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How the U.S.-led Airstrikes in Syria Hit Their Targets Before Assad's Missile Defenses Even Fired

Electronic warfare suppression, a decoy battle group in the Mediterranean and never-before-used stealth missiles were all part of the attack

Haaretz and Reuters Apr 17, 2018 12:20 PM

Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria's chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's progress in the 7-year-old civil war.

The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities, including a research and development center in Damascus' Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.

Russia claimed early Saturday morning that Syrian air defenses had shot down 71 of the over 100 missiles fired by the coalition - a claim the Pentagon refuted. “No Syrian weapon had any effect on anything we did,” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said. He described the joint U.S., French and U.K. strike as “precise, overwhelming and effective.”

In fact, most of the Syrian countermeasures, including air-defense missiles, were fired after U.S. and allied missiles had already hit their targets, McKenzie told reporters on Saturday.

The Syrian air defenses not only missed the incoming missiles but they kept firing even after the last U.S., British and French strikes were complete. Some of those more than 40 Syrian missile interceptors, he suggested, might have hit civilian targets.

According to the Pentagon, 19 new Lockheed Martin “Extended-Range” stealthy Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Attack Munitions (JASSAM) were launched by two B-1B bombers based out of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

The bombers were accompanied by a single EA-6B Prowler for electronic warfare suppression, potentially against Russian air defenses, as well as tanker support, according to a Joint Staff spokesman. Defense News added, "inclusion of the EA-6B is notable, as that aircraft was officially retired by the Navy in 2015 in favor of the more advanced EA-18G Growler."

Six Tomahawk cruise missiles were also launched from the Virginia-class USS John Warner submarine according to the Pentagon. The U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Winston Churchill and another U.S. destroyer, the USS Donald Cook were deployed to the Mediterranean Sea as an apparent decoy to draw Russian and Syrian attention away from the three U.S. battleships which fired the other 60 Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea and North Arabian Gulf.
The cruiser USS Monterey fired 30 Tomahawks and the destroyer USS Laboon fired seven from the Red Sea, while the USS Higgins fired 23 Tomahawks from the North Arabian Gulf, according to McKenzie.


The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.


The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multi-sided war that has killed at least half a million people.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success.

He proclaimed on Twitter: "Mission accomplished," echoing former President George W. Bush, whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years.

"We believe that by hitting Barzeh, in particular, we've attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program," McKenzie said at the Pentagon.

However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, "The United States is locked and loaded."

The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They blame Assad's government for the attack.

In Washington, a senior administration official said on Saturday that "while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use" in the attack.

Speaking at a summit in Peru, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin, saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine.

Assad 'resilience'

Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption "Morning of resilience".

Late on Saturday Syria time, a large explosion was heard in a Syrian government-controlled area in a rural region south of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown, as well as its target.

Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.

The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad's government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.

Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.

Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.

A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were "unacceptable and lawless."

Syrian state media called them a "flagrant violation of international law," while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.

British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as "limited and targeted," with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.

Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.

The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria's ability to produce such weapons.

Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes, the leaders' offices said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.

In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged Russia to drop its "pretense" that Syria was not behind the chemical attack on Douma and use its influence to force the Assad government to destroy its chemical weapons.

"Russia has used its position as a member of the United Nations Security Council to veto resolutions designed to ensure that this chemical weapons crime is thoroughly investigated and cannot be repeated," he told a news conference on Sunday.

"It should stop all the denial and the pretence that it wasn't an action by the Syrian government and ensure that the chemical weapons are destroyed, that the ability of the regime to use chemical weapons is eliminated and that this type of criminal conduct does not occur again."

Weapons inspections

Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.

Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.

The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia. French Defense Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict.

Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: "The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages."

In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad's government of the war.

The Western assault involved more missiles than a U.S. attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria's chemical weapons facilities. The U.S. intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war.

Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad's chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.

Túlio escreveu:Peço encarecidamente que algum Colega tuga convide a dita freira para o DB. Se sabe quantos mísseis foram lançados, quantos foram interceptados, quais os modelos de SAM em uso pela AAAe Síria e até os futuros, bem que merece estar entre nós.

Sendo freira, pode até se tornar a nossa primeira MODERADORA!

Trump's Big Flop In Syria by Publius Tacitus
Tacitus01

Do not believe a word you have heard from the Pentagon and the White House about the "success" of the cruise missile strikes on Friday last. A fraud is being perpetrated on the American people and the world at large. Frankly, General Mattis and General Dunford have dishonored themselves by going along with this charade.

If you could go to the CAOC (i.e., the Combined Air Operations Center) located at the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar and speak to officers working for CENTCOM, you would hear a mixture of disgust, shock and anger from many over the President's claim of "Mission Accomplished." And I am talking about people who have been supportive of President Trump. But Trump, with the sycophants at the Pentagon and the Joint Staff, has crossed a line into delusional thinking.

(By the way, here's a picture of the CAOC courtesy of the US Air Force Central Command.)

170623-F-CH060-0003

Why the discontent?

There are at least three sources--First, the United States fully coordinated and deconflicted the attack in Syria with the Russians; Second, well over 50% of the TLAMs launched by the United States, France and Britain were shot down by air defense systems in Syria; and Third, the pundits (like retired General Jack Keane) and politicians who are insisting foolishly that Russia is a second rate military power and won't hit back.


Let's start with the first issue of "coordination and deconfliction." We have been in daily contact with the Russians telling them where we are flying for almost three years. Who says so? The Associated Press:

FLYING THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES

A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State-held territory across Syria, launching 24 strikes on Thursday alone, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command. The coalition includes some 60 countries, with some launching their own strikes into Syria. Russia is waging its own bombing campaign in support of President Bashar Assad’s forces, while the Syrian government has its own air force and air defense systems. That means a lot of aircraft are flying in a small airspace, which raises the danger for pilots. In November 2015, for instance, NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian jet fighter, nearly sparking an international conflagration.

WATCHING THE WAR FROM QATAR
To protect pilots, Moscow and Washington opened a so-called “deconfliction line” after Russia began its bombing campaign in September 2015. On the U.S. side, it is run out of the Combined Air and Space Operations Center at the vast al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. There, air traffic controllers and senior military officers are in contact with their Russian counterparts in Syria. They share coordinates and other data to avoid midair collisions or confrontations. One U.S. pilot flying missions over Syria credited his safety to it in a recent Associated Press interview .

With this background you can now appreciate how misleading and deceptive General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in answering the following question:

Q: I just want to clarify on the deconfliction line. You notified the Russians ahead of time before the operation began what you were going to do and what targets you were going to strike?

GEN. DUNFORD: Gordon, to be clear, the only — the only communications that took place specifically associated with this operation before the targets were struck was the normal deconfliction of the airspace, the procedures that are in place for all of our operations in Syria.

Russia was told where we were going to strike. Russia in turn warned the Syrians. Both the Syrians and the Russians evacuated key personnel and equipment from the target sites. Any claim by the United States that we caused devastating damage or destroyed essential capabilities is total fantasy.

The second issue concerns the imagined success of the U.S. TLAM strike. Before General Mattis (retired) approached the podium Friday night, he knew full well that a significant number of the inbound missiles had been shot down inside Syria. That is why Mattis closed his press conference with the following comment:

Based on recent experience, we fully expect a significant disinformation campaign over the coming days by those who have aligned themselves with the Assad regime.

Give the old boy his due. He was inoculating the ridiculous operation against legitimate criticism by simply being able to point out that any information contrary to what the Pentagon said was "propaganda." Of course, the enlisted and officers that staff the CAOC know differently. The Russians and Syrians were not lying when they claimed to have downed more than 70 of the U.S., UK and French missiles.

I understand the reluctance of the U.S. military leaders to admit the truth about this debacle. It would undermine the confidence of the American people is our supposedly invincible weapon systems and would embarrass and enrage the man child that inhabits the White House. Better to tell him lies and let him believe the fantasy. But this is a very dangerous game. So far the Russians have not pursued significant PR efforts to expose the U.S. lie about the missiles. Maybe they are choosing to keep quiet, like a good poker player, and not tip their hand to the American public. One of these days Trump and company will over bet in trusting the Russians not to punch back (and punch back hard) and the American people will be in for a rude awakening. They will discover that the Russians have a decided advantage over us when it comes to air defense.

A friend of mine who has expertise in these matters wrote me:

Any air defense engineer with a security clearance that isn't lying through his teeth will admit that Russia's air defense technology surpassed us in the 1950's and we've never been able to catch up. The systems thy have in place surrounding Moscow make our Patriot 3's look like fucking nerf guns.

Finally there is the matter of the Russians as a second rate military masquerading as a world power. Another friend who has spoken with military commanders in the CENTCOM AOR told me:

All of the knowledgeable aircraft commanders are usually scared shitless about the prospect of a legitimate air-to-air skirmish with a SU-30 or any Russian air superiority fighter.

But that is not what blowhards, like retired General Jack Keane, believe:

Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) expressed skepticism over Russia's threat to shoot down U.S. aircraft in Syria.

Russia's defense ministry said planes flying in Syria, west of the Euphrates River, would be considered targets after the U.S. Navy shot down a Syrian warplane.

The Syrian SU-22 had just attacked U.S. partner forces battling ISIS and was shot down by a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet.

Keane said on "Fox & Friends" he sees the statement from the Kremlin as more "talk" and "bluster" by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"That's rubbish. They're not gonna shoot at U.S. airplanes. They're not gonna take on the United States. They have very limited capability in Syria by comparison to U.S. capability," said Keane, a Fox News military analyst.

General Keane is confusing restraint with weakness and incompetence. That is a dangerous and potentially deadly error to make. Russia, unlike the United States, has a very clear, precise strategy in mind with respect to Syria--defeat the rebels (Islamic and otherwise) and preserve Syria as a political entity. They have been willing to roll with some of our punches because they do not want to disrupt the progress they have made.

We are reaching a point now, however, where such restraint cannot and should not be taken for granted. Our intelligence analysts know full well the type of military capabilities the Russians have put in place in Syria. One can only hope that their briefings are not dismissed as "propaganda" because it does not adhere to the party line being pushed by a delusional Donald Trump.

EDSON escreveu:

Túlio escreveu:Peço encarecidamente que algum Colega tuga convide a dita freira para o DB. Se sabe quantos mísseis foram lançados, quantos foram interceptados, quais os modelos de SAM em uso pela AAAe Síria e até os futuros, bem que merece estar entre nós.

Sendo freira, pode até se tornar a nossa primeira MODERADORA!

E se for de blog de um americano?

Túlio escreveu:[


E se for de blog de um americano?

Marechal-do-ar escreveu: Sex Abr 20, 2018 5:07 am Os sírios dizem que abateram mísseis e os americanos dizem que não, e que o ataque foi um sucesso.

Muito bem, o que os americanos conseguiram com esses ataques? Porque esses ataques custaram ao menos 200 milhões de dolares, mas o que eles conseguiram? O que eles ganharam? Que prejuízos causaram ao inimigo?

Pelos danos que vi até agora, com mais "sucessos" assim os EUA vão à falência...

THE SKEPTICS
Here Are All the Reasons Striking Syria Was a Bad Idea

Ted Galen Carpenter
April 16, 2018



The air and missile strikes that the United States and its British and French allies launched against Syrian government targets are reprehensible for so many reasons. First, Washington’s action is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Except in cases of responding to an attack on the United States, that document gives Congress, not the president, the authority to decide whether to involve the republic in combat. Punishing a foreign regime for an alleged outrage against its own citizens does not qualify, and arguments to the contrary are either disingenuous or historically illiterate.

Second, there is not even certainty that Bashar al-Assad’s government was the guilty party for the chemical attack that triggered the Western response. As I noted in an earlier article, there are several other suspects, most notably the various rebel factions trying to oust Assad from power. Those groups, reeling from a series of military defeats, have a powerful incentive to lure Washington into deeper involvement in Syria’s civil war on their side. Conversely, Assad has no incentive to provoke the United States.


Third, by degrading the Syrian government’s military assets with the latest attacks, the West risks enabling the largely Islamist rebel coalition to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the Syrian conflict. The most powerful faction in that coalition is Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate). Assad is assuredly a corrupt and brutal ruler, but to help empower such an Islamist successor regime is hardly in America’s best interest.

Fourth, the airstrikes needlessly create new tensions in Washington’s already abrasive relationship with Russia. So far, the Kremlin has reacted with restraint, and everyone needs to hope that attitude continues. But even if Vladimir Putin refrains from escalating his country’s own military involvement in Syria (or taking action in other locales such as Georgia and Ukraine) the new cold war between Moscow and the West will deepen.

Worst of all is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the Western powers regarding their justifications for the air strikes. Trump, as well as British prime minister Theresa May and French president Emmanuel Macron, portrayed the assault on Syria as a moral imperative to deter the use of chemical weapons in the international system. Beyond that objective, they painted Assad and his government as an exceptionally vile enemy. In his address to the American people announcing the raids, President Trump charged that “the Assad regime again deployed chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians.” The new incident, Trump insisted, confirmed “a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime. The evil and despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead.”

Trump also sharply criticized Russia and Iran for their longstanding support of Assad. “To Iran and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators.”

The latter statement deserves a prize either for cluelessness or diamond-studded gall. The United States has never had a problem supporting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators. Washington’s alliances with such regimes, including the Shah of Iran, Nicaragua’s Somoza family, a succession of genocidal generals in Guatemala, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi royal family (among others) provide ample evidence of chronic moral insensitivity.

Daniel Larison, a columnist for the American Conservative, provides a stinging rebuke to the hypocritical moral posturing of the Western powers. Citing Trump’s (apparently rhetorical) question of what kind of nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children, Larison responds:

Trump should know the answer, since he just hosted one of the chief architects of the war on Yemen that the U.S. has backed to the hilt for the last three years. Britain welcomed the Saudi crown prince earlier on, and France just hosted him in the last few days. All three have been arming and supporting the Saudis and their allies in Yemen no matter how many atrocities they commit. There may be governments that have the moral authority to lecture Syria and its allies over their atrocious conduct, but the Trump administration and our British and French allies aren’t among them.

The Saudis and their allies have used the weapons sold to them by the United States and other Western governments to slaughter innocent Yemeni civilians by the thousands, including cluster munitions that almost every nation on earth has outlawed.

If the United States and its European allies believe that attacking Assad will strike an effective blow against the future use of chemical weapons by Syria or other nations, that is a policy debate worth having. If, as is more likely, they believe that weakening Assad’s forces can save the rebels from imminent defeat, and that a successor regime controlled by those rebels would be better for both the Middle East and America’s security interests, that is a policy debate worth having.

But they should at least spare us the moral preening and hypocritical posturing. Those three nations did not even disown Saddam Hussein for his repeated use of poison gas, throughout the 1980s, including the killing of at least five thousand of Iraq’s Kurdish citizens at Halabja in 1988. And Washington has rarely attempted to restrain its menagerie of authoritarian allies from engaging in other atrocities. Indeed, as Larison notes, the United States, Britain and France are outright accomplices in Saudi Arabia’s current slaughter of innocents in Yemen. The Western powers need to get their own moral houses in order before lecturing Russia, Iran, and other countries.

P44 escreveu: Sex Abr 20, 2018 3:59 pm


(porreiro pá, esta nova cena dos tweets)