{"id":3357,"date":"2017-06-20T05:03:20","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T20:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=3357"},"modified":"2017-07-06T17:44:35","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T08:44:35","slug":"splash-1-fitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/splash-1-fitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Splash 1 Fitter!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boeing F\/A-18E Super Hornet scored its first kill when a Syrian SU-22 Fitter was downed by an F\/A-18E Super Hornet most likely from the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) allegedly deployed to Sixth(6) Fleet in the\u00a0\u00a0Mediterranean Sea according to GlobalSecurity.org<\/a>.\"FA-18E-catapult-706x417\"<\/p>\n

I was never Blessed to encounter SU-22’s or the\u00a0earlier Su-17\/20 variants or I would’ve been writing endless posts about “there I was….” shooting them down. Known by its NATO codename: Fitter, they are very fast air to ground attack airplanes built as a knock off the USAF F-111 Aardvark of the 70’s.<\/p>\n

Fitters have very limited air-to-air capability and only carry archaic thermal seeking missiles easily defeated by contemporary tactics and countermeasures. I had to look this piece of junk up on the web because we rarely covered them when I was still aviating.<\/p>\n

\"978564f0a9fe801c8f0da5c9\"<\/p>\n

They are typical former Soviet Union technology. If you can’t make them good make them fast and durable and the Fitter is both. It was reputed to have carried non-conventional (chemical\/biological) weapons and that may have factored into the U.S. Navy’s motivation to target the aircraft.<\/p>\n

Also of interest is that the Hornet downed the Fitter\u00a0after<\/em> the Fitter had attacked. This is probably due to over-lawyered rules of engagement that so badly distort ‘hostile intent’ so as to make it nearly impossible to engage absent a blatant hostile act such as dropping a weapon on friendly forces and\/or civilians.<\/p>\n

I’ve no doubt the pilot will get a chest full of Silver Stars, etc. and get the Navy public relations rubber chicken dinner treatment. Good for him. Well done.<\/p>\n

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The Boeing F\/A-18E Super Hornet scored its first kill when a Syrian SU-22 Fitter was downed by an F\/A-18E Super Hornet most likely from the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) allegedly deployed to Sixth(6) Fleet in the\u00a0\u00a0Mediterranean Sea according to GlobalSecurity.org<\/a>.\"FA-18E-catapult-706x417\"<\/p>\n

I was never Blessed to encounter SU-22’s or the\u00a0earlier Su-17\/20 variants or I would’ve been writing endless posts about “there I was….” shooting them down. Known by its NATO codename: Fitter, they are very fast air to ground attack airplanes built as a knock off the USAF F-111 Aardvark of the 70’s.<\/p>\n

Fitters have very limited air-to-air capability and only carry archaic thermal … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5506,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}