Turkey 'downs Russian warplane on Syria border'

[Spider]

A full scale conventional war in the 21st century would be over relatively quickly.

If it went nuclear....well. No point worrying about that, is there?

[John Galt]

the us is very good at conventional warfare and would be able to engage russia on two fronts at once easily, without need to escalate to nuclear. and i agree, it would not be a protracted war. the us military relies on superior firepower doctrine, and will be able to send drones unmatched by any other and take minimal attrition while it piles up for russia. problems include: russia could have the capability to destroy satellites (there are indications of tests having been done to do it, disguised as space junk) and it would involve a cyber war between two of the biggest players, both of which could disrupt us operations, and, most worryingly, putin has like 5000 nuclear weapons. but even if it came to nuclear war would it necessarily be anything other than tactical? im not sure. granted i don't want either, and i hope putin deescalates the situation, as it is quite simply up to him. perhaps knowing that he has the power to start or stop before it starts a major military war with his (in his mind) arch rival will prevent him from doing so, jsut knowing he could would be enough. or, he's crazy and sets the world on fire

[Spider]

As for telling his subs to unload on N America...I'm mostly concerned by his ego and investment in personal image. Not sure how he'd respond to massively losing a big war with the evil West.

[John Galt]

so after a day as far as i know...

russian planes violated turkey airspace over turkish territory for 17 seconds after 5 minutes of warnings to not violate the airspace. the planes can travel up to mach 2.18 so lets say that was travelling for 10km over turkish territory
1 plane was shot down, crashed in syria
i believe 1 pilot is dead, killed by anti-assad rebels of likely turkish ethnicity who are armed by americans
1 marine is dead from a russian rescue helicopter that crash landed

russia is in the wrong here. they violated turkish airspace. they should be apologizing. reasons for why their did: didn't care/didn't think turkey would have the balls to do anything about it or russian version of gps is bad and they should feel bad

much has been made about how russia "always" goes to other country's "airspace". this isn't true. they enter air defense identification zones, hundreds of miles from borders of other countries, on trajectories that would place them, eventually, in the airspace of those countries. the russians are then escorted out. the russians do this to probe defenses on mostly training activities. there's nothing wrong with doing that. in this case though, they were literally flying over the country of turkey.

turkey cannot know russia's intentions. it doesn't matter if they weren't going to bomb turkey (but, they very well could, think vietnam and US trying to bomb cambodia to stop supply lines). the russians were wrong

ive seen shit of the russian nationalist noise machine blaming turkey for all of this but turkey was defending her borders. i hope this won't escalate but this is russia's fault entirely. i know our country doesn't want to inflame things. i think obama is doing the correct thing, saying that turkey has a right to defend its airspace. it doesn't say "hey russia, apologize" even though that really should be said, but it does say that turkey was not wrong

of all the nato nations, turkey is the one most closely 'aligned' with russia, so this is of course quite interesting in what russia will do. embargoes and whatnot would come, but, on this, i think nato should continue to stand by its member state.

[Spider]

Russian pilot is claiming on Russian media that he was over Syria and received no warnings.

Neither Russia or Turkey want to escalate. Turkey wants Russian gas and Russia wants to keep using the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Business will continue as usual.

[The Comrade]

Pretty dumb thing to claim since a bunch of commercial radios picked up the warnings too.

[Spider]

I'm pretty sure they could claim than Tom Cruise shot him down from his F-14 on Russian media and people would believe it.

How they can be connected to the internet and still live behind the Iron Curtain is beyond me.

[The Comrade]

Russians are delusional after almost 600 years of being nonstop f**k.

[John Galt]

[NAB]