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Droning on about Drones-- Curiouser and Curiouser

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My friends at SouthFront, where I do voiceovers, apprised me of this video, posted on their site.

At the very end, there is a shot of the propellers of the drone apparently damaged. One blade is feathered. And one seems to have a damaged tip. Note that the rotor continues to rotate. The drone appears stable.

This scene was NOT included in the various videos that I saw when I wrote my first two articles on this incident, although Simplicius refers to it.

The videos I saw had video footage with comments by US military interspersed, making their points. Rather like the PowerPoint presentations the US military are so fond of.

But, while Milley and Austin accused the Russians of colliding with their drone, they didn’t use the footage that you see at the end of THIS video I have included here and that SouthFront published. They did not show this scene and say: “See this is what the Russkies done!”

If this footage is genuine, why didn’t they start with it?

Curious indeed!

SouthFront commentors are an intelligent crew. One of them noted that while most of the shots of the rotor with the Su27s roaring up-and-away above the drone show propellers with stripes, you cannot see those stripes in the final footage.

Now, that might be a trick of light…or…it might be, as the commentor suggested, a different drone.

Questions, questions….

The kind of damage you see in the last moments of the video could theoretically occur if an Su27 brushed the moving rotor with a wing.

That maneuver would be very difficult to carry out, given the respective configurations of the drone and the Su27 which is a big aircraft with a long nose. How could the Su27 damage the drone propeller unit without risk of a catastrophic collision?

An accident? The tail of the drone is pretty complicated, with little room for an Su27 to get in close. There would have been a lot more damage. Despite what the Americans say, Russian pilots are pretty good.

If the Su27 wanted to knock the drone out of the sky, it would be more likely to tip a wing. Like this:

One thing that is very clear is that there is more video than just the few scenes shown.

If the Su27 hit the rotor with a wing, there would be footage, at least until the moment of contact.

One pro-American commentor said that this could be because the shock of collision might jar the datalink by which video is transmitted interrupting transmission temporarily. Yes, possible.

But while video transmission might be interrupted. But filming would continue —uplink or not— and there would be record of the Su27 approaching from the rear to match speed and insert a wingtip, a la WWII.

Propaganda is all about omission and misdirection.

My take is that in this case seeing should NOT be believing.

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