May 9th - Moscow

[22A]

The Russians celebrate May 9th rather than 8th as the ending of the war in 1945. The news channel Russia Today (Sky 512) showed the practice parade on Sunday with the actual today. On Sunday there was brilliant sunshine, but today, the weather conditions have led to cancelling the flypast.
As it's 72 years since 1945, there was going to be 72a/c in the flypast. On Sunday's practice a Diamond 9 of Su35s, with specially painted fins, flew low over Red Square and released infra red flares overs the Kremlin. It looked impressive; would the RAF be permitted to release flares over Whitehall?

[jem60]

Was in Kiev in the Ukraine for an evening of Victory day many years ago. Hordes of people on the street. A very good evening, except for us just escaping a mugging on the way back to the hotel!!.

[toom317]

If the flares were infra red, who would see them?

[johnhowe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytp-c98gckQ This lasts 5 minutes, the original is 27 minutes long and the flypast includes
127 aircraft mostly jets with a small number of helicopters including attack and transport helos.

[22A]

Later in the day RT interviewed spectators including a few Brits who were in their early 20s and didn't remember the Cold War.; "Wow! That was fantastic. I've never seen anything like that".
The parade by 10,000 troops and featuring a lot of current army hardware was led, symbolically, by a T34. WW2 veterans, instead of marching past, were seated comfortably on the Kremiln balcony.
A new piece of kit for me was a mobile SAM; six launchers either side of the turret.

[T_J]

If the flares were infra red, who would see them?

See from 1:30 during the Victory Day parade rehearsal. Decoy flares (aerial infrared countermeasure) from Flankers and Fulcrums. (Looks like a mixed formation made up from the Russian Knights and Swifts aerobatic teams)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure)

[Thunder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytp-c98gckQ This lasts 5 minutes, the original is 27 minutes long and the flypast includes
127 aircraft mostly jets with a small number of helicopters including attack and transport helos.

That's from 2010 though.

[toom317]

If the flares were infra red, who would see them?

See from 1:30 during the Victory Day parade rehearsal. Decoy flares (aerial infrared countermeasure) from Flankers and Fulcrums. (Looks like a mixed formation made up from the Russian Knights and Swifts aerobatic teams)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure)

So not infra red, but infra red decoy flares then.