Why Russia won’t dare shoot at American planes
19 hours ago by Steve Berman Russia “warned” the U.S. that “Any aircraft, including planes and drones belonging to the international coalition operating west of the Euphrates river, will be tracked by Russian anti-aircraft forces in the sky and on the ground and treated as targets.”
This happened after a U.S. Navy F/A-18 downed a Syrian SU-22 bomber that attacked anti-Assad rebels in Raqqa province on Sunday. The Russians don’t like that their favored dictator is being attacked by U.S.-backed forces. To hell with ISIS, Russia considers Syria to be within its geographic sphere of influence.
As Streiff at RedState noted,
Note they say “tracked” as air targets, not “treat U.S.-led coalition planes in Syria, west of the Euphrates River, as targets.” Why is this significant? If Russian air defense systems “treated” allied aircraft as hostile that would entail “painting” them with fire control radar, an international sign of imminent hostilities. “Tracking” merely means allied aircraft will be coded on Russian battle management radar as hostile. They have probably been doing that since Day One.But let’s move past weasel-words like “tracked” and “painted” and “treated.” The word “target” can mean a lot of things in the radar and military world. Just because something is a target doesn’t mean anyone is shooting. For example, right now, at this moment, the U.S. is targeting several Russian cities and military facilities with weapons of mass destruction. And the Russians are targeting us. That’s how deterrence works.
In reality, Russia wouldn’t dare shoot at us. Not on purpose, at least.
Just looking at the numbers answers the question before it’s even asked.
The U.S. has way more than double the number of fixed-wing aircraft than the Russians. We have 500 more fighters than Russia, with enough tankers to move them wherever in the world we want. Oh, and that’s just the Air Force. The Navy has another 300-odd F/A-18 Hornets and another 300+ F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
And if things got really serious, we have scores of F-22A Raptors that can shoot any Russian aircraft out of the sky before they even had the chance to “target” it.
In short, the Russians would be insane to the point of suicidal to shoot at an American aircraft.
But let’s just assume for a moment that some mistake happened, some dude who imbibed a bit too much vodka pressed the wrong button and fired an S-300 or S-400 air defense battery at one of our planes. First of all, that scenario can’t happen unless American jets fly over known Russian bases near the Mediterranean.
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http://thenewamericana.com/2017/06/19/russia-wont-dare-shoot-american-planes/
