Well, talk more about the botched Intercept in a moment, but first lets take a look and see exactly what brought this drone down. The MQ 9 drone is powered by the Garrett tpe 331 turbo prop engine direct drive, turboshaft engine, pushing a four bladed propeller. I believe its a four bladed metal propeller – I cant get the specs on the propeller just yet, but when I first saw the footage of this on the television set, seeing this one curled prop, I was thinking boys. Why? Couldnt you keep flying that drone? It doesnt. Look that badly damaged, but if you look closer at this video from dvids, you can see that not only is that prop blade damaged, but as we scroll through here, we should be able to find this prop blade is in The Feathered position now, this being a Single engine aircraft Im not sure if this is a fully featherable propeller on the MQ 9 drone, I believe its a reversible pitch propeller. So in that case you know it would have to move through the feathered position in order to feather the propeller. But with that much damage to the propeller of four blades, two of the four blades being that badly damaged, I could see that damage forcing this aircraft down. Typically, if you lose oil pressure to these engines, the propeller should go into a low pitch condition: high RPM. So that you can continue to operate, but if the, if one prop blade, is darn near feathered like this Stuck In The Feathered position because youve jammed the gears on it and the other prop blade badly bent youre not going to be producing a enough thrust to Remain airborne and B, the vibration might just very well Shake itself to death, thus causing this aircraft to be Force landed into the Black Sea.

So now lets talk about the botched portion and terrible airmanship of this intercept. Airspace around the United States is protected by something called. The aid is the air defense identification Zone anytime, an aircraft enters this airspace that has not been properly identified via the transponder. It is a unknown Rider and youll get a car. A call on the guard. Frequency 121.5 unknown Rider unknown Rider, and you need to identify yourself and get your transponder working. If you continue into this airspace unidentified, you will be intercepted by a military that is sitting alert, usually a couple of guard units, one I believe at Fresno and one at Portland and theyre going to come up and do a military intercept to find out. Just who you are and what youre up to and in order to do, a professional military intercept, heres the basic rules, the fighters usually work in a pair a pair of Fighters and usually send one fighter ahead to intercept the aircraft and do a formation rejoin. Alongside of the aircraft to get the crews attention now, I know were talking about an MQ 9 drone that does not have a pilot, but they have cameras on board that they can clearly see whats going on just like a pilot, just as we saw in this Video and then the second aircraft remains behind out of sight. Just in case anything happens now, generally youre intercepting these aircraft, these aircraft unknown Riders without the intention of shooting them down, but just in case theyre back there loaded for bear, and so as a civilian pilot.

You need to know your intercepting aircraft signals and you need to review them from time to time what the different Wing rocks and or if they, if you cannot establish radio communications, what the different Nordo or no radio um procedures are and what they mean. So the lead aircraft comes alongside the aircraft, hopefully is able to match the speed of the aircraft, usually a much slower aircraft and then give them the signal and get their attention and figure out their intentions from there. So, instead of doing a professional intercept, the Russian su 27 here is harassing the Drone. By doing a series of flybys there hes dumping fuel, the sg27 has the ability to dump Fuel and he does a very close pass. Thats the first pass, the propellers find the drones fine, it does disrupt the camera briefly and then on video here we see him doing a second pass where the Russian su 27 actually hits the prop. Now what this Russian intercept pilot is doing is a fundamental failure to understand formation Basics very similar to the same situation as to what happened in the Collision of the p63 versus the B 17 when the air boss, when the air boss in that crash over um In Texas there directed The p63 to put him belly up to the B 17. You never ever want to be belly up to another aircraft in formation, because you will hit him and thats exactly what happened here standby.

Let me get the models anytime. You go belly up to a formation aircraft at a higher rate of speed, youre gon na youre gon na smash right into them, because you cannot see below the wings now on this second pass here with the su 27, you can see that he is farther below The Drone than he was on the previous pass and perhaps where he wanted to be and youre going to see him try to pull up at the last moment to avoid the Collision right. There oh pull up there. He whacks the Drone. Camera comes back on and there you see the damage to the propeller. Now one of the long standing problems with the Russian pilots and Air Force is their lack of currency and qualification in the aircraft. Its hard to get the flying time that these Pilots need to stay current and qualified in these aircrafts, and this intercept just shows a fundamental lack of basic airmanship on behalf of the Russian pilot thanks. So much for your support of this channel, especially the folks over on patreon, that make this content possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzLV-R_-kk