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Published on Apr 14, 2016

The aerobatics skills of Russian pilots over the US destroyer Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea left the Pentagon and other US official running for cover in Washington over “aggressive close interactions” with Russian fighters jets.
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Releasing the footage of Russian jet flybys in the vicinity of the destroyer, the US Navy said that its vessel has encountered multiple “aggressive flight maneuvers ...within close proximity of the ship,” some as close as 30 feet (10 meters) on Monday and Tuesday.

The set of incidents took place as the US ship, which had sailed from the Polish port of Gdynia, was conducting exercises with its NATO ally Poland in the Baltic Sea. The Navy announced that the SU-24 first flew over Donald Cook on Monday as US sailors were rehearsing “deck landing drills with an allied [Polish] military helicopter”. The numerous close-range, low altitude encounters were witnessed at 3:00pm local time, forcing the commander of the ship to suspend helicopter refueling on the deck until the Russian jets departed the area.

The next day, the Navy said, Russia caused concern among US sailors when a Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter flew seven times over the ship at low altitude in international waters at around 5:00pm. Some 40 minutes later, two Russian SU-24 jets allegedly made a further 11 “close-range and low altitude passes”.

“The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian. USS Donald Cook’s commanding officer deemed several of these maneuvers as unsafe and unprofessional,” the Navy said.

Judging by the videos released by the US Navy, the sailors were nonplussed by the Russian aerobatic skills. They gathered on the top deck of the destroyer to watch the Russian pilots.

“He is on the deck below the bridge lane...It looks like he’ll be coming in across the flight deck, coming in low, bridge wing level...Over the bow, right turn, over the bow...” the voiceover on the footage states in what looks more like an instructor’s advice on how to maneuver in open waters, rather than the panic that the central command presented it to be. At least on the video no one can be seen running for cover.

According to a US defense official who spoke with Defense News, sailors aboard the Donald Cook claimed that the Russian jets’ low altitude stirred waters and created wake underneath the ship. US personnel on the American vessels, also claimed that Su-24 was “wings clean,” meaning no armaments were present on the Russian jets that could have posed a threat to US operations in the Baltic.

Yet at the same time, the official noted, that this week's incidents are “more aggressive than anything we’ve seen in some time,” as the SU-24 appeared to be flying in a “simulated attack profile.”

The Russian overflights have caused panic over in Washington, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest calling the actions of the Russian pilots “provocative” and “inconsistent with professional norms of militaries.”

“I hear the Russians are up to their old tricks again in the EUCOM [US European Command] AOR [area of responsibility],” Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren said during a briefing on Wednesday, adding that the US is “concerned with this behavior.”

“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers. These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death,” the US European Command said in a statement.

In the meantime Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, thanked the US crew for keeping their cool during the stressful situation.

“Bravo Zulu to the crew of USS Donald Cook for their initiative and toughness in how they handled themselves during this incident,” the admiral said on Facebook.

Russia has yet to comment on the incidents but most likely the Russian air craft flew from the Kaliningrad region, bordering Poland. Kaliningrad is the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, which also includes the Chernyakhovsk, Donskoye, and Kaliningrad Chkalovsk air bases.

Description Credits: Russia Today

Video Credits: Defense Media Activity - Navy

Yes, delivery is important, but please recognise that on a video about sexism, criticising a woman's tone and voice is sailing directly into the Irony Seas.

I am not directing this next bit at you in particular, Eric, but for anyone who wants to know why I wrote the above paragraph. Please do a Google search with the following:

criticising woman's tone -hillary -clinton

and read any of the articles. If you want to relate it to recent political stories, drop the 2 Hillary exclusion terms.

This is VERY important.

Your video, Sailing is an art form best enjoyed...cold sober..., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I have to strongly disagree with the suggestion that animals are killed and tortured for my "taste preferences" and "pleasure".

It gives me no pleasure that an animal has to die for me to eat. My pleasure in the consumption of that animal is a fleeting, automatic chemical reaction triggered in my body. In an evolutionary sense, i only receive this pleasure because it prolongs the survival of my species to feel it.

Most of these arguments reek of over simplification and ignorance to the reality of the society westerners live in.

In ideal conditions, i would eat meat from animals that i tended, who died of natural causes (mostly old age i assume) which i would personally butcher. In reality, it is not possible and even if it were possible for one person, it would not be possible for every person - we have limited space, limited resources, limits placed by law, limits on our time. As well as the cost of the land, I would have to hope enough animals died naturally to sell enough humane meat to pay taxes on the land and maintain my farming equipment, buy grain for the animals and so on. Or maybe i could grow my own grain and use primitive DIY tools, but then i'd probably need help for all the farming i'd have to do every day and now i'd need enough animals to die to feed three, so more land, more grain... Oops, it looks like this is getting complicated doesn't it. Shall we keep going until we reach a society of 70 odd million people, or should we consider that the problem is far more complicated than comments here would care to acknowledge?

Furthermore gluten is often the primary protein source for vegans, but i have a disease that requires me to avoid that protein in entirety. The smug, holier-than-thou field radiating from certain commenters here will i'm sure extend far enough to condescendingly say "ah, but you can be a vegan and avoid gluten, you poor, uneducated, smiling murderer!" Yes, and you could live your life without ever being touched by the sun's rays, or sail a small sailboat without ever getting wet, not even a droplet. And how can we know what effect gluten-free-veganism may have on public health when it is extended to a population of 7 billion? What a dangerous experiment to salivate over - reckless and potentially harmful in a way that a butcher could never hope to be.

It would be wonderful if the world was ideal. I wouldn't have this disease, and all people of the world could enjoy their own 10 acre farm and eat only those animals whose time had come. Unfortunately when i am abroad, away from home, the only source of protein that i can entirely trust might perhaps be a roast chicken. And i will eat it, the only true pleasure from which i take is that i will not spend the next three days doubled up in bed.

There are people worse off than me, but i don't know enough about their situation to use it as a point in this discussion. To people like me, the language used by some people here makes me think of someone dancing around at a diabetics convention shouting "I can't believe you losers have to use insulin! I hope you all realise that drug addicts use needles!"

I reject any notion that these people have a moral advantage over me. Have any of them ever heard of walking a mile in another man's shoes, or does their narrow mind only reach as far as "ME"?

By the way, plants are also alive. Or is this about sentient life? Shall we move on to abortion then, if non-sentient life is ok to end? Shall we have the philosophical discussion about degrees of sentience and types of sentience and whether we can even know if a plant has its own brand of sentience? If yes, let's try to at least do it without you being smug and in return without me being sarcastic.

Worrying about how people treat vegans? How about the language used to describe people who have no choice in the matter, lest that choice be never leave your own house and eat only this very small list of things which you may or may not find too disgusting to stomach? Am i to live in misery and squander my life so that a chicken could have an extra 2 years to run in circles? This issue is not fucking black and white despite the attempts to paint it so.

*quality tune. Makes me want to go sail a tall ship.

I'm confused. They imply a 3 day trip to mars is possible, but is that at the maximum speed photonic propulsion can deliver, or do they include the acceleration and deceleration times? As I understood it, photonic propulsion can deliver extreme speeds, but only at a minimal acceleration. That means that maximum speed is much faster, but accelerating to that speed takes immensely longer, and the same goes for deceleration. Maybe they've invented a new method I've not heard of with much higher acceleration, but that's not really mentioned in the video.
They actually seem to imply they plan to use the same tech as cyclotrons, which means essentially a huge rail gun (and that's not photonic propulsion BTW, it's magnetic). Again, the amount of propulsion is miniscule, but the top speed is high with that method. Yes, you can expel matter at near speed of light, but only in tiny amounts and using huge amounts of energy.
Yes, it may take 10 minutes to achieve 30% the speed of light....with single molecules or atoms.
There are MANY reasons why we can't do this at macro sizes. Just look at the size of a cyclotron needed to accelerate an atom to those relativistic speeds. Now think about sizing that up to accelerate enough matter to move a spaceship instead of a single atom and it's likely near the size of the entire planet. We won't be building a cyclotron that size ever, nor will we likely ever shrink the accelerators to a size where they can fit inside a spaceship to shoot trillions of atoms out like a light speed gun. They are just too big and use too much power. Maybe once fusion is perfected and miniaturization also perfected it could work for interstellar travel, but never for local space travel, the acceleration levels are just too small.
Also, it seems solar sails give the same or better acceleration to the same top speeds without the impossible technology....but they don't work too well for stopping except at other stars.

Dolphins will come over to boats just to play with them, I've seen it quite a bit when sailing in waters with dolphins. Seals less so, but they still have that mammalian curiosity. I think the whale was just dumb luck though! What a fantastic couple of minutes

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Needs Sail during slow-mo.

A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame
to gleam thereon by Elbereth
herself was set, who thither came
and wings immortal made for him,
and laid on him undying doom,
to sail the shoreless skies and come
behind the Sun and light of Moon.

Only one way to find out...
Sadly, I don't own any sail/wing/kite boat at all, so it's up to someone else.

I'd like to see how fast an AC72 would do this course. The wing sails are very different in performance to conventional cloth, and they turn a lot of the conventions of sailing on their heads (they sail faster downwind in more adverse tide due to sailing faster than the wind for example). I know the kite is fast, but is it that fast?

Beautiful watercraft all.
I'm not surprised at the results, beyond (SPOILER ALERT) the fact that the foil cat beat the moth. That thing looked fast. Kites beat sails hands down every time, though. They simply work better in many ways.
Why didn't they include any kite-cats? There are plenty of automatic kite systems, and non-automatic kites to replace sails as well. A kite driven foil cat would have been nice to see in the comparison.

Sorry to jump the thread here; not sure if dubious is the word either, but pretty amateur and more fear mongering with no supporting data.

First, the suggestion that no more reactors should be built because people use them to aid in production of nuclear weapons. Well kids, that ship has already sailed: In June 2014, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that nine nations (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possessed approx. 16,300 nuclear weapons in total. So someone builds one or 10 more? Yeah, that will matter. Someone needs to read up on the concept of deterrence.

When talking about waste: "Germany has literally tons of the stuff just laying around" - well, that's just horseshit.

Regarding accidents and number of deaths due to nuclear reactors: "devastating disasters every 30 years" - devastating? Come on, people died, but compared to other sources of energy, according to the WHO, it is by far the safest. Consider:

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal - world average, 161
Coal - China, 278
Coal - USA, 15
Oil - 36
Natural Gas - 4
Biofuel/Biomass - 12
Peat - 12
Solar/rooftop - 0.44-0.83
Wind - 0.15
Hydro - world, 0.10
Hydro - world*, 1.4
Nuclear - 0.04

* Includes the 170,000 deaths from the failure of the Banquao Reservoir Dam in China in 1975

So, if not dubious, certainly cheap and pedantic.

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