Historic First: Russian Pilot's Helmetcam Captures One of the Most Intense Moments in Modern Warfare
Incredible helmet camera footage showed the moment the pilot of a Russian attack aircraft is forced to eject from his doomed Su-25 jet.
A pilot activated his ejection mechanism in the footage, moments before his jet crashes in a field in a fiery explosion. The pilot drifted to Earth.
A Russian Su-25 flying at low level gets hit by a Ukrainian SAM, the pilots helmet cam captures his ejection and landing. pic.twitter.com/4uPJggLP0H
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 23, 2022
The video began circulating on Twitter and military-oriented Telegram channels earlier this month, but it’s not entirely clear when the pilot crashed, according to War Is Boring.
An intelligence analyst on Twitter identified the cause of the crash as a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, but the location of the video suggested otherwise.
Another Twitter user geolocated the field in which the plane crashed — in Belgorod Oblast, Russia, rather than Ukraine.
Belgorod is north of the Ukrainian border and has been a staging point for Russian invasion forces.
The sleuth suggested that the plane crashed as a result of a collision with power lines.
50.83373 37.03762 @GeoConfirmed It clipped a power line a portion of its vertical stabilizer and spun out of control.. https://t.co/h1PZRRelpG
— Ruben Hofs (@rubenhofs) October 23, 2022
This wouldn’t be the first time that a Russian military aircraft crashed as a result of an avoidable error.
A Russian fighter-bomber jet crashed into a populated apartment building in another border region with Ukraine just earlier this month.
The pilot was seen ejecting in this incident, and locals filmed themselves interviewing the downed aviator on a city street.
The tactical circumstances of the war in Ukraine have led military experts to reconsider the future of armed conflicts.
The war, held between two heavily-armed conventional powers, differs considerably from asymmetric conflicts between western governments and Islamist militants.
In a conflict without air superiority, timeless weapons such as artillery and new military technology such as drones have proven capable of changing the outcome of battles.
The widescale use of man-portable anti-aircraft weapons has forced military aircraft on both sides to take protective cautions, such as flying low enough to the ground to evade surface-to-air missiles.
This strategy has its own risks, perhaps as seen in the footage of a Russian pilot documenting his own ejection.
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