Looks pretty accurate to me. What's the problem? (i am serious)
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Honestly, I think a terribly drawn sketch is best in scenarios like this. Making a precise drawing gives the impression that you have confidence in the smaller details.
The reports that the drawing came from were probably from long range sightings or from combat sightings. Possibly even from one chance sighting from a single person. Whoever saw the plane probably didn't have the chance to hyper analyze it to minute details.
Take something like the cockpit window. A sketch says "it's roughly this shape and located around here". But what if you try to draw it more precisely? Then you have to imply the exact shape, the precise location, etc. If you saw a plane from a mile away, you wouldn't attempt to draw the instrument panels in the cockpit.
If you see only the sketch, would you be able to identify the plane?
Anyway, the problem is that they sent somebody that can't draw to make the sketch...
They nailed most of the features, only missing minor details. Canopy, nose windows, two bigass engines, wing profile, t-tail, landing gear. They can't draw for shit but they got the info.
The sketch has widening wings, while the plane has constant-width wings. The body profile is completely wrong. The engines on the sketch are not anything nearly as bigass as on the plane. The vertical stabilizers are just completely wrong. The landing gear is on the wrong place. The wings are on the wrong place...
I would call that a cruciform tail rather than a T tail. And it's a high wing, drawing has it as a low or mid wing.
That's fair, though we don't know how close the sketch "artist" actually saw the thing. I'm just saying it ain't terribly far off.
If your job is to inform the Joint Chiefs that the ruskies have a bomber with a canopy and ejector seat, two big honking jet engines and a tail gunner, this'll do.
I mean, maybe? Never worked intelligence but I assume there's a shitload of extrapolation and assumption. Also realistically they'll paint it as a 12th Gen aircraft and demand 50 billion more funding to close the capabilities gap.
The plane had wings that were level with the top of the body + with massive engines below them. Very distinctive feature. In the side drawing the wings are near the bottom + without engines. A lot of other errors could be explained by poor skills, distance, perspective, ... But drawing wings near the bottom when they were actually at the top, can't be explained by any of those practical reasons. And it makes the drawing useless for identifying the plane.
Decades after this drawing, it turned out that the CIA had been collecting loads of double agents in the eastern block, all deliberately feeding misinformation to the CIA.
Not everyone's an artist.
But suddenly, I'm way more confident in my art skills now.
*insert hand drawn meme propaganda here*
I am assuming they selected spies for stuff like sneaking into enemy air bases and talking themselves out of sticky situations in a foreign language, not drawing planes. Although, if your job is to sneak into an airbase and draw a plane, maybe do practice the plane drawing part a bit...
HOW the plane looks like, or WHAT the plane looks like?
Maybe he saw a previous design still in R&D. 🤷♂️