Earlier today a Russian Su-24 was shot down close to the Turkish-Syrian border. According to Turkish media, the unidentified plane was shot down in Turkish airspace, after repeated warnings (10 warnings over five minutes being quoted). Russian sources claim the aircraft was brought down in Syrian airspace, something which seems to be corroborated by the fact that it was later the rebels who showed pictures of the dead pilots.

An interesting piece of evidence that surfaced surprisingly fast was a purported radar track of the Turkish F-16 as well as the Russian Su-24. According to this track, the Su-24 overflew a salient, crossing approximately 2.5-3 km of Turkish territory. In practice, even if the plane flew at low speed, it would not have spent more time in Turkish airspace than 10-30 seconds. Even if the F-16 fired an AMRAAM (the usual weapon of choice for today’s F-16 pilots) the…