As Vilnius is in Lithuania and Lithuania is in NATO, Putin may consider Vilnius for New York a double win.

As for Russia's end game I submit that is too far in the future. In the near term I think he is more concerned with reesatablishing Russia's Cold War sphere of influence. Some of this is not possible as the Warsaw Last countries are deeply embedded in Europe but the Baltic States, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are much easier targets.

Russia lost its Mediterranean ports and anchorage so reestablishing their Syrian port is a logical step.

Mark Galeotti is a highly regarded British academic with deep insight into Putin's mindset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti

In this short recording dated February 2017, he was prophetic about Putin v Trump.

ORAC,

Good to see the discussion going into the tech. direction, not political.



Why sea only? It works over solid ground, too. But talking about East Med, water matters, indeed.



I did not mean that kind of a radar, but more "classic" ones, with some 3000 km range.



Direct identification is of course not possible, but simply excluding "friends" we get "foe".
As for "highly jammed", it depends on particular wave length.
It would be very hot around 10 GHz, but OTHRs typically operate in the 2-30 MHz window.
I would be interested to see a jammer for this bandwidth.

Russia hasn't got a long range OTH radar which covers the region. They do have a newer coastal OTH, "Sunflower", but only back in Russia and not covering the area. Even if they had its VHF band and eminently jammable.

I did a tour based at 280SU in Cyprus back in the day - I wish you luck. Ignoring all the air traffic talking to Nicosia, Tel Aviv etc there are many many more operating autonomously talking to nobody doing various surveillance tasks - none of whom could arbitrarily designated as a foe.

You said. Not the Russians :rolleyes:

Nobody has. The mountain terrain north, east and west precludes a long range OTH and Syria and Lebanon don’t have coastal VHF surface wave radars. Israel probably has - but that wouldn’t help the Syrians much.

Russia claiming they have evidence of who carried out the chemical attack on Douma. Can you guess who they say the evidence implicates ....



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKBN1HK24P





JAS

The Russians have a real thing about English Spies... if only they really were so effective.......

The Iranians will believe them. We are the “Little Satan” after all - and they have long believed we are the Machiavellian schemers leading on the gullible Americans...

In a roundabout way it’s a compliment; even during Cold War they believed all James Bond gadgets were real, and they’ve used the phrase “licenced to kill” in present crisis. But none of that turns bombarding Syria, with the possible exception of confirmed CW sites, into a good idea.

Feels like a bit of a set-up for a strike on UK military locations or ships/aircraft i.e. if Russians are killed during a strike on Syria, attacking British mil is a slightly less confrontational way of seriously hitting back than hitting US mil. They are certainly are pretty p***** off with the UK for the global reaction to Salisbury. Testing Britain, NATO and Trump, with just enough to leave some wriggle-room to de-escalate

It’s an odd one. The “it could have been staged by the rebels” and “what good can come of intervention?” viewpoints were really starting to gain traction in the UK; in fact General Jonathan Shaw was making just that point on Sky News when he was inexplicably cut off earlier today. The tide was certainly running against action, in my view anyway. This accusation by Russia makes it a lot harder for those viewpoints to get a fair hearing and if anything strengthens the Government’s case for action. Do we think Russia actually *wants* us to attack so that it can exploit divisions in the aftermath?

Russians trying to cash in and spin on the recent propaganda story that UK Special Forces were captured near Damascus as the Syrians advanced.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...aptured-troops

This is all starting to look rather complex, and definitely not helped by Trump's first "missiles are coming" tweet (which must have had the US miltary top brass doing somersaults!).

Although the Maybot is an inadequate fool, I do feel for her right now as she's kind of damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. If I was in her position I'd pluck for the parliamentary vote and keep fingers crossed it gets voted down - then at least she can say she tried. And, in the meanwhile hopefully things will de-escalate.

I'm not exactly one for appeasement, but as somebody pointed out above, with two lunatics in charge of things (Putin and Trump) the last thing we want to do is provoke even further, surely?

Saw that myself on sky, I was aghast that they chopped him mid sentence when it became obvious he had an alternative viewpoint. Very sinister.........

a distinct smell of fish detected!

Indeed, not that subtle either!

If its voted down, she is out, and she knows it, hence avoidance of that route.

A golden opportunity for an operational trial of the S-400 system - the one manned by the Syrian Army of course.

Trump on air now.
US, UK and France have launched strikes.
AP reporting explosions heard in Damascus.
Pentagon briefing in 50 minutes.

EDIT : Interestingly, both aircraft and ships used - JASSM and Stormshadow?
Strikes reported in several districts around Damascus.
Already video on Twitter.
CNN reporting RAF Tornado GR4s fired Stormshadows at facilities around Homs.

...not forgetting that old adage that 'tracer (missiles) go both ways..'

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?