You are perfectly right giving AK-47 as an example. No intent to blame Turkey, at least from me. Could be simply dropped by the Syrian (governmental) army when they were running away from Daesh. Also black market for such things work, as they are quite compact and good for transportation. Ukraine had these mortars, Hungary even got a manufacturing license. Not so important anyway where they came from. The main idiots are those commanders of that airbase/camp who were/are not keeping planes in HAS or PAS.

Further attack on the airbase.
Syria war: Russia thwarts drone attack on Hmeimim airbase - BBC News

When I was in Murree, you could buy an AK-47 in the market.

Where can’t you buy one?

Now Russians are saying attack was a drone swarm.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone...warm-of-drones

"Swarm" is not the right word in this context, and it was not used even in the Russian (stupid) media (but an English interpreter used it).

"Swarm" is typically used while addressing coordinated, interacting and self-organizing crowd of robotic devices. Too loud in this case where we see just wooden made-on-the-knees drones. And a dozen of them can hardly be considered as a "massive attack".
Nevertheless, it is good, military wise, to deal with such stuff for real training of the airbase personnel and identifying optimal measures to take away various models of this flying b-sh@t.

If it was a swarm (that being the correct plural for multiple unmanned aircraft under control of a single operator or having some element of self control the actual number required to classify it as a swarm is pretty irrelevant) it's actually quite a breakthrough. First reported use of a swarm to attack targets as far as I'm aware.

Even if it was multiple unmanned aircraft under control of multiple operators its still quite a significant event.

Better get them 2.4GHz jammers up and running.

Whomever attacked the airbase with this gaggle/flock/swarm/squadron/flight of armed drones took a page from the Red Army's long standing modus operandi of massing effects. That tells me that a military mind, or one with a good understanding of how to apply effective military tactics, was behind this attack. As one crusty old iron major once pointed out: you may not like the enemy, but never for a moment presume that the enemy is stupid.

Good point made by A_Van about training air base personnel on this as a part of their threat calculus/force protection measures. Likewise the comment in re jamming by unmanned droid.

Wasn't it Stalin who said: "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

The United States may have assisted a drone attack on a Russian airbase in Syria
 

Article in The Times today.

Snip:-

Even in my day there was a US Recce aircraft going north/south along the Syria/Lebanon/Israel border 12-14 hours a day - and thats when there wasn't a war going on in Syria. In fact the suspicious thong wild be if there was'nt a recce aircraft at the time.

There are many "officials" here talking various nonsense - freedom of speech and democracy :-) But on the action side of the matter, formal written claims and complaints were sent to Turkey because a so-called "Idlib de-escalation zone" (where all this crap flew from) is formally under their responsibility. Some more pictures of this work of art:
https://ria.ru/syria/20180110/1512356013.html

Are you buying that, LL? If so, I've got a nice bridge in Booklyn that you might like to buy shares in.

Well I guess anything is possible these days but what is pretty sure is that there are many people that will want to see the data collected by the P8 on that night...

Please don't hesitate to include yourself in between those speech marks.

Merely passing on the article for your amusement... ;)

Russia now hinting at involvement by the Ukraine.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...s-report-23987

A rather delicious irony if they were.

From an article in Japan Today:
"Dmitry Sablin, a lawmaker who coordinates parliamentary links with Syria, told the Interfax news agency the attack was even bigger than the Russian military acknowledged, involving 31 drones."


And in the comments section there re drone bomblets:
"Impovised explosive devices, 400 grams each, full of metal balls with effective killing range up to 50 meters. Ten such IEDs per drone."

Brat I've read your linked article above twice now but find no mention of the Ukraine.

jolihokistix,

In fact, in Russian media there indeed was some mentioning of Ukraine but only in the context that "explosives to make such IEDs are easily accessible on the open market. E.g., the components of that particular explosives found on the drones captured are produced at many chemical plants such as ... including Shostka plant in Ukraine". There was no mentioning that they came out of this specific plant and no blame on any particular group.

Thank you, A_Van.
My guess is that among the anti-Assad factions there are quite a few brainy individuals, maybe Syrian, recruited back from abroad who are able to put something together like these. The fact that they look so similar suggests that there must be a crude manufacturing line somewhere.