Russian military intervention and aid to Syria #14

JohninMK wrote:

franco wrote:

Isos wrote:Idk if it was already shared.

FSB Diamond DA42T spy plane.

Basically a manned UAV

They've certainly loaded some stuff into that. Is it the Austrian aircraft?

Is it in Syria?

It's a few month old pic. The plane was spotted in Syria.

JohninMK wrote:Woofers
@N0tWoofers
· 5h
Reportedly the 23rd Division’s headquarters just got flattened. The 23rd division is an old group which has been in Turkey’s pocket since 2018 when they invaded Efrîn.

GEROMAN
@GeromanAT
·
3h
The Russian Aerospace Forces struck at the entrance to the underground shelter on the territory of the militants' facility on the mountain east of the Kakh settlement, which had already been hit by a ballistic missile on 03/21/21

MapperKrumm
@Krummapper
·
4h
Geolocation of RuAF strike to SNA HQ near Qah, Turkish/Syria border.
https://satellites.pro/Syria_map#36.2





Before the hit photo

Within Syria
@WithinSyriaBlog
·
4h
A satellite image shared by @Archer83Able reveal that the first strike didn't target the main yard of the 23rd Division, but a large tunnel entrance.

Early reports of many casualties as a result of Russian airstrikes that targeted the HQ of the Syrian National Army 23rd Division in Qah.





Looks to be a reasonable size munition.






CM
@CaricaMil
·
2h
Strikes on caves in most cases are without any effect. While HTS and gangs drive around convoys and artillery freely.After airstrike on cave HTS shell northern Aleppo

Sorry about the sound track but Video at link https://twitter.com/i/status/1453352183244759056

That was the answer to the drones attack in Donbass. Dear Turkey, if you attack our proxies in Ukraine, we look at your Syria.

ALAMO wrote:

Mig-31BM2 Super Irbis-E wrote:

That was the answer to the drones attack in Donbass. Dear Turkey, if you attack our proxies in Ukraine, we look at your Syria.

Enlight me in details how Turkey is responsible for the results of using by the Ukraine systems they sold them?

They don't. It's a false equivalents. Essentially this was Russia responding to terrorists in Syria. The results on Ukraine didn't do anything and at best 1 guy died or no one died. So I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that it's some response.....

I was not going to reply to this news . Since I am now completely confused ! And feel I had  nothing to say . Side with America against Turkey ? I thought it was better to side with Turkey against America . Keep out of it , and let the Turks move South , and then clash with the Yanks ! Then when they are in need , move in and demand terms to rescue them from the evil clutches of the Americans ! Same as leaving the Egyptians to support Haftar in Libya against Turks , sowing discord amongst the NATO and allies , and then imposing terms on the most agreeable side !

But then I also said that the weakest enemy should be defeated first in Syria . Consolidating useful territory and forces , and then moving against the strongest side . In this way , it makes sense to move against the Turks first and then the Americans . But as long as doing so does not empower the Americans , or allows them more territory or forces in Syria ? Yes I am confused.......

Helping the lesser evil against the greater evil ? Or the least powerful against the most powerful ? Defeating the Rats , a very evil , but not so powerful , did not need an alliance with the Yanks . But if the greater and most powerful evil , can not be defeated alone , then side with the lesser evil against the greater evil ......

nomadski wrote:I was not going to reply to this news . Since I am now completely confused ! And feel I had  nothing to say . Side with America against Turkey ? I thought it was better to side with Turkey against America . Keep out of it , and let the Turks move South , and then clash with the Yanks ! Then when they are in need , move in and demand terms to rescue them from the evil clutches of the Americans ! Same as leaving the Egyptians to support Haftar in Libya against Turks , sowing discord amongst the NATO and allies , and then imposing terms on the most agreeable side !

But then I also said that the weakest enemy should be defeated first in Syria . Consolidating useful territory and forces , and then moving against the strongest side . In this way , it makes sense to move against the Turks first and then the Americans . But as long as doing so does not empower the Americans , or allows them more territory or forces in Syria ? Yes I am confused.......

Helping the lesser evil against the greater evil ? Or the least powerful against the most powerful ? Defeating the Rats , a very evil , but not so powerful , did not need an alliance with the Yanks . But if the greater and most powerful evil , can not be defeated alone , then side with the lesser evil against the greater evil ......

This is what I was thinking.

Is there any chance that Russia and Turkey have a secret backdoor deal, where Turkey pretends it going all out against the Kurds and Russia pretends that it is Russia and not the US that can/will protect them, in order to get the Kurds come to terms on the deal with Russia and the Syrian government?

Right now the US and Turkey and Israel are involved in Syria so Russia has to communicate and work with all three... this is nothing to do with selecting or changing sides, and nothing to do with finding new friends and alliances.

The situation on the ground is what it is and if Russia wants to promote change for the better for Syria and the Syrian government then they need to talk to the countries friendly with the terrorists.

Working with Turkey does not mean suddenly ISIS is the good guys, and working with America does not mean the Kurds get a free pass and everything they want... which is fair enough because the evidence so far has been the same between these two groups where the kurds don't care about ISIS fighting assads forces and isis don't care about kurds fighting assads forces either.

Does not make them friends or allies of course but they remain the problem to peace and stability in Syria.

Their might have been a hope for ISIS supported by Turkey and the Europe, might have been led into a conflict with the Kurds supported by the Americans, but I think although ideal from an Assad, Iran, Russia perspective, would be very very unlikely and would not last long.

The real problem is the west sees the ISIS and Kurdish forces as groups they can use against Assad and indirectly against Russia and Iran... the sooner Russia or Assad or Iran or anyone can make both groups less appealing the sooner this conflict will be sorted out.

The sooner ISIS is wiped out the better for everyone, but the Kurds will remain an issue... Russia just needs to point out that Russia and Assad want a lasting solution that might include autonomy but likely not independence any time soon, while the US sees the Kurds as a stick they can use to poke the Bear and Assad.

Perhaps they need to have explained to them that life as a poking stick can be short and violent and not effective at all.... but they are desperate and likely would accept help from any quarter without thinking too much about it.

#Syria: this morning #Russia bombed same area than 3 days ago in Qah, on border with Afrin region. Thermobaric ordnance used, creating a massive fireball.

The Russians/Soviets are experts at destroying tunnels... they got plenty of experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

I remember reading about their engineer tactics for dealing with a vertical tunnel entrance.

The vertical tunnel entrance is a vertical hole in the ground that has side tunnels that lead to bunkers... the vertical holes go past the tunnels and end in a dead end so if you drop a hand grenade into the vertical tunnel it will land in the bottom and all the explosion and dust and fragments will be directed up and will not go down the tunnels.

Sometimes they used to take RPO launchers and lean over the lip of the hole and launch rockets into the side tunnels but you risk getting shot and the effect does not go down the tunnel very far because of the angle you are firing the rocket means it will explode inside the tunnel but not very far inside it.

The normal solution was to call up an engineer who normally took some detonator cord... which is just HE rolled into a long piece of plastic covered string. They had enormous numbers of captured western mines so take an anti tank mine and poke the detonator cored into the fuse well and loop the det cord around it so it is holding the weight of the mine.... then about 1 or 2 metres of det cord and then put a blob of about 80 grammes of plastic explosive wrapped around the det cord and then get a straight piece of rope with two guys holding the rope away from the tunnel opening. Hang the mine and the blob of HE and the det cord over the rope so you form a triangle Y shape where two bits of the Y are rope and one is det cord... the combination of the rope and the det cord holds the mine in the centre of the hole without the people holding the rope or the det cord needing to stick their heads over the lip of the hole and risk getting shot.

Feed the rope down till the mine is level with a side tunnel... tie off the ropes and det cord and attach a detonator to the det cord and detonate.

The rope holds the det cord in the centre of the vertical hole. When detonated the det cord explodes at a speed of about 3km/s... it reaches the blob of HE first which explodes first.... miliseconds later the det cord in the mine fuse explodes and sets off the land mine.

It sounds really complicated, but it is simple and cheap and relatively safe to do.

If you just dropped a mine or a HE bomb down the tunnel all the blast would come up and out of the tunnel and the side tunnels would be fine.

Doing it this way the HE blob creates a gas plug which blocks the tunnel above so the explosion of the mine is directed back down and out into the side tunnels and was much more effective than just using huge amounts of HE....

They would have scouts around the place when they detonated because often there were multiple entrances... early on they would focus on the found entrance and start taking casualties when muj from other hidden entrances would pop up and shoot at them while they were dealing with the tunnel entrance they had found.

Very complex tunnel systems were often dealt with using this method... engineers normally carry det cord and plastic explosive, and the anti tank mines they used had been captured from the enemy, but any 6-8kg bomb could be used instead in a pinch... say a couple of 82mm mortar bombs or something similar.

I've always said that you should ignore any statements of 'imminent war' in Syria unless Russia starts to spread their aerospace forces around Syria. Even with the recent deployments to Qamishli, I remain sceptical until we start seeing S-400's, BUK's & Tor-M's start to pop up there, in addition to Russian Armed Forces to protect the base from any rebel mortair attack.

I believe we will continue to see similar developments well into next month. If we start hearing rumours that T4 AFB or Tabqa AFB or Aleppo AFB have RuAF assets (including air-defenses) being deployed there (Su-30's, Su-27's or Su-35's) then we can start to assume the Russians are preparing for a conflict in North/North-Esat Syria. Note that these deployments would follow a massive air-lift (and sea-lift from the Black Sea) campaign from Mozdok via Iran to Syria for additional air-asset deployment. So far we have not see this at all, so I remain skeptical.

Edit: There are some rumors that they've deployed:

• 4x Su-35S's (at least one confirmed by photos)
  
• ?x Su-34's (alleged)
  
• ?x Mig-29's (alleged)
  
• ?x Mi-8's (alleged, though they have plenty of them in NE Syria already)
  
• ?x Mi-35's (alleged, though they have plenty of them in NE Syria already)
  
• 1x Ka-52's (confirmed with video)
  
• 1x An-32 (alleged)

We will know the real force distribution there in the following weeks. Currently the base lacks confirmation of figher-bombers (Su-34's/Su-30's) and bomber aircraft (Su-24's) and air-defense (Tor-M2's, BUK's, S-300V4/S-400's) to really make it a proper Russian AFB.

That airport was used since long time ago. They just didn't had all the stuff to operate jets from there.

Like I said it is a small airport very close to the Turkish border and could be quickly destroy by mortars and artillery. Russia can't fly recco drones and fighters above turkish territory to control the area.

They use just because it is a low intensity conflict and it is close to the frontline. Also it is in the former US hold territory so this way US can't come back the same as in the begining when they controled all the eastern Syria.

We may see air defense systems rather sooner than later. Good to see that Syrian AF operating out of there alongside Russian.