07/31/2026
Did Ukraine just hack Russian air defense and cause them to down one of their own fighters?!
A Russian Su-57, the fighter Putin himself called the best in the world weeks earlier, crashed near Moscow on July 23rd, and a Ukrainian intelligence collective InformNapalm says Ukraine spent weeks mapping a Russian air-defense unit’s training footage, software, and blind spots, then manipulated that unit into treating its own aircraft as hostile.
If even part of it holds up, Ukraine didn’t attack a piece of hardware, it attacked the trust between a radar and the crew reading it.
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- Chapters!
- 00:00 – Alleged cyber‑assisted SU‑57 downing
- 00:11 – Crash and the cyber‑trolling claim
- 01:34 – Intro and overview of crash investigation
- 02:05 – Air defense as a shared picture
- 03:05 – Chronology and possible causes of crash
- 04:28 – Strategic impact of SU‑57 loss
- 05:59 – Informed Napalm’s alleged cyber operation
- 06:46 – Defense Express questions BARS capability
- 07:29 – Two possible mechanisms: autonomous error
- 08:21 – Manipulating the airspace picture hypothesis
- 09:01 – Networked air defense: novelty assessment
- 10:22 – Operation Orchard as early spoofing case
- 11:08 – A different kind of air‑defense problem
- 11:27 – How isolated air defenses can be compromised
- 12:39 – Partial influence and contextual vulnerability
- 14:09 – From subtle nudges to technical failure
- 14:43 – Evaluating credibility of Informed Napalm claims
- 15:43 – Jumpy crews, phantom targets, Russian self‑losses
- 17:05 – Conclusion and final remarks