A Possible fault in Sukhoi navigation system

SU-27 Crashed in Lithuania today, the reason was a most likely a failure in navigation system. Plane was destroyed and pilot ejected and was detained by local police.
Could the failure pose a serious threat to all SU-27s and even newer SU Fighters?

Well only if there were similar instances reported in a majority of the units..
Usually this tends to be a case of poor maintenance..
If it is a technical fault that is..
Failure in navigation system is by NO MEANS reason enough to eject unless you are severely low on fuel.. I suspect an ulterior motive behind ejecting.. also since the pilot has been detained, I presume the Su-27 was in non-allied territory..
There's much than meets the eye here..
Russian Su-27 right?
CAn we have a link and if not that some more details?

The plane ran out of fuel and crashed in to a sovreign country Lithuania, while enroute from st.petersburg to Kaliningrad. Pilot ejected after fuel ran out as you said (how the hell do you lose all your fuel in the land as small as lithuania?)

There are no English sources on this yet, only few Finnish wep pages. I got the original stroy from a FAF military airtraffic controller..

And the damn link didn't work.

[edit on 15-9-2005 by intrepid]

yeah.. "failed navigation" sounds extermely fake to me..

www.kommersant.com...

That makes 2 Russian aircraft crashes recently, this one was with the Russian Navy, an Su-33.

[edit on 15-9-2005 by Hockeyguy567]

Here is more on that Lithuanian Su-27 crash:

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - A Russian Su-27 fighter bomber crashed in Lithuania Thursday after violating the NATO member's airspace, prompting an investigation, Lithuanian officials said.

The pilot ejected safely before the plane crashed about 120 miles northwest of the capital while flying from St. Petersburg to Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the Defense Ministry said.

Defense Minister Gediminas Kirkilas said the prosecutor general's office had begun an investigation, but added he believed the airspace violation was not intentional.

More here:

Russian officials gave conflicting reports of why the jet had entered Lithuanian airspace.

A Russian Defense Ministry statement said the incident happened as a detachment of air force planes flew to the enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. Kaliningrad is home to a major Russian military base.

.......

In May, Finland complained that Russian military aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace for several months. The violations allegedly took place over the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea as the fighter jets flew to and from Kaliningrad.

Similar alleged violations by Russian planes have been reported in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In November, the Estonian government filed an official complaint with Moscow, but said none was serious enough to merit intervention by the four NATO fighters that patrol the Baltics' airspace.

Russian Fighter's Crash Prompts Probe
Report: Russian Fighter Down in Lithuania

After reading this article and doing some other digging/research, I do not think that there is necessarily a navigation system error or problem here. IMHO, it appears to be 'a' typical Russian provocation towards some of its former republics/provinces.




seekerof

And his radio, TACAN, ADF aerials and ring laser inertial nav system all failed as well.

Pilot error.

IMHO, it appears to be 'a' typical Russian provocation towards some of its former republics/provinces.

That's one hell of an expensive provocation.
I don't find the story particularly difficult to believe: a/c gets lost, can't get back to it's base, runs out of fuel, crashes.

how do you get lost with all that fancy radar that is suppsedly is better than american radar?

They [the Russian aircraft and/or group] didn't get lost [articles mention the "corridor"], thats the provocation [whether to intimidate, etc] part I was indicating.
Russia, as indicated by the articles I linked, has been repeatedly violating, intentionally--hence the use of the word provocation--the airspace of several of its former Russian republics/provinces.

There was no getting lost.
Read the articles linked and I am sure that some will come to the same conclusions.





seekerof

[edit on 15-9-2005 by Seekerof]

Is Lithuania a member of NATO?
It seems obvious that the plane was either spying or testing the Lithuanians response.
Another screw up of Russia while pretending to be a super power....

THe Lithuanians are not worth testing for any response..
Maybe (if it is a NATO member) the sortie was a recon mission (behind enemy lines types) to check for fwd NATO listening posts..

Lithuania is a Nato member and it's airspace is protected atm by either Norwegian or Danish Fighters (F-16) so it's allways worth testing.


As an update the pilot of the SU-27 will remain in custody of Lithuanian police untill the crash has been investigated and the reason of crash is clear...

Ah.. Norwegien F-16s..seen a couple at gardermoen, Oslo

The norwegian F-16s gave us a few early wakeups at Battle Griffin '05, flying real low over our Recon Plt camp... probably didn't know we were there

As were said before there are several "navigation systems" in a fighter, that duplicate functions of others to increase reliability of the fighter in combat, so malfunction in all navigation systems is almost impossible, moreover SU-27 flies in the group of 6 other fighters and A-50(AWACS), even without AWACS SU-fighters uses datalink between each other. So, it's not navigational system, that's for sure.

The question is what our fighter have done in Lithuanian airspace, well I guess we have a chance to see.. Althought there are many factors, that can affect on reports, for example: there are alot of tensions between countries because of the oppression of russians in the Lithuania(yes, I know that before we opress them ).

Anyway, it seems that NATO airspace is ill defended, at least in some areas.

BTW: Don't start mongering about poor maintaince, because F-16, F-18 crashes on monthly basis just joking, # happens.