Friendly Fire patriot/f-15

I've been wondering about the possibility that its an Israeli F-15 being shot down by an Arab-owned, Russian-made SAM - someone else in this thread suggested it might be a SA-6 or SA-10, so the Egyptians/Syrians would have these?

Well, the Syrians had a long relationship with Soviets during the cold war, soviet advisers oversaw Syrian SAM sites and command centers. Syrian military personnel were also trained in the Soviet Union. The Soviets did supply the Syrians with not only SA-6’s and SA-9’s but with also capable advisors and trained personnel to man those system

Assad's rise to power led to a strengthening of political and military ties with the Soviet Union. Contributing to these closer relations was Egypt's sudden ouster of Soviet military advisers in July 1972, which caused an increased Soviet interest in Syria. The months preceding the October 1973 War saw a significant increase in Soviet arms flow to Syria. During the war, Soviet military advisers supervised the operations at SAM sites and were present at Syrian command posts.

The most significant Soviet involvement between October 10- 23, 1973, however, was its airlift of almost 4,000 tons of military equipment and its sealift of considerably more, to rearm the Syrian and Egyptian armies. Within a year after the ceasefire , the Soviets had more than replaced Syria's massive equipment loss.

In addition to arms, Syria received military advisers and technicians from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and sent military personnel to those countries for training. The number of such advisers and technicians in Syria was estimated at 3,500 in the aftermath of the 1973 War, 2,500 in 1976, 2,000 to 3,000 in 1978, 5,300 in 1984, and 2,300 in 1986. With regard to training, the United States Central Intelligence Agency has estimated that 6,600 Syrian military personnel trained in the Soviet Union between 1955 and 1985 and a further 1,515 trained in other East European countries.

In 1983 and 1984, the Soviet Union increased involvement by installing SAM-5, SAM-6, SAM-9, and SS-21 missile systems in Syria. These SAM systems, which had adequate range to cover a major part of the region, were at first manned and protected by Soviet advisers and troops and have only gradually been turned over to Syrian control. The large Soviet re-supply of SAM systems was interpreted by the United States, Israel, and Jordan as a Soviet response to the massive destruction of Soviet-built SAMs in the Lebanese War, among other reasons. Syria acquired additional T-72 tanks following Assad's October 1984 visit to Moscow.

Link

Also, Syrian SAM systems and aircraft have tangled with the IAF before, if this picture is indeed real then the best bet for when it could have happened is in 1982 when Israel launched is Peace for Galilee campaign. Prior to 1981 Israel had no twin seat F-15’s, however in 1981 they received 18 F-15C’s and 8 F-15D’s. There are no reports of any IAF F-15’s being shot down by either Syrian A2A missile’s or SAMs. So while the possibility that an IAF F-15 was shot down is there, I would have to see at least some proof to consider that it indeed happened.

On June 6th, 1982, Israel began operation "Peace For Gaillee" and its ground forces pushed into Lebanon in pursuit of Palestinian terrorists. Contact was expected to be made with the Syrians, the main power broker in Lebanon, but during the first days of the fighting the Syrians mainly kept their forces at bay, only a few dogfights taking place. Only as IDF forces continued their push northward into Lebanon, approaching areas under Syrian control, did contact become inevitable and the IAF got to exercise its full ability. On June 9th a single IAF pilot managed to shoot down four Syrian MiGs and land his aircraft after it was hit by an air-to-air missile. By the end of the first week of hostilities, over 85 Syrian aircraft had been shot down, 40 of them by IAF F-15 Eagles. Most kills were made with either the AIM-9 Sidewinder or the Israeli Python 3 short range missiles, a few (including the various MiG-25s) were shot down with the AIM-7 Sparrow, while a number of aircraft were cannon kills.

On October 1st 1985 eight Israeli F-15s made their way across the Mediterranean to strike at the PLO headquarters in Tunis in retaliation of the murder of three Israeli citizens in Larnaka, Cyprus. In the IAF's longest range attack ever, the F-15s, refuelled in flight by Boeing 707s, flew 2040km to their targets, and destroyed the buildings located on the Tunisian beachfront.

Following this raid, Syrian MiGs began challenging IAF reconnaissance missions in Lebanon, and on November 30th 1985, IAF F-15s shot down two MiG-23s, in the last air engagement between Israel and Syria to this day.

Link

During the Israel's Operation Peace for Galilee in 1982 Israeli aircraft struck Syrian surface-to-air missiles, resulting in the destruction of nineteen sites and the damaging of four. Israeli aerial mastery was confirmed in the skies over the Biqa Valley. At the conclusion of the first week of the war, after the participation of approximately 100 combat planes on each side, a total of 86 Syrian MiG-21, MiG-23, and Sukhoi-22 aircraft had been shot down with no Israeli losses.

When Syrian fighter aircraft scrambled to prevent Israeli aircraft flying over eastern Lebanon in November 1985, two Syrian MiG-23s were shot down in Syrian airspace. Syria responded by deploying mobile SA-6 and SA-8 SAMs into eastern Lebanon and by setting up SA-2 sites along its border with Lebanon. Thereafter, the potential for rapid escalation in Syrian-Israeli hostilities became a source of concern on both sides. Following the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, Syrian influence and control expanded to eastern Lebanon and the Biqa Valley, where Syria maintained about two divisions; about six divisions were redeployed in the Damascus-Golan Heights region.
Link

Now, the Egyptians also had equipment supplied to it by the soviets and the US. The Egyptians had a program which was know as the Air Defense Force (ADF). This force primarily consisted of multiple SAM sites and radar instillations to defend against the devastation Egypt suffered in 1967 at the hands of the IAF.

In 1989 the ADF had an estimated 80,000 ground and air personnel, including 50,000 conscripts. Its main constituents were 100 antiaircraft-gun battalions, 65 battalions of SA-2 SAMs, 60 battalions of SA-3 SAMs, 12 batteries of improved Hawk SAMs (I-Hawk), and 1 battery of Crotale missiles. Each battalion had between 200 and 500 men, and from four to eight battalions composed a brigade. Gun and missile sites were located along the Suez Canal, around Cairo, and near some other cities to protect military installations and strategic civilian targets. The ADF deployed some of its more mobile weapons in the Western Desert as a defense against possible Libyan incursions.

A large share of the ADF's antiaircraft artillery, SAMs, and radar equipment was imported from the Soviet Union. As of 1989, the most modern weapons in the air defense system were the 108 mediumaltitude I-Hawk SAMs acquired from the United States beginning in 1982. These weapons were supplemented by 400 older Soviet-made SA-2 SAMs with a slant range of forty to fifty kilometers and about 240 SA-3s, which provided shorter-range defense against low-flying targets. A British firm helped the ADF modernize the SA-2s. In addition, Egypt was producing its own SAM, the Tayir as Sabah (Morning Flight), based on the design of the SA-2. The ADF had mounted sixty Soviet SA-6 SAMs on tracked vehicles as tactical launchers. Sixteen tracked vehicles provided mobile launching platforms for its fifty French-manufactured Crotale SAM launchers.

Link

Here’s a link when you can check out the Russian and US SAM’s mentioned in the above posts.

Russian SAM’s
I-Hawk

[edit on 20-2-2006 by WestPoint23]

Err, so your saying that it is possible, in 1982?

And I will revise my earlier post. That pilot doesn't have a chance in hell of escaping alive. He has obviously made a very bad mistake.

Err, so your saying that it is possible, in 1982?

Yes, if its an Israeli F-15 then the earliest it could have happened is 1982 because the IAF didn't have twin seat Eagles before 82.

THE IMAGE IS A FAKE

I faked that image using PhotoShop CS. It took me around 5 minutes, not including the time I used to find the pictures, and I then went to post.
I realized the missile was to well defined, so I spent another 10 minutes blurring and generally making the background behind the missile consistent.

Direct links to the original images are as such:

Background/Aircraft

Missile Smoke

Missile

As you can see, so far this thread has had 481 views, 11 replying members, of around 7 or 8 believed the image to be real.

I had to get rid of the rear part of the Soviet bomber, turn off the red navigation light, and fake an ejection. That took less than 2 minutes. I then cropped out the smoke trail, edited it so it blended nicely with the background, then edited and pasted the missile in. Lighting effects didn't really matter here, but I did have to lighten the missile slightly to make sure it didn't contrast too much agaisnt the aircraft's colour. I then flipped the image around, did the blurring thing, and done.
I posted, then realized I had made a mistake about 10 minutes before the edit period ran out. I had left the canard fins on. Patriot missiles do not have canards. Doh!!!
Also, I was totally wrong positioning the missile that close to the aircraft, I'll admit, and yes, the trajectory is also wrong. I believe that those are the main factors the contributed to everyone believeing that the image was either a test shot or totally faked. If I had actually bothered to think about the positioning, I would have had different pictures.

Now in hindsight, of course it looks fake. The missile is blurred in all directions, not just the one, and it also contrasts to much with the airplane, even though I fixed that somewhet.

This just goes to show how easy it is to pass off photos as real. Along with a little sweet-talk and bad typing I made the image at least plausible.

I hope this serves as an eye-opener to many of you, and a laugh to the rest.



[edit on 23/2/2006 by Sovtek]

[edit on 23/2/2006 by Sovtek]

Oh, and last night I was just clicking around the net when I found this image. It appears to be a U.S. Aircraft carrier firing onto one of its own aircraft!




Unfortunately, I have forgotten the website I got it off and my History was deleted.







[edit on 23/2/2006 by Sovtek]

Originally posted by Sovtek
As you can see, so far this thread has had 481 views, 23 replies, and of that, around 7 or 8 members believed the image to be real.

LOL, the image was never plausible to anyone who knew anything about the subject - as I have stated in previous posts.

Just goes to show the complete gulliblity of some people or cmplete lack of knowlege. Anyway, glad you came out and said it was a fake otherwise many posters in this thread would keep on believing it was real, no matter what argument I put up.

Deny Ignorance people.

Rogue1,

>>
WTF are you talking about. I am fairly well versed in military affairs, however I have a hard time understanding what you're talking about most of the time. You talk in a kind of pigeon english making what you're trying to say very hard to follow.
>>

Ask Westpoint, the post was for he and others able to discern my 'pigeon' well enough to be worth my time or at least to have the wit to point out the elements of my prose they found questionable or difficult to comprehend.

www.thefreedictionary.com...

Since I am neither Chinese, Portugese nor Hindi, you might consider your own chosen word use.

>>
At least in this post you aren't sprouting acronyms left right and centre.

PS. You'd garner much more respect if you thought out your posts more - make them more coherent.
>>

Complex Subjects. Short Attention Spans. Google.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466
Rogue1,
Ask Westpoint, the post was for he and others able to discern my 'pigeon' well enough to be worth my time or at least to have the wit to point out the elements of my prose they found questionable or difficult to comprehend.

lol, If they say so Sometimes I don't even think you know what you're talking about.

www.thefreedictionary.com...

Since I am neither Chinese, Portugese nor Hindi, you might consider your own chosen word use.

Pigeon ENglish is used as a slang term used here to describe garbled unintelligable english. Quite an apt description

Complex Subjects. Short Attention Spans. Google.

Oh you think so. I have plenty of time to read something worthwhile, I don't like wading through BS though.

[edit on 23-2-2006 by rogue1]

ATS Terms and Conditions of Use.

1). Posting: You will not post any material that is knowingly false, misleading, or inaccurate.

Ahh yes. I was wondering where the mods were.

What can I say? I mean, that rule is only there to stop false information from circling the internet, something that would affect ATS greatly. This is just a very small example of how easy it is to pass off false as genuine.

Ah, so I was right all along, but still I had to look up all that information. :shk: