Vikasrehman wrote:

May be its just me, but why did Syrians have to open their big mouths so soon when they could have used that time to hide the evidence in the first place, and why did Israelis allowed them so much time to do so?

The Syrians, like the Israeli air raid on Ayn Shahab (Syria) back in 2003, chose to play the innocent card. They simply announced that Israel had conducted an airstrike, dropped bombs and had violated their airspace. Syria simply looked for the sympathy vote and complained to the international community and U.N.

What evidence could they hide? How are you going to hide the fact that a large structure near a river bank is no longer there?

The theory is that the Syrians built this facility and chose not to put air defences around it. The reason being that they didn’t want to draw attention to it. The positioning of air defences around a structure is going to get the attention of Israeli and other intelligence services, either visually or electronically. For air defences to spring up and radiate in a new location is going to bring it to the attention of interested intelligence services. It appears that the Syrians didn’t do this or put up in-depth fence layers in order not to draw immediate attention to the facility.

The Israeli’s and the U.S. could have gone down the IAEA route and brought it to their attention. This possibly would have brought pressure on the Syrians to open up the facility for IAEA inspection. That drawn out process could also have allowed the Syrians to finish the structure and also deploy substantial air defences around it as well as denying IAEA access.

The Israelis, it appears, chose the right time to cripple the project. The Israelis released footage of the Iraqi reactor strike and the Ayn Shahab strike. Maybe in time they will also release footage of the Syrian strike?

thats a good point but it still doesn’t explain why the IDF had to fly over Turkey, something that surely was not part of the plan.

The externals were found in Number 61 – Antioch (Hatay) and number 62 – Gaziantep regions.

Why not make use of skirting the Turkish border and then zip over the Hatay province on final egress. It seems very logical to me! Why egress further south into a potential hornets nest? Maybe the strike package on ingress followed this route too and the externals were dropped on ingress?

Great pictures. You probably know, but your camera sensor needs a bit of a clean. The dust spots are quite visible on a lot of the images.

Cheers

TJ

Nice stuff, but none of the Chinook and we flew right past em!

Jayviator…pleased you enjoyed your experience.:)

Someone caught the Chinook here

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/cgi-bin/ukarboard/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=9;t=41893

Purple Bases? What are they – never heard of ’em? Can you enlighten?

Cheers

Members from all UK forces working closely together. ‘Purple’ is derived from mixing Army green with the light blue of the RAF and the dark blue of the Navy.

Mount Pleasant would be one example already mentioned. Another would be RAF Digby.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafdigby/aboutus/whoisbasedhere.cfm

Typhoons will also be based eventually as a Flt in the Falklands. I’ve seen rumours about the new designations such as FGR.4. for the newly delivered/upgraded single-seaters. Any confirmation?