Russian MiG 29 shoots down Georgian UAV

BBC has an article and a video released by the Georgian Military showing the shoot down from the unique perspective of the victim, in this case a Georgian UAV.
BBC World News

I thought it might have been CG for a moment, but when you look closely you can see the smoke from the missile is disturbed by the passing aircraft in a way in which I've never seen in a sim before.

The Georgian rebel group claims it was an L-39 Albatross but a close look at the aircraft reveals the distinct twin tails of a MiG or Sukhoi.

that was awesome

That's freaky...and kinda cool...but not...but...wow, that was funky.

v6,
boNes

That's some awesome footage. It's nice getting to see a real MiG-29 in action.

Awesome

Anyone know if there is a HD version of this?

We all knew you would like it Sim.

Finally an air-to-air kill for the MiG-29.

The kill wasn't exactly something sexy like a Rafael, Typhoon or F-22 but they'll take it I'm sure. LOL

Here's a slightly higher rez on youtube. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AfRHMbz2nuU

How did that UAV knew where to look?

wow thats sweet! but what does it mean? is russia just trying to flex their power again; or are they trying to hide something? kind of weird why they would should down a UAV during peace time.

Maybe the UAV strayed over Russian airspace? I dont know if that's been confirmed yet though.

Russian government = Al Capone and gang with nuclear weapons.

"...It was doing basic reconnaissance over Georgian territory" LOL What the sh$#?

Georgia does not recognize independence of Abhazia ....just FYI since people already doing standard "Evil Stalinist Russian Pigs (tm)"

Well, I know something of it, have a close friend from Georgia and one from Odessa and speak Russian with 25 hours of it and a minor in it.

I know Russia has had troops in that region since just after the wall fell, and has essentially acted as instigators with separatists in the region, which is a part of Georgia, not Russia. They have a hard time with Georgia wanting to join NATO, and have a very difficult time letting go of the former USSR republics/territories in general.

so let me get this straight....Russia still has force in Georgia (LOL) and
Independence in Kosovo is ok, but for Abhasia it isn't?

So how much did that missle cost compared to the UAV?

I wonder if maybe a little cannon fire might be a little more feasible. LOL

Yes, and I don't know anyone who disputes it. More recently....

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080324/102100613.html

http://english.sina.com/world/1/2008/0324/151755.html

There are literally decades worth of documentation of it.

Either way, the video is cool from a purely entertainment point of view.....

Excellent point. The UAV cant fire back so you'd think that would have been a golden opportunity for that MiG pilot to practice his air to air gunnery with the neato helmet-mounted sight.

Some UAVs are armed! Better not take any chances.

No Air/Air Armed UAVs anywhere in the world yet.

now that would have been an awesome vid of seeing tracers flying towards the camera!

Dogfight between MQ-1 Predator drone and Mig-25 Foxbat


VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWUR3sgKUV8

You're forgetting the two Cessnas shot down by Cuban Fulcrums in 1996.

Great thread!

Ah yes, truly a glorious day for the People's Air Farce of Cuba!

Looks like whatever one of the F-14s does to the contrail for a brief second during Top Gun.

Really? I didn't know that.....

I'm the one, for example. There are no Russian forces in Georgia. The last peacekeeper left the country in November 2007, now the peacekeeping forces are only at the border conflict zones in Abkhazia and South Osetia. If you think they are pure Georgian soil, then you're having a hard time dealing with the facts. Peacekeepers will be there until locals learn living in peace and not cutting each other's throats.

I've a hard time beliving this. All the information I can find says that only in 2003 did the Air Force actually test Stingers on the Predator, and it never went operational (yet). Friend of mine, Jane's Defence Journalist, was in Nellis last year where they presented both Reaper and Predator, no sign of Air/Air cababilities either.

Do spill the beans...

ROFLMAO!!

And two Eritrean MiG-29's got two Ethiopian SU-27s in 1999 on two seperate occassions.

wow thanks for that. it made my day!

the MiG-29 is one of my fav fighter jets. it's awesome to watch in action.
and the footage is superb as well. it catches the missile right before it hits.
a very nice show.

Quite funny how most replies are just about how awesome the footage is.

It is also amusing that in this confrontation beween a mighty Russian jet fighter and a lowly fixed-undercarriage drone, it is definitely the drone that goes out winning: what a spectacular "GOTCHA" moment!

- Putin won't convince anybody (outside the already-tamed Russian media) that they didn't shoot down the drone. I think he has a major foreign crisis on his hands now.

The Russians have always had a certain knack for botching up their bullying of "the near abroad"... They did it once again.

Actually, I'd rather keep the thread based on the footage and leave the politics out of it.

It's not often we get to see the end result of a MiG 29 firing an A2A missle. Pretty cool stuff. Really primo would have been a few rounds of cannon fire, followed by the missle. If there was anything left to hit.

Exactly. It's a real eye opener when your only experience with the MiG-29 is flying a digital version of it in Lock On for all these years and then you finally get to see a real one firing a real missile in a real world situation!

I can't remember having seen a video of an A2A missile kill from the business end view. We've all seen the drone hits, the video from the launching aircraft, a puff of smoke in the distance is the kill. But nothing like this, here comes the missile into your face. Wow.

A kill with the R-73 missile. Using gunzo would not only be dangerous to the people at the coast ( if he is firing towards the cost ) but mostly it wouldnt be a sure kill. This gun disperse might be too big for a UAV.

Is there a UN Resolution to have peave keeping forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia ? Im really curious and too lazy to check the UN Homepage.

What would be really cool was if there was a dogfight between UAVs from different countries. The ultimate "combat sim"

Flares...Flares...Chaff...Chaff.... ah never mind. LOL.

Cool vid.

Jason

lol, nevermind is right. Not much time between launch and impact. Those freaking missiles go pretty quick.

Of course neither the Russian pilot nor anybody else ever expected that the atttack would be filmed from the drone itself. But I guess it would still have been much more prudent, if he wanted to cover his tracks, to shoot the missile from a much wider distance, so the plane wouldn't be so easy to connect to the kill. Anyway, easy to say after the shoot-down.

To me this footage screams to me, "hey, it actually LOOKS like it does in Lock-ON, the sim isn't that far off!!"

Lock On was the very first thing that came into my mind. Notice how some of the exhaust smoke from the missile was sucked into the intakes of the MiG? I dont think Lock On models that.

so when the mig pilot gets home does he stencil the outline of a drone on his plane? also, maybe its just me being a neive american, but i didn't know countries like Georgia had UAVs.

I believe from what I've read it was a UAV from Israel but I'm not sure.....

UAVs are probably a lot cheaper to purchase than a manned aircraft. Seems reasonable to me!

There's actually a website dedicated to homebuilt UAVs somewhere...

I'd love to see a cost analysis for that interception.

I doubt R-73 Archer missiles are very expensive (when listed in Euros or Dollars). That UAV probably cost more than the missile that shot it down. Or maybe it was an older R-60 Aphid? That would be even cheaper.

http://www.elbitsystems.com/lobmainpage.asp?id=161 < official site for Hermes 450
http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/aircraft/uav/hermes_450/Hermes_450.html < many good pics of it.

Wasn't it the other way around?

I think the Flankers shot down the MiG-29s, and it was more something like 3-4, but one of them was a MiG-29 UB shot down by a ethiopian female pilot.
Apart from that, most combat on both sides was done by russians/ukrainians (didn't matter much in those days before Ukraine went orange).
Same goes for the Su-25s in Macedonia in 1999. If somebody suddenly starts to have modern russian hardware and uses it operationally, it usually means the pilots came with the planes.

Regarding the georgian situation, Georgia (the government, not the people) always reminds me of a small boy insulting a big boy (Russia) while hiding behind his very large but slightly demented brother (the US :D).
Sakashvili uses Russia as the general root of all evil, mainly because Georgia is piss poor and he managed to disappoint pretty much every hope the people had in him when he made his coup.
Think of Georgia as a latin american country like Colombia, only in the Caucasus. The people are even similar in mentality.
The problem with Abkhazia is that these people are ethnically not georgian, so if someone grands independence to Kosovo because the majority is ethnically different from Serbia, the same applies here. Also, Abkhazia is de facto independent since the mid 1990s, and the claim that this is "georgian territory" is ridiculous. De jure it is, but de facto the georgian government has no control over this region. A seperate government exists, which also has its own armed forces. In a region where you have 100 nationalities in an area of the size of Belgium, the idea of a nation based on race is a bit stretched anyway. The Caucasus is full of very ancient and weird cultures, most of which can not stand each other.
The soviets just kept the peace by treaty everybody as equal (sending everybody to siberia if he made trouble, regardless of race :D).
But that only applies until Gorbatchev came to power, after that the soviet union started acting politically correct and started respecting minority rights and stuff....

The missile looks like it is launched from the wing tip. Afaik the MiG 29 doesn't have wingtip rails. The Su 27 does.

Would say it is a publicity stunt to stir up more trouble.

you know I thought about it being a Su-27 myself. more so as I've read that the Russian Air Force prefers it to the MiG-29.

I'd only need to see the angle of the tailfins to tell for sure what it is.
if we only had a better quality video..

EDIT:
watched the YT version again..
http://i26.tinypic.com/908yfr.png

you can see here that the right tailfin of the plane is not at 90 degrees like at the Su-27.
also, the wings are shorter compared to the body than at the Su-27.
so I guess it's not a Su-27 after all.

I have the cam video of the Mig-25 vs Predator incident. The predator is shooting back at the Mig-25, but too late.

That is not quite correct.



-Skater

While that is basically true...



...this also is. And Russia has made it clear all along that they consider it to be a double standard. You don't have to like Russian agitprop to admit the West has left themselves preciously little room to maneuver with their rather overzealous support for Kosovo's independence.

Note that I'm not saying whether independence for Kosovo was a mistake or not - but it clearly was rushed with other issues like Abkhazia remaining.

That is what I said.

I thought the same at first - but then again, the first thing which comes to my mind when I think 'UAV' is footage like this, taken from the big testicle-like camera under the fuselage. The UAV is the only type of aircraft to be flown by camera - a moment's thought (which I didn't think until after I'd read your post!) makes you realise that a UAV is the most likely type to video-record your aircraft and attack!

I should have read further down before I replied Dave.

-Skater

last news: russian officials (and also some french experts) claim the video is fake...

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20080429/106196774.html

details here.. you may want a translation, but I couldn't find the same article in english...

Oh yea, I'm gonna take the Russians' word for it, they've never shot down anything flying near their airspace before! Oh and they don't ever lie either!!! LOL!

Most of their explanations for why it's fake... aren't necessarily true, or are misleading. I mean, suggesting that all air to air missiles are smokeless while all SAMS are not... BS.

Flying under the UAV to get the shot, they suggest is stupid and makes no sense, but this is shallow, not much under. Also it DOES make sense to get under it, to have improved contrast for the IR seeker, more important than usual given that a UAV will have a very small IR signature.

Probably the most credible issue the Russians make, is that of the missile's launch: they say the Mig-29 does not fire missiles from the wingtip, or close to it, while the video, if you watch it carefully like I did several times, shows it's doing exactly that, right under the wingtip. But... is that enough to prove the video is fake? I'd just as soon believe that some Migs were rigged to have an additional hardpoint that the West doesn't know about, than believe this video was faked, since either would be plausible and straightforward to accomplish.

Ultimately though, Russia has a history seen by us where they lie for whatever reason.

The Ethiopian pilot's name was Captain Aster Tolossa. It was the first air to air kill by a woman since World War II.

Miao, Cat

Anyone have a good high-res copy of this? I'm going nuts trying to figure out if it's a MiG or a Sue.

At first I was sure it's a Fulcrum, but after repeated viewings, there are certain angles that make me think Flanker.

In the beginning, the LERX and the seemingly perpendicular vertical tails look like the Su-27. But a few moments later, the fins look canted outward a few degrees. The whole "wingtip missile" thing is buggin' me, too. It's hard to tell if it's a wingtip, or the outer pylon of a MiG-29.

I know it's pointless to obsess over it, but I pride myself on my aircraft recognition skills...

Thanks for that info Cat. I really had no knowledge of that incident.