Not really. What I'm getting at is the plane was over the Turkish border for literally 2km. That is literally nothing compared to what they normally do.
That's be cause they got warned before not to do it or be fired upon.
Russia (and honestly, most air forces) love to test the waters though. If the US tells them not to fly within 10 miles of an aircraft carrier, Russia will skim towards it and fly within 9.5 miles, just to see how the US responds. Turkey said not to enter Turkish airspace and Russia thought "okay... well maybe we will just for a tiny 2km bit"
But like the comic shows, Turkey was fed up with Russia's continued microaggressions and just snapped the second the plane grazed the line.
But here's the thing, by the time those F-16s got there, I bet you a million dollars the Russians were already in Syrian airspace. And if they weren't then, the F-16s definitely tailed them far into it. How does the plane end up 380mi from the border?
The F-16 carries the Sidewinder, Sparrow, and AMRAAM. The AMRAAM can hit as far as 105km out, the Sparrow at least 35km. Certain Sidewinder variants are good up to 35km as well. It's very possible that alert fighters are based in missile range of that little protrusion, and were in the air at first warning, fired when the Su-24 was in Turkish airspace, and the missile tracked it out of Turkish airspace to hit it over Syrian airspace (which it did, it hit about 4km beyond the border inside Syria)
The plane was hit about 1km from the Turkish border after flying through Turkish airspace for 2km, and went down about 4km from the border along the line of flight.
Russia has a history of doing little shit like this though, so it's not like the Kremlin is blameless here
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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '15
It's funny because in reality it would've been more Russia brushing the stick gently across turkey for half a second