A Turkish jet fighter. Yahoo/AFP.
Turkey has shot down an unidentified drone that crossed the border with Syria. AFP. The US military claims that there are strong indications that the drone was Russian and matched the kind of drones used by the separatists in Ukraine. The Syrian government does not own or operate these types of drones, according to the US government. Turkey apparently warned the drone three times as it crossed the border and then destroyed it. Turkish media showed pictures of the drone on local TV and it appears to be a simple reconnaissance drone. For their part Russia denied that the drone belonged to them saying that all planes and drones had returned safely from their missions. Turkey has been furious at the Russian intervention and has accused Russia of violated it's airspace twice before. Russia has warned Turkey that aggressive behavior at the border could lead to accidents.
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My Comment:
Strange story out of Turkey. When it was first announced, the media was claiming that Turkey had shot down a manned aircraft, not a drone. Fortunately that was not the case and there was no loss of life. Indeed, short of a freak collision or the debris landing on someone, there were no chances of anyone getting hurt here. We should all be thankful for that. Had this been a manned aircraft things could have gotten very bad, very quickly.
The Russians are claiming that they have not lost any drones and that they had nothing to do with this. I think that is very hard to believe. There aren't any other operators of this drone type in the area. Experts have said that the drone pictured in that video above is Russian in design, and though I am no expert myself, I have no reason to disbelieve it. That means one of two things. Either it is a Russian drone, or the Russians gave it to whoever was using it. It is possible that the Russians gave a drone or two to the Syrians, but that seems unlikely. It's plausible though, since if the rebels in Ukraine can operate these drones then the Syrian military certainly can as well. The only other possibility is that someone captured one of these drones and that just seems silly to me.
So what was this drone doing in Turkey? Good question. I think we have to consider the possibility that this was just a mistake. Drone technology isn't perfect and I think it is certainly possible that this drone was out of control. Either it lost contact with it's controller or had some kind of malfunction and it could not maneuver. That's just a theory though, and if the drone was maneuvering at all when it came into contact with the Turkish jets then that theory is easily proven wrong.
If it wasn't a mistake then why would Russia do this? Perhaps they are just testing Turkish defenses. If that is the case then they found out that the Turks are ready to fight. They shot down this drone pretty easily. It's also possible that they were looking for something. There may be ISIS or other terror groups operating in Turkey. Perhaps they were just looking for weapons depots, because Turkey is supplying the rebels and terrorists in Syria. No matter what, the fact that this was a recon drone instead of one capable of firing missiles means that whatever the mission was, it wasn't an attempted airstrike.
So what are the long term implications of this attack? Well it's not going to reduce tensions, that's for sure. The Russians have to be very careful to not push the Turks to far. The Turks seem kind of unhinged and I think they may have overacted a bit. The smart thing to do in these kinds of situations is to be cautious and not shoot anything unless you have to. Given the nature of combat it is always possible that a Russian fighter could go off course and if they keep up hyping up tensions like this it is possible that they could lose a plane and trigger a larger international incident. The Russians need to stop provoking the Turks and the Turks need to stop overreacting.
If a Russian or Turkish airplane, not a drone, gets shot down, then things get very bad very fast. If it is an accident then both sides need to stay calm and not overreact. Then they need to figure out what happened ASAP and then apologize no matter who is at fault. If a purposeful attack happens, well, then nothing good comes from it. Turkey is a member of NATO and they could invoke their alliance to draw us into a war against Russia, and that is a massive disaster waiting to happen. Still, even if a plane is shot down, I doubt that anything that drastic will happen. After all nothing happened after Malaysia Air flight 17 got shot down and if you look back at history a lot of planes were shot down during the Cold War and war never broke out. And those incidents often caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians. I'm not too worried about the situation spiraling out of control, but, at the very least, the potential is there for something bad happening. Hopefully both sides get a grip sooner rather then later.
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