Is RationalWiki a crackpot site?

caveman1917

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After some renewed discussion on the Ukrainian conflict in the politics section I decided to look at some relevant articles on RationalWiki. I noticed that the article on the MH-17 crash was still peddling a long-debunked CT claim regarding the flight ceiling of the Su-25 aircraft, so I corrected it. An, ahem, interesting experience ensued.

The claim in the RationalWiki article is that the Su-25 is limited to a flight ceiling of 7km. The only source provided for this is a pop-science article, which in turn references the Sukhoi website's page on the Su-25K (the K is an old export version with reduced flight characteristics). It even goes so far as to claim that an Su-25 flying at over 7km would defy the laws of physics.

References regarding the non-K versions of the Su-25 do clearly state a correct 10km flight ceiling, including export agencies in former Warsaw Pact states such as Bulgaria and Ukraine itself, as well as enthusiast websites. One can of course also find this in the main reference work on the Su-25, Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot by Alexander Mladenov (see the table on page 27). The most damning piece of evidence would be a flight video recorded by an Su-25 pilot and uploaded to youtube here which, at time point 5m33, clearly shows the altimeter showing an altitude of 8.7km and rising. This would, by the claims in the RationalWiki article, be direct evidence of defying the laws of phyics!

A sysop then immediately reverted the article back to its previous state using an ad hominem appeal (ie "your claim is wrong because you appear serious"). I reverted it back, pointing out that whether I appear serious or not has no bearing on the correctness of my claims and that he was employing an ad-hom. He then reverted it back, claiming that his previous argument regarding me appearing serious wasn't an ad-hom, with some more ad-hom appeals added to it and locked the article.

This shows several things one tends to see with conspiracy loons:

1. Making claims without evidence.

2. Refusing to engage with contradictory evidence.

3. The use of ad hominems in lieu of rational argument.

4. Especially, here, the claim that one must be "Pro-Putin" to dispute the claimed flight ceiling of an aircraft. This reminds of the retort CTers use in saying "you're just pro-government" when presented with evidence which contradicts their claims. Rational people would understand that one's political preferences have no bearing on the flight characteristics of an aircraft. The "Pro-Putin" is of course also a simple lie, but at that point I wasn't expecting anything better anyway.

Given these observations, is this what one can expect in general from RationalWiki - ie plain crackpottery? And if this is just an exception regarding one individual loon, this begs the question: why do loons get sysop powers there? Using an analogy with a scientific journal: it's one thing for a crackpot to have been able to slip a paper through, it's quite another thing for them to actually be on the editorial board.
 
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I would not take Seismosaurus' answer very seriously. A quick look indicates that it is a serious website. Though it may need updating.
 
I have never visited RationalWiki so my comments are general: Being a sceptic, or being rational does not mean that one is sceptic or rational all the time. Each of us has biases that we hope to limit, but we can never succeed entirely because many of our biases are subconscious. This is particularly evident in political matters, and the MH-17 crash theories are clearly influenced by politics.

Finding a few cases of bias does not make the entire site biased, but of course each case is damaging to the reputation of the site.
 
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I looked at your löink and ehre is what it states :

Practical ceiling, m 10000
Maximum height of combat use, m 5000

"Armed, the maximum altitude is 5km. "

Which is correct. The 7K/10K is irrelevant since for all practical purpose only an armed Su-25(K) could shoot down an airplane. That was the claim of the RUssian gov they were debunking. Now the way they handled the 7K/10K is maybe not good though, But maybe they have a lot of russian crank editing this section ?
 
A good admin would have engaged in more of a discussion, and certainly not have locked a page for edit warring when they were one of the parties involved.

However the poor judgement of one admin on one page does not mean the whole of the collaborative wiki is a crackpot site. That would be a hasty generalization.
 
Aepervius said:
I looked at your löink and ehre is what it states :

Practical ceiling, m 10000
Maximum height of combat use, m 5000

"Armed, the maximum altitude is 5km. "

Which is correct.
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No it isn't, that's another misinterpretation of the data. The 5km is the maximum height for the safe use of the main cannon, not a reduced flight ceiling for carrying armaments. For instance in Afghanistan combat missions were regularly flown at 10km, or you could take a look at the youtube video I linked to where you can see that they're flying fully loaded.

That was the claim of the RUssian gov they were debunking.
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If that is the goal then they should at least do it properly, not just by making up a bunch of nuttery themselves.

But maybe they have a lot of russian crank editing this section ?
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They mostly seem to have a lot of Western crank editing it.

I'd also take exception with the racist undertone of this "it's a Russian, therefor crank/Putin-bot/whatever". This notion was also present in that pop-science article they used as a reference, but it was most patently obvious on wikipedia. I saw that 7km/10km edit war after the MH-17 crash play out on wikipedia, in which a Russian IP said something to the effect of "I'm an Su-25 pilot, I know how my plane flies", after which an admin there blocked him for having a Russian government IP. Not sure what that admin was thinking, I'd actually expect an Su-25 pilot to be using a Russian government/airforce computer as opposed to..well, what exactly? An iPhone in New York or something?
 
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Marasmusine said:
A good admin would have engaged in more of a discussion, and certainly not have locked a page for edit warring when they were one of the parties involved.

However the poor judgement of one admin on one page does not mean the whole of the collaborative wiki is a crackpot site. That would be a hasty generalization.
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That's the problem though, it isn't just poor judgement. Poor judgement would be considering the references and evidence provided and reaching a wrong conclusion, this was nothing more than "ad-hom, revert, lock" without even bothering to engage with any references/evidence.

If this tends to be the general approach regarding new information being added then that would make all information there suspect or at least useless. Hence why I was asking for other people's experiences - not just with reading it but with actually trying to edit it.
 
RationalWiki is a skeptical site, however, in recent years they've become more SJW-friendly in terms of articles and viewpoints. It is a serious site, at any rate.
 
Wasn't this "supported" by a photo released by Russia's spy satellite people that showed a plane flying nearby...which was faked because a plane a few miles above the ground would appear to be almost the same size as if it were on the ground, when photographed from ~200 miles above, and not appear as if it were larger than massive planted farmland fields?
 
Beerina said:
Wasn't this "supported" by a photo released by Russia's spy satellite people that showed a plane flying nearby...which was faked because a plane a few miles above the ground would appear to be almost the same size as if it were on the ground, when photographed from ~200 miles above, and not appear as if it were larger than massive planted farmland fields?
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That would be a function of lens focal length ratio. Consider the telephoto shot that looks over the pitcher's shoulder at the batter: despite the distance between them they appear nearly the same size on screen.

I haven't seen the image in question, just mentioning there's actual science and math that can be used to objectively determine if the image is genuine. I'd trust those before trusting "feels" analysis.
 
caveman1917 said:
No it isn't, that's another misinterpretation of the data. The 5km is the maximum height for the safe use of the main cannon, not a reduced flight ceiling for carrying armaments. For instance in Afghanistan combat missions were regularly flown at 10km, or you could take a look at the youtube video I linked to where you can see that they're flying fully loaded.



If that is the goal then they should at least do it properly, not just by making up a bunch of nuttery themselves.



They mostly seem to have a lot of Western crank editing it.

I'd also take exception with the racist undertone of this "it's a Russian, therefor crank/Putin-bot/whatever". This notion was also present in that pop-science article they used as a reference, but it was most patently obvious on wikipedia. I saw that 7km/10km edit war after the MH-17 crash play out on wikipedia, in which a Russian IP said something to the effect of "I'm an Su-25 pilot, I know how my plane flies", after which an admin there blocked him for having a Russian government IP. Not sure what that admin was thinking, I'd actually expect an Su-25 pilot to be using a Russian government/airforce computer as opposed to..well, what exactly? An iPhone in New York or something?
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Sigh. There's a thread for conspiracy theories about MH-17.
 
catsmate said:
Sigh. There's a thread for conspiracy theories about MH-17.
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Sigh. If you have a conspiracy theory regarding MH-17 then feel free to take your own advice and go argue it there. But stop derailing this thread, thank you. And this goes just as well for any of the others among you who seem to find it impossible to discuss flight characteristics of the Su-25 without bringing up a bunch of junk about MH-17.
 
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catsmate said:
No.
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Given your apparent inability of discussing something without making insinuations of irrelevant conspiracy theories I'll consider this answer utterly useless. It seems like you and that admin on RationalWiki would fit quite well together.
 
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Trebuchet said:
Betteridge's Law of Headlines
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Interesting. I clicked your link and followed through on the first link there to the article on "********" (being surprised it had an article on that, I wanted to check it out).

There I already found several gems, such as: "the rhetoric of the far-left has relied primarily on ********" (yeah right, as seems usual, no need for any evidence I presume?) to then top it off by giving as first example of this claim a far-right philosophy (Objectivism). Go figure!

It appeared the term "far-left" there was itself a link so I followed that one, interestingly enough leading me to the article on "Moonbat". For some incomprehensible reason the moderate-right (liberals) is then presented as some sort of authority on leftism. Unsurprisingly leading to even more gems, such as that a "moonbat" can be distinguished from a "rational leftie" by their categorical opposition to imperialism. Go figure!

To be fair though, it does make sense from the perspective of deluded right-wingers who, in their alternate reality, consider themselves "lefties" and brandish anyone who doesn't agree with their imperialist inclinations as "moonbats". How that is supposed to argue against the site being a crackpot site is anyone's guess though.

In what way exactly isn't all this just one layer of crackpottery piled on another?
 
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caveman1917 said:
Given your apparent inability of discussing something without making insinuations of irrelevant conspiracy theories I'll consider this answer utterly useless. It seems like you and that admin on RationalWiki would fit quite well together.
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caveman1917 said:
Thank you, my experience with it is limited to this one instance so I wasn't sure if this was a general thing with that site.
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Interesting to see this. Someone agrees with you without showing any evidence you praise them. Someone else disagrees with you the same way and you flame them. Biased much?
Seems pretty clear that you already made up your mind, and only posted this topic to receive some confirmation.
 
PartialDerivative said:
Interesting to see this. Someone agrees with you without showing any evidence you praise them. Someone else disagrees with you the same way and you flame them. Biased much?
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The latter person did not disagree "in the same way" but showed in their very next post an inability to even consider the point under consideration. In fact, as you can see in my statement you quoted, I've explicitly stated this as the basis for rejecting their claim as useless. If the former person had, after saying "of course it is", then proceeded to show an inability to even engage with the subject then it would have been rejected on the same basis.
 
caveman1917 said:
Sigh. If you have a conspiracy theory regarding MH-17 then feel free to take your own advice and go argue it there. But stop derailing this thread, thank you. And this goes just as well for any of the others among you who seem to find it impossible to discuss flight characteristics of the Su-25 without bringing up a bunch of junk about MH-17.
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And yet your OP was based on a webpage about the nutty conspiracy theories about MH-17.
:rolleyes:
caveman1917 said:
Given your apparent inability of discussing something without making insinuations of irrelevant conspiracy theories I'll consider this answer utterly useless. It seems like you and that admin on RationalWiki would fit quite well together.
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:D Must try harder.

Trebuchet said:
Betteridge's Law of Headlines
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Exactly.
 
catsmate said:
And yet your OP was based on a webpage about the nutty conspiracy theories about MH-17.
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My OP was based on a webpage making claims about the flight characteristics of an Su-25, as well as observations which proceeded from me trying to correct the claims made therein. Are you capable of reading comprehension?
 
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One can of course note that the crank claims are still being peddled in that article, with catsmate joining in what is apparently the methodology being used - ie making random insinuations about "conspiracy theories" which not only have nothing to do with the statements being refuted (ie flight ceiling) but seem nothing more than a diversion so as not having to engage with any contradictory evidence.
 
caveman1917 said:
No it isn't, that's another misinterpretation of the data. The 5km is the maximum height for the safe use of the main cannon, not a reduced flight ceiling for carrying armaments. For instance in Afghanistan combat missions were regularly flown at 10km, or you could take a look at the youtube video I linked to where you can see that they're flying fully loaded.
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That's your interpretation. All source I can find says 5000 meter fully armed. Not 5000 dogfight max altitude, and your own youtube does not shows pod loaded with missiles (or even tanks) (on a related note the blaring music is deafening). I doubt everybody would take dogfight altitude as the service ceiling altitude for armed flight when most of the service will be done NOT dogfighting.

In fact dogfighting does not change the profile of the airplane, loading the pod does. That is why the max ceiling change : change of aerodynamic profile.
 
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Aepervius said:
That's your interpretation. All source I can find says 5000 meter fully armed. Not 5000 dogfight max altitude, and your own youtube does not shows pod loaded with missiles (or even tanks) (on a related note the blaring music is deafening). I doubt everybody would take dogfight altitude as the service ceiling altitude for armed flight when most of the service will be done NOT dogfighting.

In fact dogfighting does not change the profile of the airplane, loading the pod does. That is why the max ceiling change : change of aerodynamic profile.
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The Su-25 is not a fighter jet but a ground attack jet, its main role is not dog-fighting but anti-tank use. Its main cannon, the GSh-30-2 is not recoil-less. The 5km figure is the height, above which, the remaining engine thrust after accounting for the recoil of the main cannon would be too low to prevent stalling.

your own youtube does not shows pod loaded with missiles (or even tanks)
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Then why do the hardpoint indicators in the plane show them to be loaded? 5m40 into the video, the green lights under the outline of the aircraft. As much as the imagery might not be that clear, it does appear to show R-60s loaded on the other planes as well.

ETA: besides, if they're not loaded, then what are they firing (such as at 3m47)?
 
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caveman1917 said:
The Su-25 is not a fighter jet but a ground attack jet, its main role is not dog-fighting but anti-tank use. Its main cannon, the GSh-30-2 is not recoil-less. The 5km figure is the height, above which, the remaining engine thrust after accounting for the recoil of the main cannon would be too low to prevent stalling.



Then why do the hardpoint indicators in the plane show them to be loaded? 5m40 into the video, the green lights under the outline of the aircraft. As much as the imagery might not be that clear, it does appear to show R-60s loaded on the other planes as well.

ETA: besides, if they're not loaded, then what are they firing (such as at 3m47)?
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I have no idea but it is quite clear from the time stamp I marked there is no pod.

But you are definitively wrong. The armed altitude is not the dogfight altitude : It is the pod loaded altitude when aerodynamic of the plane is changed. As for your claim of the canon not being able to be used below a certain ceiling I find that nowhere to be found except by a few crank on MH17 threads. All NATO and armory web site I consulted, none
mention an max altitude for the canon.
 
Also I doubt the motor would be disturbed by the twin gun. It fire at most 3000 round per minutes, so 50 per seconds, at a muzzle velocity of 870 m.s-1 of 30*165 mm.

If it was enough order of magnitude to slow down an engine meant to propel a multi tons aircraft by a good order of magnitude, it would literally pulverize backward the BMP 2 it is also mounted on.

Now I may be wrong with my napkin calculation, so how about you show the source of your claim ?
 
caveman1917 said:
My OP was based on a webpage making claims about the flight characteristics of an Su-25, as well as observations which proceeded from me trying to correct the claims made therein. Are you capable of reading comprehension?
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Yes I am. I'm also capable of understanding why people make such claims.

caveman1917 said:
One can of course note that the crank claims are still being peddled in that article, with catsmate joining in what is apparently the methodology being used - ie making random insinuations about "conspiracy theories" which not only have nothing to do with the statements being refuted (ie flight ceiling) but seem nothing more than a diversion so as not having to engage with any contradictory evidence.
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:rolleyes: The entire nonsense about MH-17 being shot down by a Frogfoot is a conspiracy theory; one initiated by pro-Russian sources and peddled by Putin sympathasiers to try and cast doubt on the reality, that pro-Russian separatists shot down a civilian airliner with a Russian supplied missile system.

Aepervius said:
Also I doubt the motor would be disturbed by the twin gun. It fire at most 3000 round per minutes, so 50 per seconds, at a muzzle velocity of 870 m.s-1 of 30*165 mm.

If it was enough order of magnitude to slow down an engine meant to propel a multi tons aircraft by a good order of magnitude, it would literally pulverize backward the BMP 2 it is also mounted on.

Now I may be wrong with my napkin calculation, so how about you show the source of your claim ?
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Indeed it would be nice for caveman, or anyone else who believes in the Frogfoot shoot-down nonsense, to show some reliable sources for the claim.
 
Aepervius said:
I have no idea but it is quite clear from the time stamp I marked there is no pod.
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You did not mark a time stamp.

But you are definitively wrong.
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I'm definitively wrong about them being loaded even though you can clearly see them actually firing missiles? And that's ignoring the status indicators in the plane itself.

The armed altitude is not the dogfight altitude : It is the pod loaded altitude when aerodynamic of the plane is changed.
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Yes, which is the 10km figure.

As for your claim of the canon not being able to be used below a certain ceiling I find that nowhere to be found except by a few crank on MH17 threads. All NATO and armory web site I consulted, none mention an max altitude for the canon.
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There is no max altitude for the cannon. Heck, it could probably even be used in space. There is, however, a max altitude for the plane using the cannon.

The plane has a twin R-195 turbojet, each providing about 45 kN of thrust at sea level. While the thrust-to-altitude profile depends on the specific engine, for the JT8D-17 the thrust at about 7km altitude is about halved. Assuming this is comparable, that leaves 45 kN of thrust for the R-195 at 7km.

The cannon is dual-barrel, projectile weight 390 g, muzzle velocity 870 m/s, rate of fire 50/s. Or a total of 390 x 2 x 50 = 39 kg expelled forwards, per second, at 870 m/s. This gives a backwards thrust of about 34 kN, leaving only 11 kN of forwards thrust = stall.
 
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catsmate said:
Yes I am. I'm also capable of understanding why people make such claims.


:rolleyes: The entire nonsense about MH-17 being shot down by a Frogfoot is a conspiracy theory; one initiated by pro-Russian sources and peddled by Putin sympathasiers to try and cast doubt on the reality, that pro-Russian separatists shot down a civilian airliner with a Russian supplied missile system.
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I'm not making any claims about who shot down MH-17, I'm making claims regarding the flight characteristics of an Su-25. But of course you know that very well.

Indeed it would be nice for caveman, or anyone else who believes in the Frogfoot shoot-down nonsense, to show some reliable sources for the claim.
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Wow, what a way to try to show that RationalWiki is not a crackpot site. I've given plenty of reliable sources for the claim in my OP - as I did when correcting the article, all of which clearly show a 10km flight ceiling. Too bad there aren't any reliable sources for the contradictory claims in the article, especially that "defy physics" claim - that's just plain Alex Jones level stuff.

Are you trolling or something?

Please don't bother even responding anymore unless you've got some evidence to show for your claim of a 7km flight ceiling, as well as actually refuting all the evidence to the contrary.
 
picture.php
 
caveman1917 said:
The plane has a twin R-195 turbojet, each providing about 45 kN of thrust at sea level. While the thrust-to-altitude profile depends on the specific engine, for the JT8D-17 the thrust at about 7km altitude is about halved. Assuming this is comparable, that leaves 45 kN of thrust for the R-195 at 7km.

The cannon is dual-barrel, projectile weight 390 g, muzzle velocity 870 m/s, rate of fire 50/s. Or a total of 390 x 2 x 50 = 39 kg expelled forwards, per second, at 870 m/s. This gives a backwards thrust of about 34 kN, leaving only 11 kN of forwards thrust = stall.
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This would all probably go a lot easier if people cared to remember that the Su-25 is not a fighter plane. It was not designed for air combat but for ground attack, specifically anti-tank operations. Its main mission profile is low-flying strafing runs on armoured columns, that's what the main cannon is for, not for dog-fighting. There was never any need for the cannon to be used at high altitude, hence why it wasn't designed for that and can't be used above 5km.
 
Caveman, here is where I think your problem lies:
You appear to be trying to correct technical specifications of the airplane, and not just to support Russian conspiracy theories about the shootdown of MH17. However, you edited RW as a BoN (Bunch of Numbers) rather than joining up, at a time when such conspiracy theories were being promoted, including on Wikipedia by people with Russian IP addresses changing airplane performance information. It seems natural to me that the RW editor figured you to be another such vandal. The fact that you seem so stubbornly set on the issue doesn't help.

RW is not a crackpot site. It is an anti-crackpot site. I find it a great resource for info on various forms of woo, without being handicapped by Wikipedia's NPOV restrictions.
 
Trebuchet said:
However, you edited RW as a BoN (Bunch of Numbers) rather than joining up
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This is ad hominem reasoning. The truth-value of a proposition is independent of who produced it. If that edit were even made by, say, a cat accidentally walking over a keyboard then it still wouldn't change one iota about whether the claim is true or not.

at a time when such conspiracy theories were being promoted
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Conspiracy theories were being promoted by both sides, Western media were in that respect not one bit better than their Russian counterparts.

including on Wikipedia by people with Russian IP addresses changing airplane performance information.
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As it quickly turned out they were trying to enter the correct airplane performance information - think about that for a minute.

As I said earlier, I watched that particular edit warring play out on wikipedia back then. Russian IP claiming to be an Su-25 pilot edited flight ceiling, gets reverted and blocked. This repeats a couple of times. I go check actual sources on this and find that the editor was correct. Everything seemed to check out, including explaining the use of a Russian government IP address - as would be expected with a pilot in the Russian airforce. Seems the "Western" side to this was doing nothing but droning on about a page on some old export version of the Su-25 that they found on the manufacturer's website, with a good deal of racist ad-hom attacks thrown in against the Russian IP editors.

Regarding the racist dimension to all this, why are you so specifically making sure to say that it's a Russian IP address? Is this supposed to evoke some sort of a priori negative connotation to the claims they make? Is it supposed to evoke our conspiracist thinking, whereupon we'll assume the edit made by that IP address is due to some "disinformation campaign by the Kremlin" or something like that? If the latter, as lowly as you might think of Russians, don't you think that if the Kremlin were doing that they would know how to use a proxy server?

It seems natural to me that the RW editor figured you to be another such vandal.
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"Figuring" would imply some sort of thought process going on, I'm not seeing evidence of that in this case. There's nothing "natural" about it, if he can't even be bothered to engage with any references provided then he shouldn't be bothering with reverting it either. And that's ignoring everything else, like the ad-hom appeals.

The fact that you seem so stubbornly set on the issue doesn't help.
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Yes, I've certainly created a bit of a fuzz about it. Doesn't it make you wonder how many more instances of this sort of nonsense have happened but where the editor just silently gave up, and hence never came to light? Also, is that another instance of this "you appear serious therefor your claim is wrong" reasoning?

RW is not a crackpot site. It is an anti-crackpot site.
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As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on that. I checked the logic portal - that always gives a good indication of such things, and did indeed find it to be quite decent. On the other hand, I've also followed up on that "far-left" thing they have going and found it to be more close to crackpottery than what one could consider rational.
 
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theprestige said:
Help me understand: Could a Su-27 shoot down an airliner at altitude, or not?
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Of course it can, an Su-27 is a fighter plane designed for air-superiority - including the taking down of AWACS aircraft, which would be similar to taking down a civilian airliner.

We are, however, talking about an Su-25 and not an Su-27. If you're asking "could an Su-25 have shot down MH-17?", in a strictly physical-technical sense it probably could. However, that doesn't mean it did and everything points to it not having done so. Not the least of which being that the AA missiles carried by the Su-25 are heatseeking and would've impacted the engine, whereas the Buk is radar-guided and would've come in from above. The latter is consistent with the damage pattern observed. The Su-25 would also have needed to be extremely lucky, since it can not keep up with the airliner.

I do remember that people claimed to have set up this mission in a military flight sim and were able to successfully fly it. I have no idea about the value of those claims as I didn't own the software - though it looked decent - and I don't remember where I found those claims anyway. This was 2 years ago.

ETA: it sure as hell couldn't have done it with the cannon though
 
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caveman1917 said:
You did not mark a time stamp.



I'm definitively wrong about them being loaded even though you can clearly see them actually firing missiles? And that's ignoring the status indicators in the plane itself.



Yes, which is the 10km figure.



There is no max altitude for the cannon. Heck, it could probably even be used in space. There is, however, a max altitude for the plane using the cannon.

The plane has a twin R-195 turbojet, each providing about 45 kN of thrust at sea level. While the thrust-to-altitude profile depends on the specific engine, for the JT8D-17 the thrust at about 7km altitude is about halved. Assuming this is comparable, that leaves 45 kN of thrust for the R-195 at 7km.

The cannon is dual-barrel, projectile weight 390 g, muzzle velocity 870 m/s, rate of fire 50/s. Or a total of 390 x 2 x 50 = 39 kg expelled forwards, per second, at 870 m/s. This gives a backwards thrust of about 34 kN, leaving only 11 kN of forwards thrust = stall.
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About time stamp : look at the video a bit later, you see there is nothing under the wings.

That would be true if it was firing *constantly*. No fighter does that, it only in short burst because ammunition is very limited. Forget topgun films ;). But it has barely any munition to fire about 10 to 20 seconds and NO fighter will fire that long (technical detail I read are about 800 bullets).

Your reasonning is good if it had infinite ammunition it does not.

Again I reiterate : show me the technical doc saying the altitude is restricted due to that. You will not find it.

The restriction on altitude is due to the aerodynamic change when the pod are loaded.
 
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