This is breaking right now. Israel did an airstrike on Syria’s coast in Latakia. Russian news RT is reporting that they lost contact with their IL-20 elint aircraft at the same time. If it went down during the attack we may have a disastrous situation. Fourteen Russians on board.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/news/438673-russian-il20-disappears-radars/amp/
Another weird part of this is RT claiming that the Russians recorded missile launches from a French frigate too.
Fantastic news, hopefully they’ll learn a lesson from this.
Israel shoots down lots of russian-made planes. Are we sure there were actually russians on board this one?
The answer you seek is in the OP.
It appears that this one plane was occupied by Russians.
Yeah, I don’t read RT. Who am I, ron paul??
Is the dedicated Syria thread dead? I can request a merger if not.
Which side is fat donald going to support?
That’s what I was wondering. This puts the Trumpets in quite the quandary.
Why not both, depending on who’s asking him at the time?
Sad that I have to ask that question to begin with.
Probably friendly fire. If so, what’s the good news or the quandary for Trump?
I don’t really care, do u?
Even if Russian/Syrian air defense brought it down by accident during the attack(a very real possibility) they’re gonna hold Israel responsible. Not sure how France got involved if that’s accurate.
See it’s pesky little things like this that can start wars. Not saying it’s going to happen, but dead soldiers can lead to that.
This wouldn’t happen if Obama wasn’t such a weak president.
Israel and Syria have been at war for 70 years.
If a Russian plane got caught in the crossfire, it’s no skin off my back.
Either this is going to end up being nothing or result in Christ coming down on the plains of Megiddo.
According to the op article they didn’t mention if the Russian plane was in Israeli airspace.
Either way I expect that Russia will start sending SU-35S escorts with all of their reconnaissance aircraft. They have several deployed in Syria.
The SU-35 is a fantastic aerial combat machine, armed with a powerful PESA radar and R-77 medium range missiles. The F-15C is competitive in some ways but is overall outmatched by the Su-35 in several metrics, namely low energy maneuverability and acceleration. The only technical area where the F-15 exceeds the Su-35 is detection range with its radar but the Su-35 uses RAM to decrease its visibility. So it’s unknown who would actually be able to engage first, the F-15s with their AMRAAMs or the Su-35s with their R-77s. Both missiles are fairly evenly matched in terms of payload and performance.
In a close encounter the Israeli F-15s would be hard pressed against them although the superiority of Israeli pilots would give them an important edge. Ultimately the engagement would depend on the quality of the Russian pilots. If they are high quality pilots then it’s a good chance that both sides would achieve mutual kills in WVR combat. If it’s a BVR engagement then it’s a crap shoot.
Of course Israeli F-35s could be used as forward “snipers” for the F-15, using its ridiculously powerful yet stealthy radar system to paint the Su-35 and the F-15s then engage without having to use their own radars that the Russians would immediately know about with their EW systems. If that happened the Su-35 pilots better be on point or they’ll eat AMRAAMs to the face before they even get a chance to engage the F-35s or F-15s.
