I see lots of dark round circles amidst the grey rubble that I would assume to be holes. Additionally the grey rubble area measures roughly 200mx100m on Google Earth, or about 4 football pitches in area.

Those Ashms were developed from 1960s and there likely role is to light up ship radars for eventual saturated attack from smaller combined attack of Antiship/Anti radiation missiles. ships does not need to sunk just disable so it need tugs to rescue and create even bigger target for second wave of attack. even Ka-52K is designed for smaller long range antiship missile. you refuse to admit that airpower has more flexibility in time and place of choosing a strike and can greatly reduced time of reloading. ship does not travel more than 30knots an hour. few hours travel it cannot escape from second volley of missiles from airpower.

This is on paper myth of Damascus/Homs heavily defended. for proper airdefence with tall and big radars with proper electric/fuel supply. you need 30 to 40km of safe area around it. just look at it in Latakia. Untill recently insurgents could easily shell mortors into Russian embassy. now they may have slightly upgraded the airdefence as areas are cleaned up but it is still fundamentally 1980s tech at best and completely lack density.

The P-800 was developed in the 1960s? Ground targets don’t move at all, what’s your point?

You can look on Google Earth at the defences. Green = SA-6, Red = SA-2, Cyan = SA-3, Pink = SA-5, Blue = EW site.

Are these the same defences that someone breached using recreational drones bought off Amazon to bomb an airbase that shot down 76 cruise missiles?

Exactly. 22 missiles aimed at underground facilities that still did enough surface damage to blot out 200m of land. How many holes are there?

Well here’s the problem with your assumption. The 1,000lb bombs dropped in the F-22 strike would have done similar damage if the building were the same. Clearly this building has been hit by 1 missile but it has not blown apart and you can see reinforcement wires hanging off the left side.

Were the missiles intended to explode on impact, or inside the complex, or underground?

There are places the Syrian Army and Russians have been bombing and shelling for years that aren’t as flat as that place.

See also.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/dg-bda11.htm

Those 3 buildings mostly like empty as no secondory explosions or chemicals or any humans there. so they may not even be defended fully .

Air launched Ashms are far smaller in size and fly too low on sea surface as there is no natural barriers. while on ground you have mounatain, high electric poles, trees, high rise buildings that make the larger size cruise missiles fly higher so easy to track from distance. plus ground based AWACS, fighters are far larger in size to provide situational awareness to incoming missiles. infact putting 300 to 400 people in frigate size ship against fighters or bomber with maximum two pilots is uneven contest.

Many AShM’s are actually larger. E.g. P-800, P-750, P-500, Kh-22 and the others aren’t much smaller. Cruise missile also fly very low and can skim over flat desert.

The whole of Damascus and Homs are heavily defended, probably the most heavily defended locations in the whole Middle East as regards air defence.

You call that still intact? If that building is still intact then so is Joan Collins’s virginity.

And you can see the reinforcement wires hanging off the left side.

Then you have the claims surrounding the airbases targeted. Dozens of missiles claimed shot down and none hit. So in a year, the Syrian air defences have suddenly gone from 3rd world crap, to the most unbelievably efficient air defences on the planet. Hmmm… don’t buy it. I also suspect the ground would be littered with Israeli jets if that were the case.

I would say some missiles probably didn’t make it but 76 shot down is a whopping lie. I haven’t seen evidence of anywhere near than many being shot down and how many cruise missile parts get left over after an actual hit? When a plane crashes, usually the parts of the jet engine remain intact, the engine is at the rear of cruise missiles and missiles like the Storm Shadow/SCALP BROACH warhead explode forwards.

So how many of these parts are actually from hits and how many parts aren’t even cruise missile parts at all? Where are all the crash sites? Where is the footage of cruise missiles being intercepted at low altitude? What is the size/scale of these sites? That research establishments looks to be about a quarter mile wide based on lorry size in some shots.

In the Raptor strike video in Syria, we also saw two munitions put down one hole and many of these targets were underground.