F-16 Designer: Turkey 'Set up an Ambush' for Unsuspecting Russian Su-24"Noting that the Turkish planes had flown around in an area 25 miles (40 km) north of the border crossing for nearly an hour-and-a-half, "the crucial thing," the analyst said, was that "they were not loitering up at high altitude –say twenty to thirty thousand feet – to conserve fuel, which is where you would normally be loitering if you were simply doing a routine border patrol. They were loitering quite low, at about 7,500 to eight thousand feet…below the coverage of the Syrian and Russian radars down around Latakia.""
"As for the Turks' supposed radio warnings, the analyst noted that they may have of the kind that were not intended to be received: "Now it so happens that Su-24s have no radios onboard for receiving UHF-frequency signals, a fact which is well known to American, NATO and Turkish intelligence." Thus, while "it's likely true that the Turks radioed warnings…those warnings may have been deliberately transmitted only on the international civilian frequency so that the Su-24s would never hear them.""
