The jet hit nothing; it was too far away to do that. What hit the propeller was the fuel load. Ever get smacked in the face full on from a water spray? Now imagine the water is coming toward you at hundreds of miles per hour. Bent head? Bent propeller => unbalanced propeller => unstable dynamics (shudder, wobble) => can't fly drone.
Not saying it is impossible but that is where it’s baffling… the Ruskie jet was going the same direction as the drone and was going upward above drone. If it was a large fuel dump at opposing directions (head-on) that could be like hitting a wall but those propellers are designed to fly through rain/thunderstorm so I don’t see a bent propeller tip from the dump. I think the fuel dump was to cover the cameras and be ingested into the engine causing a flameout thus a glide down..
Thunderstorms don't involve a huge dump of mass arriving at hundreds of miles an hour. The MQ-9 cruise speed is about 200 mph. The Su-27 cruise speed is hard to estimate, but quite possibly in the range of 600 mph. That would be an overtaking speed of 400 mph, much worse than any flight through a thunderstorm (which I doubt is a desired flight environment). The engine ingestion problem was already analyzed, but it strains credibility to think that the engine would ingest anything coming from the aft direction, since the intakes are facing forward. (The Su-27 went upward after the fuel dump. Standard maneuver for a what was essentially a bomb drop. The fuel kept on going.)
The jet hit nothing; it was too far away to do that. What hit the propeller was the fuel load. Ever get smacked in the face full on from a water spray? Now imagine the water is coming toward you at hundreds of miles per hour. Bent head? Bent propeller => unbalanced propeller => unstable dynamics (shudder, wobble) => can't fly drone.
Not saying it is impossible but that is where it’s baffling… the Ruskie jet was going the same direction as the drone and was going upward above drone. If it was a large fuel dump at opposing directions (head-on) that could be like hitting a wall but those propellers are designed to fly through rain/thunderstorm so I don’t see a bent propeller tip from the dump. I think the fuel dump was to cover the cameras and be ingested into the engine causing a flameout thus a glide down..
Thunderstorms don't involve a huge dump of mass arriving at hundreds of miles an hour. The MQ-9 cruise speed is about 200 mph. The Su-27 cruise speed is hard to estimate, but quite possibly in the range of 600 mph. That would be an overtaking speed of 400 mph, much worse than any flight through a thunderstorm (which I doubt is a desired flight environment). The engine ingestion problem was already analyzed, but it strains credibility to think that the engine would ingest anything coming from the aft direction, since the intakes are facing forward. (The Su-27 went upward after the fuel dump. Standard maneuver for a what was essentially a bomb drop. The fuel kept on going.)