296
US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
296 points (99.0% liked)
World News
38977 readers
2221 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How hard would it be to turn these into drones?
When the US retired the F4, a number of the planes were converted into target drones. Probably the bigger hurdle would be to get these planes airworthy again.
The goal was to remove Soviet era planes, and thus a customer to Russia, and open up space and provide a budget for Western arms.
The article calls the planes unusable, so I don't think Ukraine has enough spare parts to fix up 81 outdated planes just to blow them up. They'll probably strip out everything usable and use the more modern husks as decoys. That being said, I have a feeling Ukraine will scrape together enough parts to get some of the older models flying and cause some embarrassing security incidents and IFF shenanigans. Finally, there's the possibility that other former Soviet countries can pool the resources to refurbish at least a few aircraft, which would be good timing after the latest US aid package and donated F-16s entering service in the next year.
Agreed, you put these suckers out on the airfield and they’ll be great decoys. Probably cost less than the missiles that hit them.
They did that sort of thing in WWII all the time. Fake airplanes, inflatable tanks, all kinds of stuff. My grandfather worked for De Havilland in WWII as an aircraft inspector and the roof of the factory had fake bomb damage painted on it.
Considering they don’t fly. Pretty hard.
Harder than just making regular drones, I would think.
Probably. Even if they were airworthy, they're going to cost maybe a bit less than an equivalent purpose-built drone, not counting in R&D to figure out how to do it. There's a lot of extra systems in there for the pilot, and you can make an 80s-level radar way, way, cheaper and lighter with modern tech, so all of that is wasted.
Going by this article:
https://www.defensemirror.com/news/30871/Russia_Tests_MiG_31_Jet_with_Fly_By_Wire_Control_System
The MiG-31 was only recently tested in Russia to have a fly-by-wire system. That would mean these original jets had the controls directly actuating the hydrolics to run the control surfaces. So you'd either have to convert fly-by-wire, or rig up something for the computer to use servos to control it.