• sartalon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This sounds wildly implausible, or at least very exaggerated.

    I’ve worked on jets. If you put them in pieces, you are talking months (at least 3-6), to put them back together. Modern jets aren’t Legos. They are very complex machines that require testing and fine tuning.

    Most flight surface controls and engines parts have flight hour limits that are painstakingly logged so preventative maintenance maximizes service lifetime. When we transferred jets, we also delivered their maintenance history.

    When we mothball aircraft, we only remove certain components and basically seal it up. To take it out of mothball and reassemble it, under normal circumstances, you are talking 8 months.

    Maybe they surreptitiously transferred aircraft to Ukraine, I can believe that. But if they broke them down into individual parts and said, “Here you go!”, the proper response would be, “Go fuck yourself.”

    I imagine this story started out one way and has just been embellished each telling.

    • InfiniteStruggle@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Maybe they just rolled the jets there, took the hubcaps of the fuel inlet off of every one of them (so that they are “disassembled”) and then let ukraine know.

      So still technically correct and within international arms trade law, but the jets got through without needing too much reassembly.

      Maybe put some clingwrap or something over the inlet so moisture doesn’t get in.

      • avrachan@lemmings.world
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        1 year ago

        So still technically correct and within international arms trade law, but the jets got through without needing too much reassembly.

        that’s very interesting!!

        where can I learn international law regarding the transfer of military aircrafs?