In Russia missile reconnaissance you.

POV stuff is always wild to watch.

Kind of a waste though, I think I would have used guns as opposed to a missile.

Of course the Russians are pretty good about that stuff, so I'm sure they were using one close to the end of it's shelf life or something.

The politics I'm unfamiliar with hoever, so I will steer clear of THAT shooting gallery.

That was pretty cool. And hopefully the closest I'll ever get to being shot down!

@skittlzncombos: That is, by a missile. I get shot down regularly. But that's another story.

@strider_mt2k: Nah... it gets your point across a little better with the exhaust plume and the arc of the missle up towards the UAV.

Of course, at night, with tracer rounds, that would have had a good effect too.

But OTOH. again at night, a nice 'rocket's red glare' would be sweet.

So, I guess put me down as undecided. Unless it was a laser. That would have been cool.

Georgian propaganda! How do we know it was a Russian MiG, eh Comrade?

I don't know about this. The jet takes a strange approach vector to this UAV. If you are unsure of it's weapons capability, you should approach from behind and above. This also seems to be pulling a high speed manuver, but doesn't seem to get much bigger as it approaches. UAV's, from what I know, don't move that quickly. Also, air to air missle have a good range, so after they did a fly by, you would think they would fire from a stand off distance. Lastly, even after the missle hits, there is still HUD info shown over the static. I would think that you should be seeing a signal lost message as once it goes boom, All info would cease to be incoming so even if the info was from the receiving end, it should show all zeros or again, no info. Perchance someone has a copy of FinalCut?

I enjoyed watching that. If only the UAV were packin' some of it's own missiles. This would have been a pretty sweet mid-air battle.

@Git Em SteveDave: They might have edited out the very end, but you're right.
One would expect to see some kind of an alert of some kind on loss of signal.

I wondered about that approach too, but thought maybe the camera had panned to the rear.

The camera looking rearward would explain that angle on the attacking plane, but the thing would have to be going VERY slowly to not be overtaking the UAV (unless it's a quick UAV!)

(I couldn't help watching a couple more times)

@Git Em SteveDave: "you should approach from behind and above."

The MiG seemed to be shooting from behind to me. The camera is mounted under the UAV for 360 degrees of viewing, it's not nose mounted. Also, I've always heard "behind and below" is the kill spot.

[pure speculation and conjecture based on observations by an armchair aviation enthusiast]

Yep, the plane appears to be losing altitude when it launches the missle and then accelerates through the missile's trail immediately afterward.

Swung into position, slowed for the launch, launched, and then accelerated afterwards, presumably to fly out of the path of falling debris.

or I'm totally wrong, I don't care.
It's FUN!

Our UAV is online

@Maksimir: Did you listen to the video at all?

As far as I'm concerned....Georgia needs to equip their UAV's with air to air defense missiles. Once Russia has lost a few multi-million dollar jets versus Georgia's low end UAV's....they'll decide air to air combat isn't worth it anymore.

@Git Em SteveDave: I am guessing here but video and telemetry are being sent to home station via two different channels. Probably telemetry instruments were functional a little bit more than the video feed.

Political update:

Georgia wants to pursue NATO and EU membership.

Russia wants Georgia.

@Slap Bet: Your UAV is owned!

OK so his pizza was late

@LyriCa1z: Not really. A MIG vs an ex-soviet bloc UAV is kinda a no-brainer :P

@Jason: I want Miss Georgia

@Slap Bet: Nice.

@Git Em SteveDave: "you should approach from behind and above"
Yea, that's the way my wife prefers the approach...but, she makes me leave that 360 degree camera turned off.

(sorry, someone had to make the comment)

@baltwade: @strider_mt2k: I understand the 360, but if they attacked from behind and above, you would not get the shot as most UAV cameras are mounted on the underside. You also wouldn't have to worry about the debris. But when you fire a missile, you usually do it from a distance, as a missile blows up just before the target, and sprays it with shrapnel/force of the explosion. This seems to be very close range. If you were attacking a slow moving constant track target, you would think the pilot would have shot from a distance, especially if it was a drone w/ a camera to avoid detection/identification.

@DeLarge: Even if it was on two channels, when you lose one feed, you would lose both b/c they would be broadcasting from the same array. There is still data shown above the static(hard to see, but there), and it is changing.

The tinfoil hat crowd can shut up for once, this one looks completely legit, and it's something that we all know the russians are likely to do. Why? Who knows? He was ordered to, he thought it was in russian airspace, his borscht was cold and he was pissed off?

@SgtMac02: Ouch, dude. Just ouch.

@LoganSix:
I wanted to laugh. I really did. To your credit, you made a valiant effort.

Gotta agree with Git Em SteveDave. Besides, this would be an overkill situation and a missile would be the wrong weapon for the target type. 30mm gun would be used at the range it was at. The pilot, at that range, would have been easily been able to identify the nature of the target and choosen bullets over missiles.

I call BS.

I once did an inverted 4g dive with a MiG28. At a range of about 2 meters. I've got a Polaroid of it, great picture.

Val Kilmer: *cough*bullshit*cough*

Wouldn't that be a sitting duck?
And wouldn't a missile need a heat signature. Wait, cost analysis here is WAY costly to waste a missle on a UAV...

I agree...BS.

Occam's Razor. In the absence of contravening evidence, and the l-o-n-g track record of Russian mindset to overkill first, deny and obfuscate later ... I'd go with the evidence at hand. Beisdes, Georgia is trying to work its way into our sphere, and Russia claims Georgia is inciting a neighboring province to break with Russia. In that long train of evidence, let's not forget KAL 007 and Georgia Congressman Larry MacDonald, the Soviet's Union most vocal critic. Or, Litvinenko. Or, Politiskaya. Or, Iranian nukes, or ... or ... or ... an A/A missile from a Flogger is exactly what a Russian pilot would do.

@packetsniffer: Thanks. Best I could do before someone else did it. Sadly, I probably can't think of a better one.

Ok, if you freeze frame the video at the time where there is an "image" above the static, you will see that the vertical hold just goes out and you are still looking at the missle.

Most likely the "hud" imagery is constructed locally. So the place markers are still there, but it looks like the data under them went away. Though you'd think, unless it was completely autonomous, a uav pilot would have at least tried to dodge the missile. Instead they just slewed the camera to see it coming.

@Slap Bet:
LOL!!!!!

flew in from miami beach on a UAV, didn't get to bed last night,
all the way the MIG had a bead on me, man i had a dreadful fight

The video was too poor for me to make out any distinguishing markings on either vehicle. All I know I saw was a guy with a funny accent in a foreign uniform. It could very well have been two USA owned planes and the whole thing is propaganda against Russia.

Those East Bloc Migs really knock me out...they leave those UAVs behind.

Link to the vid is not valid anymore, but here's another link to it:

+ Watch video

I love how half of the people are talking like they know what's up. Seriously, how many fighter pilots and /or defense analysts are actually writing on this thread? Probably closer to zero.

You guys need to stop confusing combat flight simulators with real life. It's a GAME!

At least it wasn't a Korean civilian airliner with 269 passengers on board this time...I'd call that in improvement.

@scarbrtj: 2 meters?
Why, that's not much bigger than a Womp Rat!

Damn.. that is cool.

@carbonmotion: Tom Clancy had NO knowledge when he started writing, and did a good job in most peoples opinion. I have watched the History channel, as well as Top Gun, Firebirds, and Firefox. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

There are a lot of assumptions populating this thread. One I would like to dispel is that every person in the military (foreign/domestic) adheres completely to combat tactics in real world situations. To be honest, regardless of what "policy" states, the pilot could have just been overzealous and launched air-to air missiles in his first real engagement because hell, how often do you really get to engage real targets with a toy like a MiG29?

[en.wikipedia.org] According to wikipedia, the UAV that was shot down was an Israeli-built Hermes 450.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: Gawker really needs a military blog.

@Git Em SteveDave: "But when you fire a missile, you usually do it from a distance... This seems to be very close range."

How far do you think the Mig is? I'm guessing that it's about two kilometers away. It took about four seconds for the missile to hit and those things aren't exactly slow.

Wikipedia* shows that the Russians have a popular small close range missile called "Vympel K-13" or AA-2 that has a minimum range of 1km and a speed or Mach 2.5. It seems only reasonable to use this weapon at this range.

[en.wikipedia.org]

*Holy crap I just quoted Wikipedia as a source.

Also, I speculate the MiG pilot used an AA-11 or Vympel R-73 missile, similar to our AIM-9 Sidewider.

@baltwade: Hey! I posted at the same time you did!

You'd think that would teach the Geogian's to use manned/armed recon aircraft so they don't keep getting owned like that.

Further - a MIG head on with a short range A/A so the camera operator of the UAV gets a very up front and personal view of the proceedings (on tape) seems to me an obvious piece of confrontational 'smack in the kisser'. If the UAV had been shot down from behind with cannon fire, it's not the same statement politically as an in your face so you can see us doing it "Take that, you breakaway хулиган".

It would have been more cost effective for them to use throwing daggers. Snort.

Some of the speculation here is downright insulting.

@Blue387: Great minds thinks alike I guess...

@carbonmotion: But it's fun poking the tinfoil cap folks with a stick.

@baltwade: Well, the Mig has a take-off/stall speed of around 260-280 kph. The Hermes 450 has a max speed of 175 kph. That Jet would have overtaken that UAV very quickly, and you would have seen it get larger in the frame, IMHO. It almost appears to be the same size throughout. Also, the missile that hit it travels at mach 2.5 which means that it travels .84 kilometer per second. If it took four seconds, that makes it almost 3.36 kilometers away. If the Mig was traveling at 300kph it would take over 10 seconds for it to travel the same that the missile did in one. It intersects the missiles trail at about two seconds after firing. if we gave it the benefit of the doubt, it would be traveling at over 1000kph when it fired the missile. It would have zoomed past the UAV if it did that. Again, just my 2 cents.

PWND-SKI

@ShinySideUp: lol my favorite pick of the comments.

Fake.

I know very little about aviation, hardly anything about weaponry and nothing about Russian military. But what I do have a lot of experience in is watching videos with CG elements, and truthfully this has CG feel all over it. I'm not going to analyze it pixel by pixel, but the motion of the aircraft and missile just don't seem "realistic" by my observation.

I question why Reuters would have their logo on a clip like this - a quick search on their website revealed nothing on this. I would also think that the information on the HUD would not be in English - if it was US programmers I'm sure Georgia would have had some customization and translation done to the software.

@Fierock: also, the accent and narrative by the uniformed officer seems a little akward - again I'm no linguist but his accent seems to have elements of french, german and heavy russian.