Originally Posted by The Civil Civilian
The Turks are simply protec.ting their men below
The Turks have, up to now, been careful not to directly intervene in Syria. Funding and arming rebels, as they and the US have been doing
inside Turkey, can be achieved without tripping over the line into state-on-state war. However, if your conclusion is correct, then this was an act of war by Turkey against the Syrian state, which is engaged in civil war with those men
inside Syria, and also against Russia, which is acting on behalf of the Syrian state with its sovereign authority. I really and truly hope that your conclusion is wrong, but have my doubts.
Originally Posted by handleturning
I would very much doubt the Turks are firing AIM 120 into that environment.
If they had used anything else (AIM-9 or gun) then, based on the reported information so far, the shot must have been taken when the Russians had already left Turkish airspace. And it would be very likely that the shot itself would have been fired in Syrian airspace. For those reasons, I hope it
was an AIM-120, otherwise we're looking at an act of war again.
If you are inferring that it would be utterly reckless to fire AIM-120 into an air environment densely populated with unidentified or friendly tracks, I would agree with that... but given that the non-Russian players are more interested in ISIL than Turkmen rebels, I suspect that there weren't many other tracks in the area in question.
Originally Posted by TBM-Legend
Do the Ruskies monitor "Guard"?
Don't know. But I suspect the momentary transgression was an aircrew error - from the radar track it is pretty clear that their intent was to orbit just south of the border, and it looks to me as if they failed to notice the tiny southward protrusion of Turkish territory. With this in mind, it is perfectly possible that they would have been listening on Guard and hearing the warnings from the Turks, and giving them a stiff ignoring. Many of us have done the same thing near various international boundaries in response to air defence broadcasts like "Coalition aircraft near xxxx, identify yourself, you are approaching xxxx airspace, blah blah blah" - depending on policy, we would either ignore them or give a canned response to the effect of "we are operating under xxxxx authority and remaining in xxxxx airspace". As long as the Russians thought they were staying in Syrian airspace, they would have been justified in doing the same. Their mistake was crossing into Turkey for 17 seconds....
Originally Posted by Willard Whyte
The jet(s) were warned numerous times to alter their vector, they didn't, they got what was coming to them
They were orbiting near the border, and by rights they could do so all day provided they stayed on the right side of the line. This means their vector was changing continuously, which makes the significance of the warnings rather different - "move away from the border" as much as "don't cross the border". The Russians were pointing at Turkish airspace for at the most a minute or so prior to the engagement.
Originally Posted by WageSlave
Are you not allowed to stop a burglar after he's left your property? Strewth!
You're not allowed to violently attack him. Retribution seems to form a big part of your thinking, what your comments on downed aircrew, but even in war, the only place it can be delivered while complying with international law is in a courtroom! And your reference to the Belgrano is off the mark - the UK and Argentina were at war, which Turkey and Russia are not. Neither are Turkey and Syria in strict legal terms. That might change!