SU-27 buzzes US Navy surveillance aircraft
NBC News reports that a Russian Su-27 flew within “about 20 feet” of a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft over the Black Sea a few days ago;
In a statement issued Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said a Su-30 jet had “executed a ‘greeting’ maneuver” toward the American pilots.
It added that the fighter had been scrambled after “an air target approaching the Russian state border had been located … above Black Sea neutral waters.”
The P-8 mission commander said the encounter “was considered safe and professional”, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.
Thanks to HMC Ret for the tip.
Category: Navy
Hope the SU-27 jockey is a better driver than the Red Chinese guy who did a Chinese Fire Drill right into our EP-3 back in 2001…
I don’t remember that event. Did our guys survive?
Yes, but the EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing in Red Chinese territory, and the Red Chinese had weeks and weeks to examine every inch of that top secret electronic warfare air-surveillance platform…
Pilot was awarded DCF. I thought Court Martial was more in order.
A DFC? I agree that Court Martial would have been a better alternative.
Why would you think that?
Why a court martial?
I lot of damn armchair heroism condemning the pilot’s choice. A lot of people with a lot more information than you guys honored the pilot. That plane KS not one that crew would do well in a water landing and the equipment would have still been recoverable.
Ditching the plane would likely have cost lives and still not protected the secrets.
Crew should probably have destroyed more of the equipment in the tine they had but those saying the pilot should have been court martial are asshats.
So, the RedChi action was intentional.
Probably not, the ChiCom fighter pilot was a hotdog and most likely did not intend to crash his fighter into the EP-3 He played chicken with the EP-3 and lost, as the Red Chinese guy was killed; but his game of fatal chicken scored big for his country Red China, as they were able to go through the EP-3 with a fine tooth comb after Lt. Osborn landed the EP-3 in Red China…
Sorry, Combat Historian, but I respectfully disagree.
The EP-3 wasn’t ‘forced’ to make an emergency landing in Chinese territory; the crew CHOSE to land in Chinese territory. The mid-air collision between the EP-3 and the Chinese aircraft took place ‘feet wet’ out over the South China Sea, and the crew made the decision to proceed to land at Lingshui military base on Hainan Island, knowing full well what the adverse consequences of landing there would be.
The consensus among many Naval Aviators at the time of the incident was that instead of intentionally landing in Chinese territory, the EP-3 crew should have ditched that aircraft out in deep water in order to deny the Chinese access to those classified EP-3 aircraft systems.
(It goes without saying that ditching any type/model/series of aircraft into the water is a dicey proposition at any time, but hey, that’s why Naval Aviators get the ‘big bucks’.)
As his reward for effectively surrendering his aircraft, its classified systems, and his crew to the Chinese, the pilot (then-LT Shane Osborn USN), received the Distinguished Flying Cross, a book deal (‘Born to Fly: The Heroic Story of Downed U.S. Navy Pilot Lt. Shane Osborn’), and was lauded in the U.S. media as a ‘hero’.
What should have happened: the Navy should have at least put him in front of a Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board (FNAEB), pulled his Naval Aviator Wings, and then bounced him out of the Navy. In my opinion, he’s lucky that he didn’t get court-martialed.
‘Hero’? My dyin’ ass.
A real ‘hero’ would have taken his chances and ditched that EP-3 in order to keep it out of Chinese hands.
“Don’t give up the ship, boys! Fight her ’til she sinks!”
So much for tradition.
Nonsense. We had positive relations with China and it was peacetime. The aircraft was sovereign US territory and the pilot could not have known China would ignore international law. He would only have suspected they might. So the calculation is the potential loss of life to crew members (no way they would have all safely exited band survived a water landing) VA the risk of compromise. A compromise that could still have happened if the Chinese recovered the downed aircraft off their coast. The Chinese likely would have been first at scene.
I was SIGINT at the time and have friends and former classmates that flew the Chinese surveillance mission. I have heard none of them criticize the crew or pilot besides them insufficiently destroying the onboard systems.
‘Nonsense’?
Oh FFS. YGTBSM.
Are you now also a self-appointed expert on Naval Aviation, Commissar?
When did you earn your Wings of Gold?
What type/model/series of Naval aircraft did you fly?
Any combat time in your Naval Aviator logbook?
Is it a burden to know everything about everything?
Commissar automatically becomes an expert on any subject he chimes in on. Just ask him!
Indeed, TOW.
As a career Naval Aviator myself, I am exceedingly glad that he took the time to stop in here today to get me squared away on Naval Aviation issues.
LOL…
Babbling Desk Jockey.
I don’t give a shit if you are a former aviator. You are nothing more than an armchair hero right now condemning the pilot’s choice when you were not in his position.
So in other words, an actual subject matter expert is an “armchair hero” if he doesn’t agree with you. Way to bolster your credibility, Lars!
There’s also no way you can say with certainty that there is “no way they would have all safely exited band survived a water landing”. You’re assuming that, Berkeley-boi – just like you’re assuming that “the pilot could not have known China would ignore international law”.
And your second assumption is asinine. What did the US and Japan do when the MIG-25 pilot, Viktor Belenko, defected with his aircraft back in 1976? Did either the US or Japan post guards on the plane after he landed and make sure no one entered it – as it was the “sovereign territory of the USSR”? Hell no! We disassembled and examined the damn thing in detail. And when the Soviets complained that they wanted their plane back, we finally sent it back to them – 6 weeks later, in crates.
Different subject: do you have an answer re: Kennedy and Khrushchev yet? Are you still waiting on the “approved Party answer” for that one from your superiors?
Hondo, I might be able to help with the Kennedy answer. We have an old saying, ” We will drive off the Bridge when we come to it.”
Anybody who has spent anytime in the Military knows there are no secrets to duty and day to day life. Everything is written down. Everything has a procedure and policy to follow. Surviving the crash was not written into that policy, but safeguarding American Secrets were. Priority One was to keep highly classified info from Enemy hands. Hell even log books say NOFORN on them. China was our friend then?
Friends do not Buzz each other like that.
I’m torn about this. On the one hand, I most definitely would not want to give away the farm to the PRC. On the other hand, I wanted my shipmates to have max chance of survival. I would venture that I’m the only one commenting here who actually flew on that exact EP-3. Many, many times. Perhaps even its very first mission after she came to the squadron. I left the squadron long before this incident, back in 1993. I only know one of the crew and only then very casually. I have over 300 such type missions. Respectable, but not the most. Whenever we took off, we knew that the shit could hit the fan at any time, but frankly, after many “routine” flights, you get complacent. Knowing what I know now, Osborne probably should have ditched her, but it probably would have been ugly. EP-3’s definitely aren’t like the straight stick variety. Lumbering piles of metal. With the damage the aircraft sustained, who knows what would have happened when she ditched, but it probably would not have been a good outcome. The biggest problem was that there was a lot of “stuff” that didn’t get destroyed like it should have been. After the incident, crew who should have been taking care of business were so in shock that they froze. But I’m not here to condemn them. I like to think I would have acted differently, but one never knows until the shit hits the fan. I think Osborne, who had a lot on his plate just trying to keep PR32 in the air, expected the “tube rats” to do their job. Some did. Other, critical crew didn’t. They fucked up. To me, if they had been able to accomplish their emergency destruction, then the Chinese would not have gotten much, if anything at all of value. I can tell you that it could have been done. That was probably what Osborne was banking on when he decided to land on Hainan. I’m sure it was total chaos on the plane and well, he probably believed that things… Read more »
You likely know a friend if mine. He was flying that mission in 1993.
1993? Pretty sure the Hainan EP3 incident occurred in early 2001, Berkeley-boi.
Thanks for your reply and not jumping on the bandwagon of condemning the pilot like these armchair heros are doing.
And, Hondo, I didn’t make any assumption that China would respect international law. I explicit said the pilot knew they might not which would trigger destruction procedures. But that risk does not justify ditching the plane and putting he entire crew at risk. In fact landing should have bought more time to complete the destruction procedures. I agree with the pilot’s choice and a lot of people with a lot more experience and information on this both of us not only agreed with the pilot but honored him.
And you had been in one of these you would not be questioning my assessment that a water landing would have produced crew casualties. And it would have made the destruction of classified almost impossible while he wreckage of the plane would likely still have been recoverable by the Chinese. The fact that for crew failed to destroy enough of the systems by the time the pilot landed and the Chinese boarded is not on the pilot. That is on the crew.
Been drinking? I had to read that post 3X to make some sort of sense.
I can’t speak for anyone here, but I think they are saying the whole crew screwed up. The crew didn’t destroy enough of the sensitive equipment and the pilot made sure that Chicoms got ahold of it by landing the plane in their front yard.
I also believe that the crew and pilots would have answered a lot more for their actions if it hadn’t been for the main stream media making heros out of them before they were ever freed from the Chinese. Once they became media darlings, there was no way the Navy could accept the PR nightmare of prosecuting “national heros”
And your a fine one to accuse others of Being armchair “heros” ( I think you mean armchair quarterbacks.) you are always coming on here to enlighten everyone else with your superior intellect and worldly views. News flash for you, you’re not the only one that worked in CA, Infantry, Airborne and deployed outside of the wire. You’re not the only one to have visited the Middle East (more than a couple of times), been enlisted and an officer, have a college degree (or three) and follow politics. BUT you are the only one that seems to fall right in line with all of the liberal talking points, even when they are obviously and totally asinine.BUT hey, you be you.
Trump Acceptance Resistance Disorder- TARD
Trump Acceptance Resistance Disorder Operative- TARDO
UC Berzerkely – TARDO Central
Could be. That’s precisely the reason the sole hostage who collaborated with Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis wasn’t court-martialed. Reputedly the CSA wanted to do exactly that, but was overruled.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=59360
My comment above didn’t address either mission crew or pilot performance, Berkeley-boi. Nor did it question your assessment that casualties would have occurred during a ditching. If you think it did, you are mistaken and you need to re-read it. And this time read what it actually says – not what you want it to say. Rather, my comment was intended to point out logical flaws in your comment above. And yes: your saying “the pilot couldn’t have known . . . .” does imply an assumption on your part that the Chinese not inspecting the EP3 in detail was a reasonable possibility and should/could have been a consideration. History from nearly 35 years prior (1976) shows that idea to be exceptionally naive. I don’t question the fact that losses among the crew would have been very likely during a ditching. However, last time I checked “likely” is not synonymous with “certain to occur”. You can’t know beforehand with certainty how many will occur in such an incident; neither can I. Though unlikely, the number could be zero. Unless and until such an event occurs, you don’t know the outcome. The same is true for the Chinese respecting or not respecting international law with respect to the EP3 after landing on Hainan; that too was unknowable prior to landing, and selecting either and acting on that basis requires making an assumption. However, if the EP3 was landed on Hainan history pretty strongly indicated exactly what could be expected with nearly 100% certainty. We’d done exactly the same thing the Chinese did ourselves nearly 35 years earlier in the MIG-25 incident – dismantled the aircraft and examined it in detail. We’d have been damn fools not to expect them to do exactly the same given the chance. A priori certainty is not possible in either case. You thus have to deal with both the likelihood and possible resulting damage of each course of action – e.g., to compare risk, which is the product of both. Since you missed it the first time, I’ll spell it out for you explicitly. In your… Read more »
I call bullshit. I did 20 years as a signals intelligence analyst and communicator in the Marines. They were expected to conduct emergency destruction on all the gear they possibly could wreck. They chose not to. Wrong answer. And we NEVER have positive relations with any other country when it comes to recon and monitoring.
How the fuck does that address my point about the pilots decision? It was the crews responsibility to destroy the equipment. They failed in their duty.
Have YOU ever faced off against the enemy outside the wire like I did in my Grunt days?
Yes. While I never had to kill the enemy I physically caputered two personally and tracked down information and evidence to locate and support the capture of others.
And how the Fuck is that relevant to my post? Why the hell do you feel so damn compelled to bandwagon with those saying the pilot should be courtmartialed? And how does your time as a SGM driver and supply specialist give you the background to imply the pilot acted sob dishonorably he should be criminally charged. You guys love to parade your veteran status but calling for this pilots court martial is vile weasel shitvaggery in my opinion.
And you bandwagon Inga in it reveals you are the pathetic little weasel I have known you are.
WRONG AGAI, Babbles McButthead, I was never a Supply Specialist, your Napoleon Complex shines yet again.
The crew DID commence destroying sensitive equipment starting as soon as the Pilot made the decision to land. They had about 26 minutes before the landing to attempt that. In addition they continued to destroy classified info and gear for another 15 minutes on the ground, until Chinese soldiers started pointing weapons at them through the windows.
There simply wasn’t enough time to thoroughly destroy it all and The Chi-coms reaped a huge windfall of intel. Although there were standing orders to destroy sensitive items there had been no formal training on how to do so.
I never thought such horseshit could be packed into one post.
Fuck you. You sure as Shit would not have landed the plane in the ocean.
Not only are you a TARDO, you exhibit ALL the symptoms of Little Penis Syndrome.
Weasel.
Desk Jockey.
You really are a simple minded a.h. aren’t you? He “couldn’t know that china would ignore intl law?” why wouldn’t he? anyone with even half a brain would know you can’t trust the lying ass chinese (that half a brain business lets you out dildoe) imo
Says the man who wasn’t there.
Do you know the crew size and make-up of an EP-3, its performance envelope and ditching characteristics? Were we at war with China? I know rather a lot about this particular incident, friends at the Class Desk, who know what really occurred. That Pilot and Flight Engineer performed a miracle landing that thing on a runway, much less attempting a ditch. I wasn’t going to bring up crew performance, but MC nailed it.
Not sure if that was directed at me. I was not there, and do not have direct action knowledge of the platform, but my brother ADC NAC has a couple of those fancy Lockheed 5,000 hr pins on a P-3 as a FE.
So I do know the Wing Wiggle joke.
Not to you CB S. Did your F/E brother mention to you how to tell if it was a boy or a girl P-3?
*grin*
You are correct, AW1Ed, I wasn’t there.
But I am a retired career Naval Aviator, I was on active duty when this happened, and I do know quite a few Navy P-3 pilots and NFOs. Most of the P-3 guys that I know are unanimous in their opinion that that EP-3 crew should have put that aircraft in the water in order to keep the aircraft and its systems away from the Chinese, regardless of the inherent risks of ditching. The crew’s decision not to take any action to keep the aircraft and its systems away from the Chinese is the critical issue at hand here; no one is disputing or criticizing the crew’s demonstrated airmanship in maintaining control of the aircraft after the mid-air collision. The point is that it was exceptionally bad headwork to decide to let the Chinese get their hands on that EP-3.
And as I said in my post above, I ‘get it’ that ditching any type/model/series of aircraft is no joke. It’s also no joke to intentionally land a highly sophisticated aircraft such as an EP-3 in Chinese territory.
Were we at war with China? Nope. But the fact remains that one of their fighters ran into that EP-3 in international airspace, so make of that what you will.
So OK, the pilot and FE made a ‘miracle’ landing on a Chinese runway. And while doing so they also delivered an operational EP-3 to a near-peer adversary like it was cool.
AW1Ed, I respect your considerable experience in the Naval Aviation community as well as your many frequent posts here on these pages, but today you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on our assessments of the decisions that were made during the course of this incident.
All the best.
And I’m good with that, Mick. My beef is with the crew in the back, and their failure to complete the emergency destruction bill.
I don’t know if your post was directed at me but I was defending the pilot.
A lot “hero’s” here think he should have bee coherent martialed and the asshats even doubled down.
“Court martialed” was auto corrected to incoherent gibberish. Try to read through it.
Auto-Correct can be a real Mother Forklift sometimes.
There was absolutely no reason they could not have conducted emergency destruction actions on all the classified stuff before they landed. They chose not to. EVERYONE should have faced a courtmartial for that.
They did not choose not to. They did a very crappy job of it.
MC, I think we’ve pushed this about as far as it should go.
Other tan, for posterity, I think the Chicom pilot’s name was Wong Wei
I don’t have a dog in the fight, but do have a question. Back in the day, if in danger of being overrun, the Army procedure was to use thermite grenades to destroy classified docs and equipment. We were told they could basically melt through an engine block.
So how do you do that on an aircraft and avoid melting the fuselage? Or is there another procedure entirely?
Descend below 10,000 ft, depressurize, kick shit out the door and down the free fall chute.
I’m done with this thread.
Perry,
Looking through the incident I think that there simply wasn’t any realistic expectation for the crew to destroy anything more than a rather small portion of the Intel stuff short of completely destroying the aircraft over the water or ditching it where it couldn’t be recovered. They spent close to 40 minutes doing what they could, but short of major disassembly and melting or smashing shit the chances are the Chi-coms could recover it. There really was no procedure or training to get rid of stuff.
Reading through it they had to try and improvise by doing shit like brewing hit coffee and pouring it into the curcuits.
One thing that is sort of an Elephant in the room is that there were a handful of female crew members.
I wonder if the thought of getting them killed while ditching played a part in the pilots decision to not risk ditching the aircraft.
IF we had a “take no shit” guy in the White House this stuff would never happen.
That Obama is soft on the Russkies.
As long as these interactions are taking place off of Sochi instead of Santa Barbara, it’s an improvement.
But if Trump is a Russian agent put into place by ze Russians, would this simply be misdirection?!!!
No it was fund raising.
Was that sarcasm? Because that seemed like sarcasm. Obama is not in office but you post is exactly the kind of dipshit thing someone who hated Obama would have said about an incident like this.
Only crickets about the “weakness” of the administration when a conservative is in office.
You need your SARC meter recalibrated. You must not follow other posters closely. I am one of the few OPEN Democrats on this board.
It is all Obama’s fault Lars.
Trump Acceptance Resistance Disorder = TARD
Trump Acceptance Resistance Disorder Operative = TARDO
UC Berzerkely – TARDOs ‘R’ Us aka TARDO Central
Says a lot about someone when they think having gone to UC Berkeley is a negative thing.
What does it say?
It says they went to Stanford?
Dicks were measured and middle fingers exchanged. The natural order of things when dealing with Russians.
I was ship’s company on a bird farm in the 80s and this stuff was routine. Our pilots did their share of harassing as well, taking photos and swaggering around retelling the stories frequently. What was old is new once again.
I don’t remember it hitting the news back then like it does now.
Every time I read one of these reports in the news now, I am reminded of the story of chicken little.
I guess it is “news” that sells.
Me neither…but I was gone a lot back then and missed a lot of the news, movies, whiskey, pookie, etc etc.
Why are the media making such a big deal out of these encounters ?
This was a common type of an event by both us and the Soviets back in the 70’s during my time in the USAF. smh
Why does our close ally, and Trump’s new bosom buddy Vladimir, insist hassling us?
Why do you insist on posting here?
Joey, you don’t pay much attention to history, do you? The only reason this kind of thing stopped between 1990 and 2015 is because the Russians couldn’t afford to keep their planes in the air. Now they can, and business as usual has resumed. Note that they’re not doing it within sight of SoCal anymore for a comparison between this administration and the last.
No, fuck off.
And the media is breathlessly reporting all the AGI ships sitting off Bangor and King’s Bay like this shit only started on 1/20/17.
Uh, yeah–no.
Bwwwahahahaha. Liberals, sheesh.
The Russian Jet did nothing that we don’t do regularly. When something approaches the coast, the host country responds with a “looksee”. It really is that simple, Joe.
Nothing But Crap strikes again.
During my first deployment in the Med (1989-90 onboard USS Forrestal) we had a Soviet ‘cruise ship’ come along side our port side as we were headed to Naples for a Port visit.
I was on deck doing Plane Captain stuff, when the Air Boss came over the 5MC and told every one to head on over to the port side and greet the Russians….hundreds of middle fingers were waved that day.
So it was a flyby? When are USNAV pilots going to learn that in order to truly flip off the Russkies, they have to carry a plastic penis with them in the cockpit?
You wait til the Russian guy pulls up, root around in your lap, pull the plastic pecker up so it’s about 6 inches of length above the window sill and wave it, then put it back where it belongs.
It isn’t called a cockpit without a reason, you know.
You were in a negative 4G dive, with a MIG-28? At what range?
God, that movie was gay!
Given the stars of it were Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, yes it was. Quite literally, in fact.
Was Bernath in that Top Gun class?
The Marine Corps has a similar program for professional development in the communications occupation field, 2861 Ground Radio Technician Course, or what I call Top Soldering Gun.
We should have had a similar program in Lejeune for FMF Corpsmen that wielded the Immunization Gun with deadly precision.
Yes Hack, yes he was. He was the fellating photographer in the bath house. He was asking all of the “guys” to show him their “Fuel” hoses as he took his pictures.
I doubt that Bernath could even tell when to replenish a stapler, let alone operate it.
I just knew that someone would have to bring ‘Top Gun’ into this.
— sigh —
I hate that movie. Always have.
I knew we could find common ground, Mick.
*grin*
You all do know that scene mirrors an actual incident involving an SR-71 and a Mirage over France, right? (The incident is also described in Ben Rich’s book Skunk Works. Rich succeeded Kelly Johnson as the head of Skunk Works when Johnson retired.)
Damn fine looking plane. Reminds me of nothing currently still in inventory, think we mothballed the last Tomcat years ago. I’m sure the Russians invented this one in the ’50s.
I was never too worried if the Rooski’s bounced us, back in my P-3 days. Libyans, now, were a different story, so we went to great lengths to avoid them.
Was the concern that Libyans were trigger-happy, or that they were so shitty that they might smack a wing completely by accident?
Probably a bit of both… Just recently I listened to the radio chatter from the F-14s that splashed the two Migs.
Their concern was that even though they were changing course the Migs kept maneuvering to go nose-to-nose, which is considered hostile.