It is possible that they’re being overly cautious in case the Russians are [ also using / planning to use ] ALCMs, which generally use a step-down cruise profile.

No, it’s simply rubbish.

Looks like they’re not on the back foot after all.:rolleyes:

http://news.yahoo.com/activists-syria-troops-advance-under-russian-air-cover-121749213.html

Syria troops advance under Russian air cover

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Russian jets intensified their airstrikes Monday in central Syria as government forces battle insurgents in a strategic area near a rebel-held province and a government stronghold.

The government push is the latest in a bid to regain the Sahl al-Ghab plain, which is adjacent to Latakia province, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad and the Alawite religious minority to which he belongs.

After a heavy barrage of Russian airstrikes, the fighting was focused on the village of Kfar Nabudeh, which officials said had been seized by government troops.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 airstrikes were carried out in Kfar Nabudeh, while government troops and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters entered the village from the south.

Capturing Kfar Nabudeh would cut off a major highway, giving the pro-government forces access to the northwestern province of Idlib. A rebel coalition that includes the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front drove Assad’s forces out of Idlib in September, in a major setback for the government. Their hold on the province threatened Latakia.

well think harder. Greece is broke. but Turkey could manage to finance $1T worth of trade deficits, Plus repaid IMF, plus $100b in reserves. plus nearly 100k troops parked next to Syria-Irak. with hundreds thousands of sorties of F-16 just on CAP. is it some magic wand.

Yeah, interesting. Turkey have played a very dubious role throughout this conflict.

I completely fail to see relevance of the SyAAF violating Turkish airspace with Russians vs. RAF.

To be honest normal RoE says you can fire if attacked anyway. I’m not sure what’s actually changed following that article.

You keep mentioning NATO, but the big difference is that operation in Iraq had no UN approval so some important NATO members didn’t want the organization to get involved. It’s more precise to focus on US and British forces anyway since they basically did most if not all of the combat operations in both theaters. It took a long time to put Afghanistan under control since local people actually prefer the Taliban to foreign occupation forces and that the numbers deployed were rather small, like under 30,000 of US troops till 2008 (due to Iraq being given the priority) only starting to increase rapidly since 2009, reaching the peak of 130,000 NATO troops in 2011. The SAA numbers around 110,000 soldiers (deployed currently on a territory 10 times smaller than the size of Afghanistan) in the ground forces now and they used to have twice that in 2011 (for like 3 times smaller Syria).

How is this a problem? Some of these people are experienced fighters from other wars, but the vast majority are civilians with no military experience. They’re supposed to get some training there, but some have no time and end up being used as cannon fodder basically.

Most of the Syria is arid or desert (70%) and that’s pretty much the area that ISIS took over and Raqqa is the only larger city they control. The frontlines in the major cities (where there’s no ISIS basically except in some part south of Damascus) have changed little if any during all these years (so, there is not much combat, but artillery duels and barrel bombing) so most of the battles happen in the countryside.

I only mentioned the US and British forces in the context of your statement that “There isn’t any training that makes you ‘good’ at facing that. In fact, it’s entirely impossible to replicate such a thing in training.” since they were actually facing the situation you describe unlike the SAA.

ISIS did exist and they did proclaim their Islamic State in 2006 in Iraq already to relatively little fanfare, but were kicked out to Syria as part of the “Anbar Awakening” operation organized by the US. They only came back when the Sunni tribes who kicked them out let them come back without even token resistance as they were disenchanted by the Maliki turning Iraq over to Iranian control.

Half? IIRC, the regime holds about 25% of the country after the loss of Idlib region.

Regarding the SAA, yes, it’s a subjective topic, but I have given examples of their performance in past wars. There is nothing suggested here that they have improved their capabilities at all; on the contrary, for example, you have interviews with Hezbollah officers stating how regular SAA units are not even capable of holding the position they handed them over. On the other hand, you’ve provided no arguments to the contrary but your personal opinion that “it’s not the same army” as you list no arguments at all. Sure, they have a few “elite” units which they use in offensives backed by other militias such as Hezbollah (and the number of those units is such that they cannot execute offensives on multiple fronts), but in general the regular units seem to be of very little use. Otherwise, they wouldn’t rely so much on various local militias for defense and even more so on those radical militias provided by the IRGC (plus Hezbollah) and even that wasn’t enough anymore so Russians had to jump in. It’s interesting how this secular regime is now so dependent on radical Islamists to fight other radical Islamists, but the media focus is only on the opposing Islamists.

Zero fact behind anything? Wow. I do agree that further discussion is pointless as we’re running in circles.

Yawn, sorry but that’s all complete rubbish but I’m no longer going to waste the time to explain why to you, over and over again. If you think there are the same number of people and resources in the SAA as the US and British military deployments, even without the rest, then you’re simply mistaken. If you think the SAA is as well equipped, again you’re mistaken. These two delusions are why your judgement that the SAA is poorly training is flawed. I can’t make it any simpler than that really. Furthermore your numbers are wrong, not to mention the fact you haven’t allowed for other resources, like tanks, IFVs, artillery, fighter jets, bombers, or the relative sophistication of the aforementioned relative to the SAA. Nor was it the same people fighting the war for NATO throughout, they were rotated on tours, an ability the SAA doesn’t have. Then you have the private contractors. All-in-all a very short-sighted analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

You also didn’t count the 352,000 people in the Afghan forces opposing the Taliban.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%9314)

As I said, I’m not wasting anymore time correcting rubbish though.

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-air-force-hit-63-targets-syria-24-110529704.html

Moscow (AFP) – Russian fighter jets hit 63 targets in Syria in the past 24 hours, the defence ministry said Sunday, as Moscow intensifies a campaign it says is aimed against the Islamic State jihadist group.

“Su-34, Su-24M and Su-25SM planes carried out 64 sorties from the Hmeimim airbase against 63 targets in the provinces of Hama, Latakia, Idlib and Raqa,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

The Russian military claimed that the air strikes had destroyed 53 positions used by the “terrorists”, as well as a command post, four training camps and seven ammunition depots.

Russia said its campaign in the war-torn country was rattling IS fighters, claiming that radio intercepts showed “growing panic” among them.

The last battles in Lebanon were throughout the ’80s ending in 1990. The rest I have no idea what you’re on about as none are arguments related to the SAA (I especially don’t understand the mention of level of training of US forces in Vietnam which unlike SAA more or less won pretty much all the battles they participated in).

They won the majority of the battles but that isn’t enough to win a war. The point I’m making should be obvious, this isn’t straight-forward uniformed nation(s) vs nation(s) warfare it’s crowd-sourced global terrorism with suicide bombers in an urban environment around civilians. Terrorists who’ve managed to replace themselves with new recruits faster than NATO air power can take them out. If you can’t understand why that makes it difficult/different, then continuing discussing the matter is pointless. Does 9/11 mean the USAF is poorly trained? No, it was a sneak attack from terrorists hiding among civilians. The entire Syrian War is like that right now. The only thing demarcating terrorists from civilians is if they’re firing at you, or after they’ve blown themselves up. There isn’t any training that makes you ‘good’ at facing that. In fact, it’s entirely impossible to replicate such a thing in training. Parts of Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t under full control throughout the entirety of NATO deployment there. You can only try to force them out of areas, again, and again, and again. The only way to fully end that kind of thing is with thermonuclear saturation bombing.

No evidence? It’s a conscription based army. Just check their performance in past wars; you don’t have to go through their atrocious results against the much better trained Israelis, but for instance, their performance against Lebanese militias or against the Jordanian Army in 1970. In Jordan they were routed and in Lebanon quickly resorted to heavy bombardments of civilian areas to enforce compliance.

I don’t see what Iraqi army has to do with the Syrian one? It sounds like “Your US trained Iraqi army blows compared to my SAA!” I’m not really taking any sides here.

Iraqi Army is a different story; you need to look at it from the perspective of complete corruption and incompetence after the previous (mostly Sunni) Army officer core was presumably completely replaced. For example, some of the new Army officers were taking paychecks for fictional units which did not exist in reality. Also, the Army units in Sunni areas which were taken by ISIS were mostly composed of the Sunni soldiers which (together with Kurds) deserted from their units not wanting to fight for the current Iraqi government so there was a complete collapse of the Army units in those areas with those remaining Shia soldiers who didn’t manage to run away getting captured and slaughtered. Beforehand, the ex-prime minister Maliki took to himself personally the relevant defense ministry positions and when the **** hit the fan, he turned to Iranians and the IRGC supplied Shia militias which have managed to retake Tikrit, but little else.

It isn’t the same people as in 1970, or the same training, or the same equipment. You’re also underestimating the difference made by the equipment in those wars and the difference experience makes. And you’re underestimating the difficulty of urban warfare against plain-clothed fighters packed between your own civilians. The whole of NATO was barely able to control the same kind of thing in Afghanistan and Iraq, in much more open terrain, and not packed among their own US civilians and Israel only manages it by levelling entire neighbourhoods. Does Vietnam mean US marines are poorly trained?

My analogy was deliberately broad. In many cases the F-35 is performing the same tasks as an F-16A — in ways that are far more complex and hence failure prone.

No it isn’t, if it was, it wouldn’t exist because the F-16 could do them.

The braking system in a modern car is vulnerable to all sorts of largely computer-related failure modes that a car from 40yrs ago does not have to worry about. Any number of examples along similar lines can be found. There may be good reasons for such increased complexity, but this does not change the fact that the more advanced and complex system is subject to new and exciting failure modes that may, under certain circumstances, render it less reliable at performing basic functions (in this case, stopping the car on command) than older systems. Would the recent A400M crash have occurred if it was a boring old C-130H instead of a cutting edge aicraft? Almost certainly not.

Again this is a bad example. It is not doing the same thing. Brakes on cars 40 years ago could largely be described as useless. Modern braking systems not only monitor wheel speed and prevent lock-up but in many cases are also responsible for steering and stabilising the car. They also benefit from modern tyres, which greatly increase the force that can be applied before lock-up. However, playing on this analogy, take ABS in 1991 relative to now. ABS in 1991 was pretty bad, a good driver could stop a car quicker without ABS, especially in the dry. No driver on planet Earth could stop a car quicker than a modern ABS.