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And next, Syria?

Mr.Bishie said:
elbows - has anything more come out about this?
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OK see the other thread where a link has recently been posted to analysis attempts by Brown Moses. Some of the other posts on that blog, which are mentioned in the post that was linked to, contain a variety of thoughts from people about the idea of rebels mishandling such weapons. None of it is so compelling as to cause me to suddenly form a concrete opinion, but its food for though.
 
This video appears to show a Syrian air force fighter jet being shot down. Interesting because unless it was a technical fault, or some million-to-one chance it was shot down with small arms fire, it shows that the rebels are using manpads and other hi-tech anti-aircraft weapons, more than likely provided by us (us being the US and it's clients)



Giving the rebels effective anti-armour and anti-aircraft weapons is much more likely to have a decisive impact on the battlefield than cruise missile strikes, but at the same time are exactly the sort of things you don't want al-qaeda to get their hands on. Dread to think what might happen if one or two of those ended up in the wrong hands...

EDIT: This is from a few days ago, might have to reconsider what I was just saying about how much of an impact cruise missiles strikes could have.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syria-military-us-missile-strikes

I'll add more later this afternoon/evening
 
Delroy Booth said:
This video appears to show a Syrian air force fighter jet being shot down...
Click to expand...

i can't tell what it was shot down by as the video starts too late in the story for that, but they've been having some success for at least 2 years in shooting down aircraft at low-ish level - obviously they have MANPADS, probably a good many liberated from the Syrian Army's own stocks, but its quite likely that a lot of their success comes from using anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23 family probably..) which were pretty well distributed in the old, pre-civil war Syrian Army, and also happen to be very effective against ground targets.

for the not-pathetically-sad, Russian trained/equipped militaries had an anti-aircraft doctrine that put the bulk of the anti-air effort at Company/Battalion/Regimental level, so that every formation would have some anti-aircraft capability - whether in the form of AA Guns (which make up the bulk of the AA capability because they are cheaper to produce, easy to use and have a useful ground combat capability) or small, shoulder-launched missiles - and as soon an an enemy aircraft appeared, everyone would open up with whatever they had. they did/do also use the 'SAM's we think of SA-2/3/4 etc.. at Divisional/Corps level but less reliance is placed on them because NATO Air Forces quickly developed effective weapons and tactics to be used against static and emitting radar systems - being a Radar operator in the Red Army would have been a very exciting, and probably short-lived job had WW3 broken out...Western doctrine is very different, with Anti-Air being a 'Force' role, the bulk of it being done by aircraft, and with relatively minimal effort placed on ground forces except in point defence for HQ's and Logs bases, and even then only with the intention of forcing attacking aircraft to fly higher so defending fighters can shoot them down more easily.

the differening doctrines explain why rebel groups in almost any country with a Russian/Soviet trained/equipped military manage to get their mits on AA weapons and enjoy some success in shooting down government aircraft - its simply because they can find AA weapons that are relatively easy to use and are spread down to a low/local level within the military, so they are much more likely to be ble to capture them.

certainly some of the outside countries have 'helpfully' provided MANPADS to these AQ affiliates - and only a myopic fool would suggest that there is no danger of one of them finding its way to the end of a runway at Heathrow (400+ dead on the plane, and god alone knows how many dead when 450 tons of burning aircraft ploughs into Windsor...), however MANPADS, for all their theoretical danger and mass production, have made nothing like the impact on Terrorism than they 'should' have - it turns out that MANPADS are much more difficult to maintain and use than was advertised.

we know, for example, that PIRA got hold of 12 SA-7 STRELA's in the 1980's - but had enormous difficulty in getting them to play a sigificant role in their armed struggle. at the time, very few British helicopters had any kind of defensive aids to ward off SAM's, and PIRA were probably the most effective, well trained and imaginative insurgency groups round - yet even they were unable to make them really count.
 
kebabking said:
i can't tell what it was shot down by as the video starts too late in the story for that, but they've been having some success for at least 2 years in shooting down aircraft at low-ish level - obviously they have MANPADS, probably a good many liberated from the Syrian Army's own stocks, but its quite likely that a lot of their success comes from using anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23 family probably..) which were pretty well distributed in the old, pre-civil war Syrian Army, and also happen to be very effective against ground targets.

for the not-pathetically-sad, Russian trained/equipped militaries had an anti-aircraft doctrine that put the bulk of the anti-air effort at Company/Battalion/Regimental level, so that every formation would have some anti-aircraft capability - whether in the form of AA Guns (which make up the bulk of the AA capability because they are cheaper to produce, easy to use and have a useful ground combat capability) or small, shoulder-launched missiles - and as soon an an enemy aircraft appeared, everyone would open up with whatever they had. they did/do also use the 'SAM's we think of SA-2/3/4 etc.. at Divisional/Corps level but less reliance is placed on them because NATO Air Forces quickly developed effective weapons and tactics to be used against static and emitting radar systems - being a Radar operator in the Red Army would have been a very exciting, and probably short-lived job had WW3 broken out...Western doctrine is very different, with Anti-Air being a 'Force' role, the bulk of it being done by aircraft, and with relatively minimal effort placed on ground forces except in point defence for HQ's and Logs bases, and even then only with the intention of forcing attacking aircraft to fly higher so defending fighters can shoot them down more easily.

the differening doctrines explain why rebel groups in almost any country with a Russian/Soviet trained/equipped military manage to get their mits on AA weapons and enjoy some success in shooting down government aircraft - its simply because they can find AA weapons that are relatively easy to use and are spread down to a low/local level within the military, so they are much more likely to be ble to capture them.
Click to expand...

Appreciate that detail, thanks. I did my degree in IR and I remember being in lectures with titles such as "The history of armored personnel carriers" and "The geopolitical impact of the mass-produced RPG" and I must confess I remember my eyes glazing over as much of this kind of stuff was being discussed. That and the right-wingers barely able to conceal their arousal every time anyone mentioned military hardware put me off IR for life, but nontheless all this stuff is really important, all the politics that goes on rests upon it really.

This soviet doctrine would explain why you see so many instances of static AA guns (not the ZSU self-propelled ones, but these kinds of ones which were produced in huge numbers) being crudely welded to the backs of pickup trucks and used as anti-personnel weapons, in Libya in particular but genereally places in the former soviet bloc where there's been uprisings. If AA weapons like that were in every battalion then it's not hard to see how they'd be amongst the first weapons that rebels would loot from the armies they were fighting, if they're so spread out at every level then they'd be the prized loot every time you overrun a small base, and if every company or so has a few of these knocking around then yeah it makes sense when you see them being used that way today.

Despite that I don't think that it's likely many Syrian airforce jets have been shot down using these weapons, for a number of a reasons. Firstly, there's the fact that Syria has total air superiority. There are no other fighter jets to worry about, so the Syrian air force can use it's jets at a higher altitude safely out of the way of these kinds of AA weapons without worrying about getting caught up in combat with other fighter aircraft. It makes little sense for them to be flying at low height that makes them targets for these (fairly basic) AA guns with limited range when they have the whole sky uncontested. The other reason is for that type of anti-aircraft weapon to be effective, like you mentioned, it would involve quite a large number (maybe a whole battalion) of well trained soldiers, all firing these weapons into the air at the same time, for it to have any realistic chance of hitting a jet. It requires a massive expenditure of bullets, you'd have to be stockpiling ammo especially for these purposes for it to have a chance of working, and that's hard enough when you have a professional army backed up by a state, but when it's a group of rebels with limited ammunition, poor organisation, fewer numbers and little training it becomes highly unlikely. Not impossible, but a bit of forlorn hope.

Now there are exception. For example, in the 2003 Iraq war General Al-Hamdani of the Iraqi republican guard managed to damage a squad of Apache helicopters quite severely, causing them to be grounded and delaying the invasion of Baghdad a few days as a result, simply by waiting for them to fly over a certain town at a low-ish height and getting every adult male he could to stand on their roof and fire off their AK47's, along with all the very basic static AA guns. You can find it here on this documentary:



My guess is that it's probaby mechanical failure that is the leading cause of these aircraft getting downed, that Guardian article I posted a bit earlier suggests the Syrian airforce is in bad shape and lets be honest these are decades old ex-soviet jets they can't be in the best of shape. If they are being shot out of the sky by the rebels I'd also lean towards it being manpads rather than the types of AA weapons we're on about, but it's all speculation so who knows.

kebabking said:
certainly some of the outside countries have 'helpfully' provided MANPADS to these AQ affiliates - and only a myopic fool would suggest that there is no danger of one of them finding its way to the end of a runway at Heathrow (400+ dead on the plane, and god alone knows how many dead when 450 tons of burning aircraft ploughs into Windsor...), however MANPADS, for all their theoretical danger and mass production, have made nothing like the impact on Terrorism than they 'should' have - it turns out that MANPADS are much more difficult to maintain and use than was advertised.

we know, for example, that PIRA got hold of 12 SA-7 STRELA's in the 1980's - but had enormous difficulty in getting them to play a sigificant role in their armed struggle. at the time, very few British helicopters had any kind of defensive aids to ward off SAM's, and PIRA were probably the most effective, well trained and imaginative insurgency groups round - yet even they were unable to make them really count.
Click to expand...

This is true as well, but c'mon they only need to get it right once. And besides I have a feeling these people in the Syrian rebels have had quite a lot of hands on experience of getting these things to work, something the PIRA for all their ingenuity never really got opportunity to. It's not like you can just hang around outside heathrow practicing with these things 'til you get it right, but in Syria they've had the chance to learn how to use them properly.
 
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agricola said:
Interfax apparently reporting missile launches - "ballistic objects" in the Mediterranean....
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http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...anean-sea-russia/story-fni0xs63-1226710040337

TWO rockets whose launch was detected by Russia splashed down into the sea and may have been fired from a US naval vessel for the purposes of weather reconnaissance, a Russian military source told the Interfax news agency.

"The rockets ... could have been fired from an American ship in the Mediterranean. Given that it seems the rockets fell into the sea, the task of the launch could have been taking a precise reading of the weather conditions," the source told the agency.

A Syrian security source quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency also confirmed that there were two launches earlier on Tuesday, but also said the suspected missiles fell into the sea.
Click to expand...
 
Well a) its a Russian news service, b) weather recon would be part of preparations for an attack, and c) it would be odd to do anything before congress meets.
 
agricola said:
The Guardian stated that it was apparently an Israeli test of an ABM system - dont they have to declare such things in advance?
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In the circumstances they might not be bothered about the formalities of announcing it.

Is this the Israeli armed forces testing out it's anti ballistic missile technology in expectation of a Syrian (counter) attack? Seeing if the scudbusters work before the yanks bomb Syria?
 
Aha, interesting. Probably both a test and a message not to bother trying to attack Israel.

As for declaring things, there are a whole raft of weapons-related things that Israel hasn't signed up to over the years so I doubt they care much beyond keeping important allies informed and making sure they don't cause a PR stink by accidentally blowing up commercial aircraft etc.
 
https://twitter.com/HasanSari7/status/374836531246403584

Apparently someone senior has defected from the Syrian regime, and this person has evidence of Assad using chemical weapons earlier in the year. Of course as with all defectors he's got a vested interest and should be treated with a little bit of caution.

There were shitloads of ex-Gaddafi loyalists who decided to defect once the UN had passed that resolution authorising intervention in Libya, each and every one of them offering proof about what really happened at Lockerbie, each and every one of them looking to save their own skin of course once it became clear the west was going to get rid of Ghaddafi.

But it is still interesting. It shows that despite the Syrian regime holding together much better and longer than anyone expected, with very few defections, is not exactly immune to this. It shows that even the threat of American intervention is enough to make a lot of Assad's henchmen think twice about staying loyal, even people who've stuck with him through all the war and mayhem that's gone on so far. That's real power that, when you can get your enemy to do as you want with just the threat of force. That's hegemony in action. The odds just got a little bit longer for the regime.

This little nugget from the Guardian report is also worth reading:

What he won't do is topple the regime. There's a distinction here.

What he has told the two senators is that he also intends to assist the opposition forces, so he is going to degrade Assad's military capacity and he is going to assist and upgrade the opposition forces with training assistance
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It's been known for some time there's been a US military buildup in Jordan, along with some US special forces operating within Syria based in Jordan, but I'd thought that they were there not as an invasion force (because I really don't think Obama wants to occupy what's left of Syria it's too much of a quagmire) but as a potential post-partition peacekeeping force. They've been building this up for a while, all this has been planned for months, regardless of whether Assad has or hasn't used chemical weapons.

This however suggests it's not just there as a post-Assad peacekeeping force, or to defend the integrity of the Jordanian state which is struggling to cope with the influx of refugees, but is a key part of the operation to remove Assad. The idea this would be a "clinical, surgical, limited" strike is a bit of a bluff I think, something they're saying to make this unpopular war sellable to the general public, remember they said the same about Libya and got a UN resolution to intervene on the basis of saving Benghazi but actually used that resolution to carry out regime change. It's been mentioned on here before, if this is just about Obama posturing it'd be just a few cruise missile strikes, so he can be seen to do something, but this suggests it might be a bit more than that. It would also explain why there's some jittering senior Assad officials. Assad had a reshuffle in his war cabinet a few weeks ago, which is something I got from the Saudi state TV so not the most reliable of sources, but I bet there's some real tensions beginning to emerge now. Might be make or break time this.

It makes sense really because cruise missile strikes might look very good on the rolling news, and they don't put any US soldiers at risk, but at the same time you can't occupy territory and control it with missiles. You need troops to do that. If Obama's serious about toppling Assad, and not just trying to avoid looking weak domestically and internationally, then it would make sense. Maybe this isn't going to a tokenistic response after all?

My guess is that the US, realising that the Free Syrian Army barely exists in any meaningful sense and lost the initiative to the Al-nusrah rebels ages ago, decided to train up their own Free Syrian Army in Jordan instead. They probably handpicked Syrian ex soldiers and the best FSA units a while ago, whisked them away to Jordan, and have trained them for this specific task, to make them the decisive factor in the war.

It would also provide the rationale for the Assad govt to carry out the chemical weapons attack that took place. If this is going on, and it seems like something along these lines is going on but exactly what I can only guess at, then I assume the Syrian govt knows it's going on. The use of chemical weapons might be a deterrent to the US from actually using proxy troops on the ground in Syria. It might be a sign of desperation from the regime. Although they're just about winning the war for now, this is a new development and they might be very worried about it. Hence the desperation tactics.

I'd also keep an eye on what happens with the Druze. They're in a strategically important position, in a mountain range right inbetween the Jordanian border and south of Damascus. On the one hand they're probably not keen on the idea of Assad being toppled and them being subject to the rule of Sunni fundamentalist Al-Qeada lunatics, which is true of most of Syria's minorities, but on the other hand they're right in between the US army based in Jordan and Assad, not a good place to be especially if you're seen as being nominally on Assad's side. I mentioned before that one of the best strategies the US could employ is to try and peel away each of the minority groups that Assad depends upon for support, so for instance it's quite possible the Kurds could be accommodated and turned against Assad if the US agreed to give them an autonomous zone in the post-Assad Syria they're going to carve out at Geneva. Maybe the same is true of the Druze? The minority groups have to be willing to trust the US on this, Uncle Sam has a way of promising a lot but not really caring once the war is over. Ask the Iraqi Shia who rose up against Saddam after the gulf war in 91 about that...

A lot of thinking out loud here so I'm probably wrong about a lot of this. I trust you all already appreciate that :D
 
kebabking said:
we know, for example, that PIRA got hold of 12 SA-7 STRELA's in the 1980's - but had enormous difficulty in getting them to play a sigificant role in their armed struggle. at the time, very few British helicopters had any kind of defensive aids to ward off SAM's, and PIRA were probably the most effective, well trained and imaginative insurgency groups round - yet even they were unable to make them really count.
Click to expand...

I suspect the primary reason for that though was deliberate sabotage, which would be unsurprising given the amount of British agents in their senior leadership . The libyan supply operation was so badly compromised that the demolition charges in place to scuttle the Eksund in event of capture had themselves been sabotaged , permitting the french authorities to seize it intact . So that gives an indication as to how on top of things the brits were . Around 1990 a British helicopter pilot in Tyrone reported a vapour trail close to his aircraft, think that was the closest they got to firing one.
So in the main their attempts to take on the British air cover and transports fell largely to mobile firing platforms utilising the cumbersome Dushkas and the odd GPMG



some years back the Spanish police claimed to have intercepted documents in a raid on ETA which contained a demand for their money back from the provos, due to the fact the SAM 7s they had sold them didnt work . Hence my sabotage theory .
 
Delroy Booth said:
https://twitter.com/HasanSari7/status/374836531246403584

Apparently someone senior has defected from the Syrian regime, and this person has evidence of Assad using chemical weapons earlier in the year. Of course as with all defectors he's got a vested interest and should be treated with a little bit of caution.

There were shitloads of ex-Gaddafi loyalists who decided to defect once the UN had passed that resolution authorising intervention in Libya, each and every one of them offering proof about what really happened at Lockerbie, each and every one of them looking to save their own skin of course once it became clear the west was going to get rid of Ghaddafi.

But it is still interesting. It shows that despite the Syrian regime holding together much better and longer than anyone expected, with very few defections, is not exactly immune to this. It shows that even the threat of American intervention is enough to make a lot of Assad's henchmen think twice about staying loyal, even people who've stuck with him through all the war and mayhem that's gone on so far. That's real power that, when you can get your enemy to do as you want with just the threat of force. That's hegemony in action. The odds just got a little bit longer for the regime.
Click to expand...

i think a car boot full of Saudi money is a more likely explanation than any military threat . Particularly since the crackdown on corruption thats seen a lot of senior people get the boot .
 
Delroy Booth said:
But it is still interesting. It shows that despite the Syrian regime holding together much better and longer than anyone expected, with very few defections, is not exactly immune to this. It shows that even the threat of American intervention is enough to make a lot of Assad's henchmen think twice about staying loyal, even people who've stuck with him through all the war and mayhem that's gone on so far. That's real power that, when you can get your enemy to do as you want with just the threat of force. That's hegemony in action. The odds just got a little bit longer for the regime.
Click to expand...

On a related note, there was some suggestion that in Iraq, when Baghdad took more days to fall than the US had been telling journalists etc that it would, that the US had been communicating with certain key military etc figures in Iraq and thought they had a deal in place. But for whatever reason things didn't go exactly according to plan and so there was a slight delay in taking Baghdad.

Likewise in Libya, when Tripoli eventually fell it all happened so quickly that there is some suggestion that deals were done which prevented the defenders of Tripoli from bothering to do their job.

This however suggests it's not just there as a post-Assad peacekeeping force, or to defend the integrity of the Jordanian state which is struggling to cope with the influx of refugees, but is a key part of the operation to remove Assad.
Click to expand...

Well the term peace-keeping force is a loaded term anyway, and it's long been known that US reservations about the nature of some of the groups fighting in Syria is an issue they need to overcome if they are serious about regime change. That simple picture is however complicated by the real nature of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the USA. e.g. whether the US really hates some of the Islamist rebels as much as is suggested, and to what extent the support for armed groups by the likes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia represents something that complicates the US approach rather than being an extra proxy layer that the US actually fully supports.

Certainly when comparing to post-regime Libya and Iraq, the USA will have to be a bit more cautious about certain kinds of security and stability in Syria. Mostly because of its proximity to Israel and the fact that there are all sorts of hardcore weapons currently under the control of Syrias military that will need to be secured.

The use of chemical weapons might be a deterrent to the US from actually using proxy troops on the ground in Syria. It might be a sign of desperation from the regime. Although they're just about winning the war for now, this is a new development and they might be very worried about it. Hence the desperation tactics.
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Well they will care much less about proxy troops dying than US troops, so long as its not enough death to totally neuter the force. All the same the possession of chemical weapons by Syria is certainly a notable factor that differs from other countries that gave up such deterrents and then got crushed eventually anyway.
 
Well they would say that. But all the same this will be a more interesting test than the sort of shit we have become used to in recent decades, where the US & pals have tended to attack countries whose defensive systems have been degraded over long periods of time prior to the attack. Military hardware details are no speciality of mine, but I certainly would not expect to see the US flying planes all over Syria early on. However I did previously point out that Israel attacked sites in Syria on several occasions without Syrian defences thwarting them.
 
mccain1378243337_image_982w-300x200.jpg


Senator John McCain plays poker on his IPhone during a U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing where Secretary of State JohnKerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey testify concerning the use of force in Syria, on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, Tuesday, September 3, 2013. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Click to expand...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ates/?id=ed01ca14-222b-4a23-b12c-c0b0d9d4fe0a
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...as-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html

Here's an article of what's going on in Libya right now, and a reminder of what happens after we intervene to enforce regime change help civilians and refugees. This is what could potentially happen in Syria post-Assad, a power vacuum filled by warring militia's marked by ethnic cleansing and perpetual sectarian war. But quite possibly worse, due to the geopolitical situation and all the great powers with vested interests in Syria.
 
Libya's particular version of failed state and security vacuum is, in quite a number of ways, quite different to what we are likely to see in Syria should the Assad regime be eliminated. Thats not to suggest things would be better or worse in Syria, just different, and I already ranted a few posts back about some of the considerations that will bother the external players who are meddling in Syria today.

And although for a long time I held out far more hope for Libya than has proven to be warranted, a large part of the reason I kept moaning about comparisons people were making between Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan is the very different nature of all sorts of things in these countries. The fighting and the consequences are quite different, with fear, death and power struggles being the main common denominators. It is hard to read that independent article and make comparisons stick. Considering the wide array of alarming yet fascinating phenomenon taking place in Libya today it must be a testament to the crapness of our media and the amount of stuff going on in the world these days that we don't have a long thread detailing all the stuff going on there.
 
Delroy Booth said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23955655

Slight change in posture off the Russians? Apparently they'd be willing to accept a UN resolution authorising an attack on Syria if the chemical weapons attack can be proven. If this is a game of chicken between Russia and the USA then Putin blinked first.
Click to expand...

its the same posture theyve had from day one. Theyre rooting their opposition firmly in international law , the subject Putin did his phd in. The west are making the excuse the proper UN channels cant be used to address the issue because Russia is blocking them to protect an ally engaged in crimes against humanity, and therefore undermining international law. Therefore they will instead examine their secret evidence in secret and insist everyone trusts them on the conclusions, having already pronounced syria guilty beforehand.
Putin is saying if youve got the actual proof bring it for rigorous examination by the appropriate authorities and theyll abide by international law regardless of the outcome. Therefore the appropriate channels arent blocked As Putin clearly believes the whole thing is staged anyway he doesnt want to see his insistence they abide by international law used as an excuse by the west to break it .

Its restating the point that Russias position is based firmly upon legality and legitimacy and not cynical partisanship
 
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