Ukrainian credibility

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Military drone from Ukraine war crashes into Croatian capital Zagreb

IMO the explosive payload is the self-destruct for this vehicle, those were not designed to land (they were from before remote control capability or sophisticated enough autopilot). Obviously it failed to self-destruct before impacting the ground.

Tupolev Tu-141

Considering other resources like satellites I find it highly unlikely these could be in use by the Russians. Ukraine, however, is the prime place for a deployment and stockpile of these things as they were meant to fly to the west of the Soviet Union.

This would certainly call into question the credibility of any past, current, or future statements made by the Ukrainian government, especially regarding denial of incidents. Let's see what happens next.

So, how does this impact Ukraine's credibility relative to the perpetual gaslighters and liars known as the Putin regime?

I guess it is a big shocker that a government at war wasn't entirely honest.

This reference says different, based on the past tense verb used in that, and this reference won't allow copy and paste,
https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraf ... ft_id=2456

"Was formally introduced in to Soviet military service in 1979."

"The fleet was retired by the Soviets in 1989, coinciding with the fall of the Soviet Empire in full."

Now that does matter,
"However, Ukraine resurrected some of its outdated fleet in 2014 following the Russian invasion (and subsequent takeover) of Crimea and the ensuing/ongoing war in Donbass."

...Which means Ukraine is the sole known operator of these.

Thanks for providing additional information.

Which may or may not be the same thing as being the only faction which has access to these.

Also, would it be any wonder that the avionics went wonky in something of the Soviet era, which may or may not have been Macguyvered to a more modern standard by Ukraine in 2014 and may or may not have had electronic warfare applied to it somewhere along its flight path?

Edit: Also a factor, did whoever programmed the drone make a data entry error attributable to exhaustion, hunger, nearby weapons detonations, or similar.

Also: If the drone flew over Hungary for 40+ minutes isn't there a Hungarian Air Force and if someone in Hungary spotted it after 20 minutes over Hungary couldn't they have Googled the appropriate phone number and called it in and the Air Force have scrambled the interceptors it had on active alert in the remaining 5 minutes the drone had over Hungary?

We can be fully confident of where it came down and what it is, but after that ...

Last edited by kitesandtrainsandcats on 14 Mar 2022, 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't disagree with any of that, but their denial will get them into more trouble than the admission. What are they on the hook for? 40 damaged cars and some pavement? That's nothing!
They would have built more political credibility equity on that.

Instead they just claimed it's not one of theirs. I'm not pushing the narrative that it's theirs, but I'm sure it's will be investigated by Croatia and other states which it overflew. It is after all a failure to intercept.

A claim that's maybe true and maybe not. I wonder if looking at people who are actively trying to kill you has any effect on what you might say to whom when.


I finally had that thought consciously and at the same time you were posting this made an edit to include it!

Just found this article, that could be why it wasn't intercepted in Romania,
https://theaviationist.com/2022/03/11/t ... d-hungary/

Hungary in text above has link to,
https://www.budapesttimes.hu/world/hung ... in-zagreb/
Now that's interesting,
"The object was later identified as a TU-141 drone which has recently been used as a training target, the ministry said, ..."

Hmm, interesting about the parachutes, I wonder if this drone was designed to deliver its recon results via parachuting a film/data cannister.

Yes.

And I do hope the explosive device found will turn out to be a self-destruct... Otherwise it will be be ugly.

@ OP.
Desperate people do desperate things.
Is it *possible*?
Of course.

It was a Soviet-era rocket. It might be Ukrainian, it might be Russian. Croatia is going to investigate.

Croatia is a relatively objective party in this.

For those who may speculate it may be from the soviet era, how can a drone be when drones didn't exist back then?

Also Zagreb is somewhat far off from the Ukraine so what would it be doing out there? Instead of thinking it's Ukrainian or Russian, would it be more plausible if the drone was from a more nearby country, such as maybe Croatia itself?

"Drone" = "unmanned aircraft".
They existed in Soviet era, they just weren't called "drones" back then.

Tu-141 has about 1000 km range - enough to fly to many East Europe countries from the war zone.
I expect Russians to be capable of interfering with Tu-141 controls - "blinding" drones is a standard way of fighting them and the controls of Tu-141 have all the reasons to be well outdated.

Oh okay, my mistake. How come manned aircrafts were still in popular use back then, like in a movie like Top Gun for example, no one is flying unmanned aircrafts in war.

Controls of an unmanned aircraft were (and are) much more limited than controls of a one with a pilot inside.
Remote controls are easy to jam, and they were even easier to jam back in the analog times. No AI back then, no modern "senses" and target tracking... use of drones was very limited back then.

I believe these used inertial guidance like in ICBMs, they were mechanically programmed for their flight path. This incident is either operator error or a malfunction. I don't believe these were radio-controlled, so electronic warfare/jamming won't have been a factor.