Originally Posted by
BVRAAM
The Eagle driver has been named as Lt. Col. Seth "Jethro" Nehring, assigned to the 194th FS. So sad - R.I.P. Sir.
I don't know if the Flanker driver has been named.
It was named shortly after the crash: Col. Petrenko. While the name of the US officer is not named in Ukrainian and Russian media.
Some information was published yesterday about the aircraft itself. They say that the plane was built and put in service in 1991 and then "written off" and conservated in 2009 because the resource of major systems exhausted the value. But in 2014 it was put in service again with no serious modernization or repair (by hearsay), just got new colours.
Nevertheless, there is no information so far about any major system failure reported by the crew prior to the crash.