#also apologies — the Reaper might be $56-57 million??

[gremlins-hotel]

Yeah okay, so to anyone that might be freaking out about the Su-27/MQ 9 collision and if it might lead to a US-Russian conflict, honestly it’s really blasé compared to what it could be. If anything it’s funny.

The MQ 9 Reaper is an unmanned drone (UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle). Key word: unmanned. This would be a different story if this were an incident between two pilots. However, it’s not. It’s an incident between one pilot in a $30 million aircraft and a $32 million remote-controlled/autonomous-capable drone.

At most this footage displays the historic unprofessionalism and poor training of most Russian pilots. The pilot dumps fuel on the drone for whatever reason. That plume you see? Fuel dumping. And then the pilot attempts to physically hit the drone - which costs more than his own aircraft in conversion - in the propellor. The Reaper is basically a fly. The Russian pilot just attempted to spray it with Raid and then gave up on that and used themselves as the world’s most costly flyswatter. Make no mistake that the damage they could’ve inflicted on themselves is a real and dangerous possibility. If the pilot were smart (or perhaps better trained) they should’ve just used the Su-27’s GSh-30-1 30 mm autocannon platform. What a far more intelligent (and safer) idea.

See, in bird culture, this shit would be a dick move. Like what the fuck dude! I’m flying here! I don’t even have food! Pilot doesn’t even have the mind to use disrespect chaff or flares for style points. I know the Flanker has them. Big Сука Sukhoi playing stupid fuck fuck games at the wheel of whack-fuck. This is going in the United States’ cringe compilation.