Conflict in the Air - III

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

MOSCOW AND VILNIUS CONTINUE TO ARGUE OVER CRASHED RUSSIAN JET...

Lithuania's Defense Ministry stated on 29 September that Russia has intentionally misinformed Lithuanian specialists investigating the crash of the Russian Su-27 near Kaunas on 15 September (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 28 September 2005) and is providing them with incorrect technical data, Russian media reported. Defense Ministry chief of staff Vitalijus Vaiksnoras said on 29 September that Russia gave his investigators information on black boxes related to different aircraft, RosBalt reported. And Lithuanian Defense Minister Gediminas Kirkilas said that "there is increasingly the impression that the pilot of the aircraft was insufficiently trained and hadn't had enough flight time." Major General Sergei Bainetov, the head of the Russian Air Force safety service, admitted that the jet that crashed was 20 years old and some of its parts were replaced with parts from other aircraft and that caused confusion. Russia's Defense Ministry also denied accusations that pilot Valerii Troyanov was not qualified enough, NTV reported. All of Troyanov's actions in the air were absolutely correct, it added. VY

...AS DEFENSE MINISTRY DENIES SECRET CODES WENT TO NATO.

Russia's Defense Ministry also rejected reports that appeared in the Russian and Western media that Lithuania's military managed to get secret codes from the Russian aircraft, including a top-secret "friend or foe" recognition code, strana.ru reported. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, so many Su-27s remained in the former Soviet republics that everything NATO wanted to know about it it already knows, the ministry said. As for the "friend or foe " code, it has a triple-duplicated self-destruct procedure and simply cannot remain intact after a crash, an unnamed source in the Defense Ministry told strana.ru. VY