Turkey shoots down Russian warplane.

[Suff]

C'mon Crommers, you must be able to come up with better than to quote the arch conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones

The Guardian?
CNN?
The Telegraph?

All saying the same thing. Turkey, to one extent or another, are supporting IS and other terrorist organisations to get rid of Assad.

[KateLMead]

The situation becomes more frightening by the day Suff. None of the Leaders of governments and military are old enough to remember the reality and the horrors of living through the last war, it is "Just History" when and "if "War in the full sense comes to pass the attack on Paris as horrific and horrendous as it was will look like a firework display In comparison to what will come with the weapons available today and the "intent" along with the threats we will face virtually world wide, where countries will be reduced to rubble.

[Suff]

Russia has already started to punish Turkey.

All military ties cut including a hotline to announce raids in Syria, businessmen arrested and expelled for not having visas, all food imports blocked, which will have a large impact because some of them will be time critical and will spoil.

They have also brought advanced air defence rockets to the Syrian government and are talking about sending up fighter escorts for their bombers.

Even an old Lion with a ragged coat has long claws, large teeth and moves faster than a man. Turkey is about to find out just how painful it can be striking against a superpower. The second a Turkish jet goes into Syrian airspace it will be downed. Turkey has overflown Syrian airspace dozens of times a week. I wonder how many planes they are going to lose before they get the message?

Interestingly I read, a few years ago, that Russia had been putting all it's new western computing knowledge into air to air, air to ground and ground to air missile command and control. The consensus was that they might actually be ahead of the west in some of these areas.....

Time will tell....

[Workingman]

Cutting off noses to spite faces never works.

Putin is obviously pissed off with the downing of the jet, and rightly so. The most obvious thing is for Turkey to apologise and re-set the clock. There is probably some work for NATO and the coalition allies to do in that respect.

However, if Putin gets too bullish he makes a rod for his own back. The Black Sea fleet would be locked in with no escape. The only air corridors available will be over Iran, Iraq and Syria. There are no land corridors. He also cuts off major gas and oil pipelines to Europe's lucrative markets.

[Suff]

True but he can't do nothing. So he will have to take small steps to cause graduated pain for Turkey.

[Workingman]

True but he can't do nothing. So he will have to take small steps to cause graduated pain for Turkey.

Agree. However, small steps are a long way from total war and more downing of warplanes.

For me, we are not on the brink of anything much. We might get a buffer no-fly zone, or we might not, but will bombing do the job. I think not.