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The video is 100% consistent with either the jet hitting it or the fuel hitting it. 1. We don't know the field of view of the camera, which makes it impossible

The video is 100% consistent with either the jet hitting it or the fuel hitting it. 1. We don't know the field of view of the camera, which makes it impossible to judge distances and positions correctly. 2. We don't know whether the camera cutting out is actually the point of impact or some time before it (perhaps there is a buffer that got lost, or the US cut it early to mislead).

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
How does the propeller blade get bent?
- advisedwang 4y ago
  I'm not an aviation expert, but it's not implausible to me that the propeller is fragile enough to get bent by a stream of jet fuel traveling at fighter-jet speeds. On the contrary, a mid-air collision that just bends a couple of propeller blades and not the rest of the drone seems like either incredible flying or incredible luck.
  - t0mas88 4y ago
    Propellers are quite fragile things. If you hit a traffic cone with one on a small trainer aircraft, it's unairworthy immediately and requires an inspection of the propeller and engine.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    It's not a "fighter jet speed" collision, since the drone is travelling at drone speed. It's the difference, which seems fairly small. The US military said there was a collision, and with this video there seems no reason to doubt them. https://www.eucom.mil/pressrelease/42314/russian-aircraft-collides-into-us-unmanned-system-in-international-waters https://www.eucom.mil/pressrelease/42314/russian-aircraft-co...
  - guenthert 4y ago
    Well, to this non-aviator, the flying as shown is immensely impressive. I mean, a jet approaching a drone heads-on and turning a few yards away? Russian military might not be all that popular on the english speaking internet at this time, but credit were credit is due -- mad respect for that pilot's skill.
    - mint2 4y ago
      It’s not head on, the jet is already turned to pull away but the pilot either misjudged distance a bit or intentionally did it. Because they’re pulling away the collision is at a low relative velocity
    - chiph 4y ago
      It's not head-on. The MQ-9 is a pusher-prop design (the prop is in the rear), so both aircraft were flying in the same direction. If there had been a direct collision, the impact velocity would have been the difference between them, not addition.
      - guenthert 4y ago
        Ah, right, thanks.
  - stonogo 4y ago
    The idea of fuel bending a propeller blade would to me imply that the drone cannot survivie e.g. rain. This doesn't seem intuitive. However, jets making closer and closer passes while trying to foul the sensors with fuel dumps, culminating in one pass that is so close contact is made, seems more likely. You say "bends a couple of propeller blades and not the rest of the drone" but there's no telling whether contact was made with the drone airframe. We don't get a look at the Russian airframe either (to look for impact marks). The MQ-9 vertical stabilizers are "taller" than the propeller blades. I wonder if the Russian craft struck those, and the propeller was damaged by jet exhaust as the Su-27 pulled away.
    - throwaheyy 4y ago
      It’s entirely possible the propeller would be not damaged by rain but would still be damaged by a much larger “glob” of fuel.
  - chiph 4y ago
    Fuel is less dense than water (.8025 g/ml vs. 1.0) and the MQ-9 is designed to fly in all weather conditions. So it's highly unlikely the fuel bent the tip of the prop. Given that just one blade is bent, the contact had to be very fleeting (there wasn't time for the next blade to come around and also strike the Su-27). It's bad luck on the Russian pilot's part to cause something undeniable like this - but this isn't stopping Moscow from making obviously untrue claims. Cold-war story time. In college I had a roommate who was former Navy, and he told me of the time that they pranked the Soviets. Their group of ships had been shadowed by a Soviet "fishing vessel"[0] and they had gotten tired of them stooging around. At the time it was normal for ships to dump their trash overboard [1] in weighted bags. So they prepared a bag by filling it with the 80's best "adult education material" - only with all the good parts cut out and various insults scribbled on the pages. And topped it off with the messiest of slops from the galley. They intentionally did not add the steel weight, and tossed it off the stern. A gleeful crowd gathered to watch as the Soviets swooped in to collect their floating "intelligence haul". Moral of the story - pranking is one thing. Intentionally or accidentally causing a collision? Not cool. [0] Probably one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primor%27ye-class_surveillance_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primor%27ye-class_surveillance... [1] They now compress and store most waste until they return to port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpFF6c3C730 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpFF6c3C730
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      My father tells almost the same story of dumping their porno mags in the garbage for the trailing Russkies to retrieve. Mediterranean float, late 80s, USS Inchon I believe. He also spent time in Iceland watching for Spetsnaz.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      Fuel is less dense than water (.8025 g/ml vs. 1.0) and the MQ-9 is designed to fly in all weather conditions. So it's highly unlikely the fuel bent the tip of the prop. Rain does't hurt. Getting nailed in the head with a water balloon hurts. The density of rain and the density of a fuel dump are not equivalent.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
  - wrp 4y ago
    There are some attempts to do the math on whether just the fuel could have done it in the comments to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzLV-R_-kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzLV-R_-kk). Example: The thrust from a propeller blade is typically proportional to the density of the medium it is operating in (plus other factors of course). The density of air at altitude will be somewhat less than 1 kg/m^3. Density of pure liquid kerosene is around 800 kg/m^3, but in this case the kerosene is dispersed as droplets in the air. If we take a hypothetical guess that the air/fuel mixture is around 25% fuel, 75% air, the net density of the mixture will be around 200 kg/m^3. On encountering the fuel mixture of this density, the propeller blade would experience a sudden increase in load by a factor of about 200. A sudden overload of this magnitude would be enough to bend most things. Of course we don't know the actual air/fuel ratio. It could be less or could be more. The velocity of the dumped fuel relative to the drone's airspeed could also be significant. Too many unknowns to be anything like accurate, but appears not impossible for a fuel cloud to bend a propeller blade.
  - mzs 4y ago
    It's not just bent, one blade is even broken in half and what remains is bent the way it would be if it had hit the jet.
- noitdont 4y ago
  It doesnt. Relative velocity of blade tip much faster than jet wing tip.. Wing tip cant traverse bladed plane within 1/4 revolution of prop. Impossible angle to clear elevators and engine cowling and catch a single blade tip. Video is fabricated.
- LispSporks22 4y ago
  It’s an artifact of the camera https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21446/what-happened-to-the-blades-in-this-picture https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21446/what-happ...
  - dole 4y ago
    It’s not rolling shutter artifacts, you can see the one blade is bent in the same direction as it spins, unlike rolling shutter which makes most of the blades appears to bend towards the same direction regardless of which angle the propeller’s at. (Probably not the clearest explanation, but still doesn’t look like rolling shutter.)
noodlesUK 4y ago
I think as regards point 2., we can definitely tell that the quality has been degraded. I don't believe for a moment that the best video feed to come off of a multimillion dollar surveillance drone is rivalled by an iPhone 3GS. I expect that this is a degraded or auxiliary video feed. The cutout seemed rather analog to me which is a bit interesting. I don't think it's public knowledge how reapers get their video to the ground station (It supports satellite uplink, but I don't know if that's the only mode of operation). I do generally agree that the video looks consistent with the idea that the drone was either damaged by the fuel or actually hit.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  I thought that US military purposefully severely degrades videos before releasing them, probably to hide capabilities. This is in fact surprisingly high quality.
  - wil421 4y ago
    If you remember Trump tweeted a photo of Iran and twitter sleuths were all over it and calculated its capabilities. Navy pilots who witnessed the UFOs said they saw much better quality video at the time of the incident.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  The feed likely wasn’t from the primary sensor, UAVs have engineering and TOAL cameras that are far lower quality than their primary sensor electro optic package. Also I believe the drone itself was configured for a SIGINT/SAR mission so it would have an SAR pod and a bunch of antennas instead of an electro optic sensor payload.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mzs 4y ago
This is a very good thread geolocating this video but the answer as to why it shows contact is here: https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1636749222195101696 https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1636749222195101696
dogma1138 4y ago
These are engineering or TOAL cameras also sometimes called flight cameras. They are for visual inspection of key flight systems e.g. flight surfaces, rotors and landing gear. As well as for assisting in non visual range take off approach and landing operations. The primary sensors are which take the nice photos aren’t designed for that, their optics and sensors itself won’t be able to focus on objects so close and the gimbal and pod location aren’t suited for inspecting the aircraft. The cutout in the stream is simply because the drone streams via satellite which is extremely sensitive to sharp disruptions in its location in 3D space so a drop in altitude or a rapid attitude change will cut the link. (This is also why the SpaceX stream often cuts out or at least used too). These cameras have far lower quality than the massive electro optical sensors in the primary sensor package and they also are allocated far less bandwidth than the primary mission package whether it’s ElOp, SIGINT or SAR.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

How does the propeller blade get bent?

advisedwang 4y ago
I'm not an aviation expert, but it's not implausible to me that the propeller is fragile enough to get bent by a stream of jet fuel traveling at fighter-jet speeds. On the contrary, a mid-air collision that just bends a couple of propeller blades and not the rest of the drone seems like either incredible flying or incredible luck.
- t0mas88 4y ago
  Propellers are quite fragile things. If you hit a traffic cone with one on a small trainer aircraft, it's unairworthy immediately and requires an inspection of the propeller and engine.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  It's not a "fighter jet speed" collision, since the drone is travelling at drone speed. It's the difference, which seems fairly small. The US military said there was a collision, and with this video there seems no reason to doubt them. https://www.eucom.mil/pressrelease/42314/russian-aircraft-collides-into-us-unmanned-system-in-international-waters https://www.eucom.mil/pressrelease/42314/russian-aircraft-co...
- guenthert 4y ago
  Well, to this non-aviator, the flying as shown is immensely impressive. I mean, a jet approaching a drone heads-on and turning a few yards away? Russian military might not be all that popular on the english speaking internet at this time, but credit were credit is due -- mad respect for that pilot's skill.
  - mint2 4y ago
    It’s not head on, the jet is already turned to pull away but the pilot either misjudged distance a bit or intentionally did it. Because they’re pulling away the collision is at a low relative velocity
  - chiph 4y ago
    It's not head-on. The MQ-9 is a pusher-prop design (the prop is in the rear), so both aircraft were flying in the same direction. If there had been a direct collision, the impact velocity would have been the difference between them, not addition.
    - guenthert 4y ago
      Ah, right, thanks.
- stonogo 4y ago
  The idea of fuel bending a propeller blade would to me imply that the drone cannot survivie e.g. rain. This doesn't seem intuitive. However, jets making closer and closer passes while trying to foul the sensors with fuel dumps, culminating in one pass that is so close contact is made, seems more likely. You say "bends a couple of propeller blades and not the rest of the drone" but there's no telling whether contact was made with the drone airframe. We don't get a look at the Russian airframe either (to look for impact marks). The MQ-9 vertical stabilizers are "taller" than the propeller blades. I wonder if the Russian craft struck those, and the propeller was damaged by jet exhaust as the Su-27 pulled away.
  - throwaheyy 4y ago
    It’s entirely possible the propeller would be not damaged by rain but would still be damaged by a much larger “glob” of fuel.
- chiph 4y ago
  Fuel is less dense than water (.8025 g/ml vs. 1.0) and the MQ-9 is designed to fly in all weather conditions. So it's highly unlikely the fuel bent the tip of the prop. Given that just one blade is bent, the contact had to be very fleeting (there wasn't time for the next blade to come around and also strike the Su-27). It's bad luck on the Russian pilot's part to cause something undeniable like this - but this isn't stopping Moscow from making obviously untrue claims. Cold-war story time. In college I had a roommate who was former Navy, and he told me of the time that they pranked the Soviets. Their group of ships had been shadowed by a Soviet "fishing vessel"[0] and they had gotten tired of them stooging around. At the time it was normal for ships to dump their trash overboard [1] in weighted bags. So they prepared a bag by filling it with the 80's best "adult education material" - only with all the good parts cut out and various insults scribbled on the pages. And topped it off with the messiest of slops from the galley. They intentionally did not add the steel weight, and tossed it off the stern. A gleeful crowd gathered to watch as the Soviets swooped in to collect their floating "intelligence haul". Moral of the story - pranking is one thing. Intentionally or accidentally causing a collision? Not cool. [0] Probably one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primor%27ye-class_surveillance_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primor%27ye-class_surveillance... [1] They now compress and store most waste until they return to port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpFF6c3C730 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpFF6c3C730
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    My father tells almost the same story of dumping their porno mags in the garbage for the trailing Russkies to retrieve. Mediterranean float, late 80s, USS Inchon I believe. He also spent time in Iceland watching for Spetsnaz.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Fuel is less dense than water (.8025 g/ml vs. 1.0) and the MQ-9 is designed to fly in all weather conditions. So it's highly unlikely the fuel bent the tip of the prop. Rain does't hurt. Getting nailed in the head with a water balloon hurts. The density of rain and the density of a fuel dump are not equivalent.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
- wrp 4y ago
  There are some attempts to do the math on whether just the fuel could have done it in the comments to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzLV-R_-kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzLV-R_-kk). Example: The thrust from a propeller blade is typically proportional to the density of the medium it is operating in (plus other factors of course). The density of air at altitude will be somewhat less than 1 kg/m^3. Density of pure liquid kerosene is around 800 kg/m^3, but in this case the kerosene is dispersed as droplets in the air. If we take a hypothetical guess that the air/fuel mixture is around 25% fuel, 75% air, the net density of the mixture will be around 200 kg/m^3. On encountering the fuel mixture of this density, the propeller blade would experience a sudden increase in load by a factor of about 200. A sudden overload of this magnitude would be enough to bend most things. Of course we don't know the actual air/fuel ratio. It could be less or could be more. The velocity of the dumped fuel relative to the drone's airspeed could also be significant. Too many unknowns to be anything like accurate, but appears not impossible for a fuel cloud to bend a propeller blade.
- mzs 4y ago
  It's not just bent, one blade is even broken in half and what remains is bent the way it would be if it had hit the jet.
noitdont 4y ago
It doesnt. Relative velocity of blade tip much faster than jet wing tip.. Wing tip cant traverse bladed plane within 1/4 revolution of prop. Impossible angle to clear elevators and engine cowling and catch a single blade tip. Video is fabricated.
LispSporks22 4y ago
It’s an artifact of the camera https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21446/what-happened-to-the-blades-in-this-picture https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21446/what-happ...
- dole 4y ago
  It’s not rolling shutter artifacts, you can see the one blade is bent in the same direction as it spins, unlike rolling shutter which makes most of the blades appears to bend towards the same direction regardless of which angle the propeller’s at. (Probably not the clearest explanation, but still doesn’t look like rolling shutter.)

noodlesUK 4y ago

I think as regards point 2., we can definitely tell that the quality has been degraded. I don't believe for a moment that the best video feed to come off of a multimillion dollar surveillance drone is rivalled by an iPhone 3GS. I expect that this is a degraded or auxiliary video feed. The cutout seemed rather analog to me which is a bit interesting. I don't think it's public knowledge how reapers get their video to the ground station (It supports satellite uplink, but I don't know if that's the only mode of operation). I do generally agree that the video looks consistent with the idea that the drone was either damaged by the fuel or actually hit.

gpderetta 4y ago
I thought that US military purposefully severely degrades videos before releasing them, probably to hide capabilities. This is in fact surprisingly high quality.
- wil421 4y ago
  If you remember Trump tweeted a photo of Iran and twitter sleuths were all over it and calculated its capabilities. Navy pilots who witnessed the UFOs said they saw much better quality video at the time of the incident.
dogma1138 4y ago
The feed likely wasn’t from the primary sensor, UAVs have engineering and TOAL cameras that are far lower quality than their primary sensor electro optic package. Also I believe the drone itself was configured for a SIGINT/SAR mission so it would have an SAR pod and a bunch of antennas instead of an electro optic sensor payload.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mzs 4y ago

This is a very good thread geolocating this video but the answer as to why it shows contact is here: https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1636749222195101696 https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1636749222195101696

dogma1138 4y ago

These are engineering or TOAL cameras also sometimes called flight cameras. They are for visual inspection of key flight systems e.g. flight surfaces, rotors and landing gear. As well as for assisting in non visual range take off approach and landing operations. The primary sensors are which take the nice photos aren’t designed for that, their optics and sensors itself won’t be able to focus on objects so close and the gimbal and pod location aren’t suited for inspecting the aircraft. The cutout in the stream is simply because the drone streams via satellite which is extremely sensitive to sharp disruptions in its location in 3D space so a drop in altitude or a rapid attitude change will cut the link. (This is also why the SpaceX stream often cuts out or at least used too). These cameras have far lower quality than the massive electro optical sensors in the primary sensor package and they also are allocated far less bandwidth than the primary mission package whether it’s ElOp, SIGINT or SAR.