The fighter jet went down on Monday, when Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage at Ukraine, a military statement posted on Facebook said.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/jiS4M
The fighter jet went down on Monday, when Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage at Ukraine, a military statement posted on Facebook said.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/jiS4M
Sweet story that omits more than tells
How did the pilot die during the missile strike?
It is a sweet story that forgets to mention that this missile strike shut off electricity in multiple regions despite report of 80% interception rate.
On that day the were multiple leaks of fireballs on the ground. Odessa, for starters.
Ukraine moved significant amounts of anti-air to protect its Kursk invasion of Russia. The result was a successful missile attack against military assets in Ukraine. One of the losses was F-16 with the pilot. How did he die? Was it long range anti-air hit at an impossible distance even for long range missiles? Or was it a hit on the ground? How far away from front lines?
Is it that acknowledging hit on the ground is revealing a successful hit of military airfield used to arm F-16? What about all those sweet intercept numbers?
The way article is written makes reader to think that F-16 was in the air, when it was hit. It is all about the way story was written. However, there’s no actual statement of how or were it was hit.
Russian unofficial telegram channels reported that F-16 was hit on the ground. F-16 is not stationed in Ukraine, but it gets armed in Ukraine to avoid accusation of direct NATO involvement. So, Russians managed to hit a highly missile protected the furthest away airfield in a time window of short F-16 armament.
Suddenly the story has a completely different meaning. That’s why it is a sweet story, that omitted more, than told us.
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Update: today’s telegram says F-16 was shutdown by friendly anti-air fire. Was it western supplied weapons that don’t have friendlies identification?
Doing some quick searching, it seems that we currently do not know how the plane crashed. It was in the air on a mission to shoot down cruise missiles, and after doing that on the way to another target they lost connection. It will likely be a while before we know, both because it will take time to investigate but also depending on what the cause was they may not want to release it publicly for a while.
Slightly more informative article I found: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/world/europe/ukraine-f16-pilot-crash.html