Gen Dunford just said no Russian SAMs - just Syrian.
CNN also report Bones used.

Pentagon briefing

No response by Russian forces. No coordination or advance notice of targets given to Russians except usual daily airspace coordination message from the CAOC in Qatar last night.

Attack was made against three Syrian targets A CW storage site, an HQ and a CW research facility at 2100 EST. Attack was made with both cruise missiles and manned aircraft. uS, British and French forces used in the attack.

BDR will take place overnight and a further briefing will be given tomorrow morning at 0900 EST.

I will be interested to see what weapons were used against the storage site to minimise the release and spread of the CW in the local area.

For clarity, the attack was at 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT, not EST), i.e. 0100Z.

Some eyewitness reports and video starting to come in on Syrian TV:

@alibunkallsky (Sky News) reporting all four Tornados returned safely. How’s about that then, Van? :D

The Pentagon press conference said that around double the number of missiles were fired compared to the Shayrat attack, which would make 120ish. Syrian TV is claiming 13 shot down. Not a great advertisement for the vaunted anti-missile capabilities, in fact a significant embarrassment if true given the rhetoric from Moscow.

MOD Statement

Looks like Storm Shadow was used against stored CW precursors. Presumably they’ll have assessed that releasing precursors in an isolated area would be an acceptable risk.

Yes - what's with this all singing, all dancing `feared' S-400 that can hold everything out to Cyprus, down to Israel and up to Turkey at threat?
There are reportedly at least two in the area.
Russians supposedly not given a heads up; so did they or the Syrians choose not to use it?

From the MOD statement:

We appreciate the UK's enormous level of support in our military actions. :ok:

A face saving strike where the combatants signalled their intentions well in advance. The S400 did not fire at the GR4s and a handful of missiles hit a few sites around Damascus.

In next weeks news a dozen innocent people die in London as an IS radical plows van into crowd...says its revenge for Syria.

About 120 I believe - and there are reports of B-1 involvement.

BBC also reporting use of Storm Shadow- the footage (MOD released) clearly shows each aircraft carrying a pair each. Target was on CW precursors just outside Homs.

Below the line, what valuable target can be hit if strikes are announced days ahead? You could even see the Russian navy moving out ships out of their base for days and their air defence looks like having remained silent. So everything was agreed before? Even Israel seems to pre-coordinate things with Russia these days.

So is this more than a show? Not exactly some credible chemical weapons deterrence it seems. Two days of evening headlines news and this was it.

Russian defence ministry now claiming Syria AD downed 150 of the 120 missiles launched against the country...

This is all a bit worrying.
There's a farm just a few yards from us with a shed full of "precursors"

Sounds like a pretty formidable IADS they have there.....

BBC now reporting that there will be no retrospective vote to approve last nights strikes.......
Its a bit late anyway now anyway?

If there’s any revenge from this it won’t be from IS; they and all the other Sunni Islamist nutters are opposed to Assad so will presumably be happy to see his stuff getting broken. It will be Iran, Hezbollah or more likely Russia that does something about it...

Everyone talks about how Putin plays the West, but I’ve actually quite enjoyed watching the West play him back. He doesn’t like it does he? Lots more to come ‘out of sight’ on this I fancy.

The west responded way better to Skripal than to Assad.

Which he'd have eventually done anyway, not because of Syria but because most people don't agree with his Wahabi view.

It’s the easiest way to avoid US ‘blue on blue’ attacks. :)

Do not worry, "nessun dorma" :rolleyes:

It was announced earlier that the Russians would only respond if the US & Co shoot at them. Nobody did, even no threat in the areas where two Russian bases are located. Thus, why to respond?

Lots of data concerning the western attack have been collected and are/will be analyzed, good.


It seems that the Syrians used everything they had in terms of AD: C-125, C-200, 1st gen of BuK and 2-3 other types of AD systems, still from the times of Soviet Union. They even do not have C-300, while they were sold to Cyprus/Greece in 90's.

I wonder what exactly the intercept ratio was (per type of missile and per type of AD complex). First announcements differ greatly and seem not trustworthy. Western leaders are just saying that the goals have been achieved, which sounds vague. Conversely, the Russian MoD gives too detailed numbers, which I doubt a lot (i.e. 71 missile intercepted of 100+ and also split is provided per attacked facility/airbase):
https://function.mil.ru/news_page/co...2171300@egNews

It's in Russian but autotranslation should work...

Now who said it was a good idea to retire the Tornado fleet?