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Comment by benj111 | Hacker News Reader

Is this not an act of war by itself?

This stuff's not black-and-white, and a lot of it comes down to how the two sides choose to perceive it. A bunch of stuff done by both the US and Russia has been an "act of war" against one another and their respective treaty-bound allies, over the last couple decades—in other circumstances, we've (the US) certainly chosen to regard actions smaller-scale than our support for Ukraine as acts of war against us.

But, if neither side wants it to be an act of war, it's de facto not.

The notion of an "act of war" is largely a pragmatic political tool. To the extent that they exist legally, they're invoked so haphazardly and selectively by e.g. the UN that it would be difficult to justify regarding the rules about "legal" and "illegal" war justifications as, per se, any kind of definitive guide for declaring what is and is not a "real" act of war.

Which means we're left with "both sides say it's not, so... it's not".

[EDIT] To be clear, if one or the other had chosen to regard this as an act of war, there may be room to debate the truth and justice of that position, or how we might interpret that stance based on international law and precedent—but neither (apparently) did, so it's rather moot. Yes, it probably could be so-regarded with some justification. Yes, there'd be room to, not without reason or basis, counter that a war asset providing intelligence to an adversary in a war is already engaged in war, regardless of who's operating it, et c., et c. It joins dozens of other actions as kind-of unrealized "acts of war".

Oh absolutely, it's all about realpolitik. We've already seen how far the west will go to avoid a war with Russia, so I wasn't expecting this to bring about a declaration of war.

But if this were a manned aircraft, that would be a major thing. The question is, what's the important element here.

It isn't necessarily the killing, if a plane were shot down, and the pilot ejected without harm it would still be a major thing, so there must be some element of, attacking a foreign nations military hardware is a no-no. But then the rhetoric doesn't seem to match that.

I'd say it's an act of aggression, but the line of "act of war" is still further off given the fact it was an unmanned aircraft.

Hopefully the RF will think twice before similarly harrassing an American pilot, which would be much closer to, if not crossing, that line.

Flying surveillance aircraft in the black sea?

Russia is at war with Ukraine and receives intelligence from US and UK 24/7 that surveillance aircraft is not there defending the coasts of Turkey or Romania.

So if a us ship were in international waters monitoring North Korea and passing on the Intel to South Korea, it would be ok for North Korea to sink that ship?

This was in international waters. The drone had every right to be there.

Not arguing that it had every right, from what we're told at least, I see no precise coordinates.

Just that it seems far fetched that downing a surveillance drone is an act of war.

Back in the Korean war, US fighters shot down actual Soviet pilots in supposedly North Korean planes. Both sides kept it hush hush because nobody wanted a full war.

Because Russia has not explicitly declared war or hostilities, or taken any actual redlined actions, it's up to the US to define if they consider this an act of war or not.

It's an obvious provocation, and it's absolutely not in the US (or NATO's) interest to be drawn in in this manner and time. So instead you get this passive-aggressive shit talk.

The day on the calendar is the middle of Mar

Is that a reference to Shakespeare, i.e. "beware the ides of march"?

Either that or Mars, the god of war, who gives the name.

The ides, you say?

No, because it wasn't intentional. They were harassing the drone and made a mistake.

The harassment was intentional. Making a “mistake” during an intentional act does not suddenly wipe away that root intention.

We don’t know that it was or wasn’t intentional. Harassing the drone is a problem to start with, running into it intentionally or not an extension of the core problem. Whether it was an accident or not probably isn’t much of a difference. Safer to assume it was intentional since we’d never get the truth out of the Russians.

Good news is that incidents like this will increase US military support for Ukraine.

According to the article:

>Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.

That seems more intentional than a simple fly-by anyway.

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