A Russian pilot tried to shoot down an RAF surveillance plane after believing he had permission to fire, the BBC has learned.
The pilot fired two missiles, the first of which missed rather than malfunctioned as claimed at the time.
Russia had claimed the incident last September was caused by a “technical malfunction”. The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) publicly accepted the Russian explanation.
But now three senior Western defence sources with knowledge of the incident have told the BBC that Russian communications intercepted by the RAF RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft give a very different account from the official version.
The RAF plane - with a crew of up to 30 - was flying a surveillance mission over the Black Sea in international airspace on 29 September last year when it encountered two Russian SU-27 fighter jets.
Must have been a bit of a code brown moment for the crew of the Rivet Joint listening in to someone trying to kill them. Makes me wonder whether the failure to lock was caused by some EWAR the Rivet Joint was packing or whether Russian missile guidance is just that shit though.
Russian missile guidance is probably good, but it was last serviced in 1990 and since then it “lost” half of its components. Just like gunpowder in Russian active tank armour turned out to be just plain sand - someone needed a new villa. It’s not that their armour is bad, it’s just never got deployed to the battlefield together with tanks.