Thread:SlyCooperFan1/@comment-28452503-20160726100919/@comment-28452503-20160727051904

The "unknown reasons" part refers to why the Grey Men felt they were finally ready to put their plans into action; the first sentence of the "planning and execution" subheading clearly states they started planning and preparing long before the Circum-Pacific War's outbreak. Those are things I think we all agree on.

The thing is, however, we cannot definitively say that the unidentified fighters were Yuktobanian either. During the first two cutscenes and Shorebirds, Genette and other Oseans refer to the bogeys as "unidentified aircraft". My issue with saying they are Yuke aggressors stems from Osea's inability to identify its own ally's aircraft after nearly two decades of friendship. can only positively identify friendlies, so if the Yukes did deal the first blow, it begs the question: what provoked such a response?

Nikanor and his anti-war proselytizing would surely never authorize such action unless duly justified. Many of the plot's later revelations—8492 is Grabacr, Belkans are performing secretive ops within Osea and Yuktobania, etc. — allude to the Grey Men's early manipulation of the war. We also know that the Grey Men had operatives planted on both sides of the field, and as that last contributor points out, Grabacr did commit terrorist acts while masquerading as an Osean squadron. It's likely the Belkans used their operatives to attack both countries while pretending to be Yuke and Osean aircraft. By staging similiar attacks in Yuktobania posing as Oseans around the same time as the attacks in Osea, the Belkans obscured who shot first, compelling both superpowers to assume the other was responsible.

I like Plt. Pao Ayo's idea of Yuke aggressors led by Belkan puppetmasters, but it also begs the question: why would Yukes follow Belkan orders? That leads to a lot of conjecture.

And it's also worth nothing that AC5 is told through a very Osea-biased perspective ; the Oseans did not get a clear ID  on the hostile aircraft and only assumed them to have been Yukes after being attacked in Narrow Margin. This assumption played right into the Grey Men's hands.

Those are just my thoughts on the matter. I'm loving the discussion this has generated! The trouble with this article is, as Sylvered pointed out, the entire work of the Grey Men is quite literally a conspiracy lol... But I think it's one we can piece together with AC5's contextual clues.