Guest Column -- Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian Air Force jet?

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The following is a guest column From George Abert, formerly of Air Force Intelligence, addressing the question that everyone should be asking ...

Turkey is so militarily inferior to Russia that it is unlikely Turkey would commit an act of war against Russia without encouragement from Washington. We might think that Turkey would feel shielded by NATO, but it is doubtful that many European members of NATO would risk nuclear annihiliation by going to war with Russia in order to save Turkey from the consequences of such a reckless and irresponsible act as shooting down a Russian military aircraft and lying about it.

Turkey has issued no apology and no believable explanation. Unless Erdogan has lost his mind, Washington is behind the shootdown, and the reason is Washington's desperation to decode the new Russian technology that gives Russian forces total control over a battlefield, whether on land, sea, or air.

When the Russians deployed their forces to Syria they also deployed some new stealth technology. So far as I know they've only used this technology in Syria twice, once during their first sortie and one other time when some Israeli Air Force jets entered what they knew was Russian operational airspace.

As noted, the first use of this stealth technology was during the first Russian sortie. In accordance with protocols agreed to beforehand with Israel and the US, the Russians informed the US of their intent to launch a sortie. They did so an hour prior to the launch. When they did they also employed a new stealth technology. The technology effectively blinded both the US and Israel. None of the radars worked and most, if not all, satellite coverage was lost or compromised as well. But there's more.

About a week after Putin's UN General Assembly address the Israelis launched a sortie into Syria which flew into airspace that was under Russian operational control. Russian air controllers warned the Israelis that they had violated Russian controlled airspace. When the Israelis ignored the Russian air controllers, the stealth technology was employed a second time. The Israeli aircraft are equipped with two radars, one for fire acquisition and the other for fire control. Both are advanced and employ frequency-skipping technology to avoid being jammed. Both radars were effectively jammed. These aircraft have multiple telemetry data-links to their base. These were shut down. The only communications channel left was the high-frequency AM band normally used by civilian air traffic controllers. After the stealth technology was turned on and it was clear to the Russians that the Israelis knew they had been shut down, the Russian air traffic controllers used this AM band to tell the Israelis to scram. The Israelis complied.

Whatever this technology is, it's a game changer and I'm certain that breaking this technology has been given an extremely high priority.

So why did Turkey shoot down the Russian jet?

I suspect somebody wants the Russians to start using this stealth technology more often, often enough for its weaknesses to be exposed. Shooting down that Russian jet might just get the Russians motivated to do that.

If I'm correct I bet every Raven and ELINT specialist in the business has been deployed to that theater of operations to hack this one! One can only imagine how many resources are being amassed.

Here is an alternative view from Alexander Mercouris, who sees the incident as a blunder made by an out-of-control President Erdogan of Turkey. Mercouris writes that the reckless and irresponsible act has turned NATO against Erdogan and that even Obama is disturbed.