t know who the back-seater was, but I would suspect it was a paid ride.
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An interesting summary from Larry Johnson:
How Will the War in Ukraine End? - A Son of the New American Revolution (sonar21.com)
".… something we should be contemplating if the world is going to avoid a nuclear holocaust. It boils down to three possibilities:
** Unconditional Surrender*
** Negotiated Settlement*
** Prolonged Conflict and Exhaustion, i.e. Stalemate*
…
Ukraine is facing a situation like the one that confronted the Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox. Lee’s beleaguered army still wanted to carry on the fight against the North but, despite their spirit, they lacked the logistics and manpower to continue. Lee recognized the futility of the situation and agreed to the generous terms offered by General Ulysses Grant. I believe the moment is approaching when Ukraine’s General Zaluzhny will face a similar moment of truth. …"
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In the video I posted today, EJECT! EJECT!, John Nichol and Ward Carroll discuss command eject at some length. Carroll (F-14 pilot for 15 years) says that originally pilots did not usually enable back seat command eject, but after several incidents in which the pilot was disabled or injured, now the majority do fly in that mode. It’s still at the pilot’s discretion, and presumably they wouldn’t enable it while flying an untrained person in the back seat, especially after the 2020 Rafale B incident in France. It was only due to a malfunction that the pilot was not ejected as well and was able to fly the plane back to the base without a canopy and land safely. (The passenger landed safely.)
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American 2-seat jets have the ability for command ejection by the back-seater. However, that authority is usually selected by the pilot, and by-and-large pilots do not give their back-seaters this ability.
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In the video I posted today, EJECT! EJECT!, John Nichol and Ward Carroll discuss command eject at some length. Carroll (F-14 pilot for 15 years) says that originally pilots did not usually enable back seat command eject, but after several incidents in which the pilot was disabled or injured, now the majority do fly in that mode. It’s still at the pilot’s discretion, and presumably they wouldn’t enable it while flying an untrained person in the back seat, especially after the 2020 Rafale B incident in France. It was only due to a malfunction that the pilot was not ejected as well and was able to fly the plane back to the base without a canopy and land safely. (The passenger landed safely.)
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You are, of course, correct. Mostly it’s a question of crew trust. When a crew has flown together a bit, there is a bond that develops that allows the pilot to feel “safe” allowing his back seater to initiate ejection for both if he is injured. Remember, if the pilot initiates the ejection, the back seater goes automatically - he has no choice (especially since he usually has no aircraft controls in the back).
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As discussed in this documentary:
and note what happens when the same pilot forgets to enable:
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Ward Carrol wasn’t a pilot, he was a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) backseater. Obviously, he had to knows a lot about all aspects to do his job.
Some would argue the pilots were chauffers for the RIOs who were the actual brains of the operation, but that’s just inside baseball.
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But recall when Russia was mocked for “cope cages”:
At least some are more thorough and/or objective:
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In the meantime, Wagner pivots to education in Belarus:
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UA and RU video of “sea baby” attack on Kerch Straits Bridge:
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Ron Paul recommended this interview, posted today (2023-08-22) on 𝕏/Twitter by Tucker Carlson, of retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor about the state of the war in Ukraine, likely prospects for the outcome, and relative readiness of the U.S. and NATO for a conflict with Russia.
The 52 minute video interview cannot be embedded here, but may be watched on 𝕏/Twitter by clicking the link above. You do not need a 𝕏/Twitter login to view the video.
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Some of his military analysis is probably right.
His political analysis seems weak. I have not been able to come up with a simple explanation of the insanity going on in this war. His attempt at a simple explanation is effectively that the “neocons”* (Jews) are harboring ancestral resentment for the Tsarist Russians. IMHO, more likely, that, as leftists, they resent Putin’s pro Western civilization rhetoric.
*Unlike the actual neocons, the pro-war Democrats (Jewish or other) are unrepentant leftists.
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I have noticed over the last several years, and not just in this interview, that the word “neocon” seems to be mutating from its original meaning of (mostly Jewish) liberals who became estranged from the Democrat party when it veered left in the opposition to the Vietnam war and embraced “anti-anti-communism”, particularly in 1972 and afterward.
Now it seems to be coming to mean anybody, regardless of political background, religion, or position on the domestic policy spectrum, who backs the “American greatness”, “essential superpower”, “freedom agenda”, or “invade the world” policy framework. Among those I’ve seen referred to as “neocons” are Newt Gingrich, Dan Crenshaw, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Mitt Romney, John Yoo, Lindsey Graham, and Nikki Haley—whatever you think of them, hardly exemplars of the original profile of neoconservatives.
It may just be another example of the rule that “In the U.S., any word with a political connotation eventually loses all meaning other than as a term of derision for those who disagree with the speaker’s views.”
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Given that the Pale of Settlement was largely in Ukraine, and the Jews were as badly persecuted by the locals and anywhere, I don’t buy Paul’s argument on that either. P.S. this Jew thinks Putin is the only actual statesman and that Russia is certainly entitled to determine its own security interests and what constitutes a mortal threat.
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