Damascus Says Downed Turkish Jet Was Over Syria

NATO member states are to hold a crucial meeting June 26 to discuss Friday’s downing of the Turkish fighter jet, as Ankara and Damascus traded blame for what happened.

Turkey said the F-4 Phantom was fired on over international waters, not inside Syrian airspace as Damascus maintains, and is urging ministers to honor the collective defense rights of a fellow NATO member.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdissi told a news conference the plane had violated Syrian airspace.

“In turn, Syrian air defenses fired back and the plane crashed inside Syrian territorial waters,” he said. “What happened is a gross violation of Syrian sovereignty.

“If the goal of the [NATO] meeting is to calm the situation and promote stability, we wish it success,” Makdissi said.

But “if the goal of the meeting is aggression, we say that Syrian airspace, territory and waters are sacred for the Syrian Army, just as Turkish airspace, territory and waters are sacred for the Turkish Army.”

Turkey has called the emergency NATO meeting, invoking Article Four of the alliance’s founding treaty, which covers threats to members’ security.

What is clear is that Europe has already taken advantage of the situation to impose more sanctions…

Were the Turkish Phantoms ‘Teasing’ Syrian Air Defenses for NATO’s ELINT Collection?

According to the map released by the SANA agency, the Turkish aircraft, apparently an unarmed reconnaissance version of the Turkish Air Force F-4E, was circling at higher altitude in Turkish airspace north of the area, possibly using Long Range Oblique Photography (LOROP) payloads (similar to the system Turkey bought in Israel few years ago). LOROP provides high quality imagery form very long range (up to 100 km), when taken from high altitude. However, it is less suitable for fast, low-altitude tactical recce missions characteristic of the final dash the Phantom performed just before it was shot down. What drew the pilot to act this way? One possible explanation for the Turkish maneuver is an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) gathering mission.

Officially, Turkey said the planes were on a training mission but more likely they were on a reconnaissance mission, peeking along the Syrian Mediterranean coastline, where Syria is known to maintain a strong anti-aircraft, coastal defense and radar coverage. Based on the flight profile (if the Syrian description is correct) the Turks could have performed a ‘teasing’ game, in an attempt to stimulate the Syrian air defenses to activate their fire control radars, therefore give away critical data that could be used to optimize electronic countermeasures if NATO decides to involve in the situation and enforce a ‘no fly zone’ over Syria, similar to what the alliance did in Libya in 2011. Apparently, the Syrians weren’t tempted, and challenged the intruder with anti-aircraft fire rather than surface-to-air missiles. Under these circumstances, the downing of the Turkish jet could have been a miscalculated unlucky rather than lucky shot.

Are we broken?

Nic

:rolleyes: Oh boy 😀

Nuclear Missile Launch To Increase Rafale’s Appeal for India

The Rafale fighter aircraft has acquired nuclear deterrent capability following the successful first operational evaluation launch of a nuclear-capable missile carried out by the French Air Force.

Winner of the Indian MMRCA (Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) contest, the fighter carried the ASMPA (Air Sol Moyenne Porte Ameliore) cruise missile, minus the nuclear warhead, to test its strike capabilities.

The nuclear missile launch will add to the Rafale’s multi-role capabilities and the Indian Air Force may get more than what it bargained for.

The testing of the Rafale with a cruise missile might add a substantial new capability and improve its potential utility for the Indian Air Force (IAF). So far, the IAF had thought of the MMRCA as a ground attack and air superiority role but not a strategic bomber. It has chosen the much bigger Sukhoi 30 MKI for this role and plans to test the Brahmos cruise missile on it sometime this year or the next.

Although the contract with Dassault and the Indian MoD is yet to be signed and the losing finalist, Eurofighter is still hopeful and has offered a price ‘adjustment’ meaning to undercut the Rafale offer, the cruise missile launch capability should further solidify Rafale’s appeal to the IAF and further weaken Eurofighter’s chances.

What about the survivability of the drone? Where are you going to launch them from in a maritime setting?

Better to lose a 10-20 million drones than to lose a 145m aircraft… by small arm fire.

Well, the point of “stealth” isn’t just in “hiding”, but also making it harder for the bad guys to target and engage you. The primary benefits you get from deploying such capable “stealth” fighters on smaller platforms than carriers, are obvious. You get a dozen more options for deployment, they can carry their own air cover for low-intensity conflicts. I don’t see how that capability could be substituted by any other means, other than an aircraft-carrier.

And how do you prevent the enemy from engaging you? By “hiding” your RCS. And no I don’t see the benefit from deploying a more expansive version of a fighter on a small carrier for low intensity mission while the less expansive yet high intensity variants are been penalized in performances…
Drones are now capable to launch from maritime platform and it’s only a question of time before they get armed. And for amphibious support, helicopters will always be better, and they can be armed with AtA missiles for self defence. Add the fact than most modern missiles boat can detect aircraft up to 400 km inland and engage them at least up to 100 km and the necessity for F-35B become less “obvious”. And I haven’t even talked about artillery support, cruise missiles etc. offered from the sea.

The value of small carriers has indeed been proven since WW2. Look at the Falklands.

Please don’t give me the Falklands. Would the Harrier have been the fighter of choice have the UK possessed at the time a full carrier strike group capability? Did you ever see the US say well… let just send the Harrier in and not bother about it? The Falklands were a one time very lucky thing, not a generality to be repeated any time soon.

Less performance than what? Another F-35 variant maybe.

To other variant and other aircraft. You don’t win a war by simply hiding, and you don’t hide effectively by putting a stealth aircraft on very visible and vulnerable launch platforms you depend on because you lack the range and weapon load for persistence.

That argument is assuming a lot of things, and ignoring the fact that VSTOL today plays a very different role then the original concept. Today they serve mainly as naval fighters for smaller carriers/ships. That role cannot be filled by any of the methods you describe, or conventional aircraft.

Small carriers are usually escort carriers which utility have hardly been demonstrated since WWII. Of course they’re better than nothing but still. They’re usually supposed to be cheaper to operate than a conventional carrier group which require expansive protection and escort of traditional blue water navies.
As far as I’m aware there are two ways they’ve been used. The USMC style also used by Italy/Spain etc. which is to provide air cover and ground support for an amphibious strike force. Or the UK’s way which is a bit more complex but unique to date.

Thats true, but, put the words ‘rocket attack Bagram airbase’ into any search engine you choose and see the results. Large collections of conventional fastjets attract attention every bit as much as smaller forward based ones.

The fact is the more expansive and difficult to build something is and the bigger the satisfaction in terms of propaganda or effect on the public opinions and commander a successful attack will be. It’s true for conventional warfare, and even more so for insurgency and guerillas warfare.
With one base, you can focus a high end security system in one place to protect valuable assets. By placing the most expansive aircraft after the F-22 near the enemy where any lucky rocket attack could take it out, you’re forced into providing the exact same high end degree of protection to every single location. The same is true for boats. With such expansive aircraft on board, attacking a amphibious ship will suddenly become so much more attractive and rewarding, you’ll be forced to provide close to carrier strike group protection. In the end, you get rising cost and complexity for limited capabilities.

Dispersing the strikers at smaller locations reduces the chances of really effective insurgent strike taking out a good portion of your tacair support in one go at your big field in-country base. The only other alternative is to confine your expensive, long ranged, strike fighters only to friendly basing out of country or on carriers offshore!.

At the end of the day that’s exactly what’s going to happen. If not by fear of RPGs attacks, then by fear of having key technologies been too close from circumstantial allies and of the technologies been stolen. Just the requirement for the stealth coating mean that the JSF will probably never be stationed at a small base for long.

Persistent armed UAV’s are not as exclusive to STOVL tacair as they are to conventional long-range ‘cab-rank’ tacair. You would need your head reading if you had a pair of F-15E’s flying circles in the sky 15000ft over the top of a couple of MQ-9’s stooging around the trashfire envelope. A pair of F-35B’s sat on the ground, at alert status, 50 miles away though is a good solution to rapidly adding firepower to the drones weapons effect without the costs of the flight hours and the risks of advanced boredom to aircrew.

Lol common, a drone that can cheaply provide either ISR or/and strike at a fraction of what the F-35B would cost is actually less attractive to you due to the risk of “boredom” for the crew?

Anyway I guess we’ll be fixed soon enough…

Conspiracy or not I doubt the US and Obama would be willing to start a war before the election unless they managed to get something big like Syria launching (or allegedly launching) chemical weapons on its neighbour or something.

While an armed conflict might not be in the present interest of the West, we do know that many are looking for a regime change in Syria. Whether they get it by armed conflict or not, that’s of little concern. An armed conflict would be a mean to a end, not a goal in itself.

Given the recent defection of a Syrian’s pilot and the constant threat of NATO to use force, I’m not surprised that the Syrian air defence had orders to shoot anything that moved in the sky. And until Turkey can prove that it was a non provoked act of aggression I doubt they’ll be able to do much more but political rhetoric as long as doubts subsist.

The fact that Turkey is allegedly helping the Syrian opposition politicly and otherwise constitute in itself a delicate matter. The US lately have been bombing countries for far less than that.

In the end the US/NATO might make a lot of noise, but they won’t bite until China and Russia allow them into Syria. Turkey might be upset but in the end I don’t think this story is going anywhere as things stands right now.