ijozicAre we arguing about whether its right to attack your enemy in a city laden with civilians or is it more about what weapons are appropriate? The RAF went to huge lengths not to destroy infrastructure and buildings in Libya, even developing tactics for removal of snipers with PWIV.
The equivalent Syrian tactic is a “barrel bomb”.
The big difference here is bombing for CAS support and bombing to terrorize the population. The Syrian regime use of barrel bombs is clearly the example of latter (and since the logic of the Baath party is to physically destroy any opposition, like in Hama in 1982., they don’t really see those civilians as civilians necessarily).
For all the recent bombardment of the East Aleppo, they barely moved the frontline (a bit in the central part and in the north they took the Palestinian camp; everything else they took, they quickly lost) which again indicates the main purpose behind the bombings – to terrorize the population of East Aleppo until they surrender, but the history doesn’t really support the terror bombardment as a successful instrument in forcing the enemy to lay down their arms. If anything, it gives them more motivation to persist, but here with the added twist of potentially further radicalizing the surviving opposition which is a threat to the Western countries as well, given that they are not doing anything to stop this.
ijozicRegarding Egypt. US thruw their support to a goverment that held no real support in the country. It blew up in US face, and behold whom Gover in Egypt now.
Libya.. do i really need to say anything here…?
Iraq, it seems the way Iraq goes, they are off to align them self closer with Iran and Russia. It may be to best of worse for US self Interest in ME, but Iraq is slowly slipping from US influence as we speak. I wouldn’t call Iraq for a Success for US foreign Policy.
Yes Assad is an Dictator. But so is Eredogan 😉 Not the place tp be hypocritical here..
Egypt? No real support? How did Morsi win the elections then? What happened in Egypt has more to do with the army which controls the country rather than any US actions which amounted to little more than grudgingly accepting the election results. Turkey had a similar army control system, but Erdogan and his AKP party with their allies (Gulenists included) managed to dismantle it, it seems.
Libya? What happened there? The uprising against Gaddafi was ongoing for two months before the West felt inclined to interfere. Here the problem was that Gaddafi distrusted the army so Libya had far more weapons than they had standing soldiers so they were unable to defeat the rebels and resorted to bombarding the opposition into submission, not much unlike what Assad regime was always doing.
And Iraq, although Arab, having the majority Shia population is bound to be more naturally inclined towards Iran in the current Sunni-Shia context, no huge surprises there. The issue will be to keep the country together though, but again, that’s what you get after minority rules a foreign-created entity by force for so long.
I don’t get why your perspective is a simple black and white one where Russia and US are in complete control of all the other players and pitted against each other when in reality there are many players and in fact the US is a relatively minor player here with much less real impact than they get credited for (apart from dismantling the Saddam regime which triggered the whole thing).
ijozichttps://lenta.ru/news/2016/10/17/achtotakmozhnobylo/
Project 949A Smolenks attacked ground targets near Novaya Zemlya with Granit.
That would be surprising if true as those were claimed to have only anti-ship capabilities, even in the recent Nakhimov upgrade articles. I would suppose there was some modification made and this was a test fire?
ijozicOn regime change, Assad can’t take things back to how they were, so what regime is there to rule? His regime is already changed, so it’s just a case of what form it takes. Are we likely to see a calm dictatorship that lets the Russians keep there bases, a fractured country with constant fighting or a new set of countries glaring at each other for decades to come?
There are obviously no simple solutions for such a divided country and plenty of involved internal and external players with different agendas, further complicated by the presence of groups such as IS and Al-Nusra. Since no external power seems to be ready to deploy significant ground troops to enforce whatever terms the warring sides come down to (if they ever manage), the future does not look too rosy for a united country, but at least all sides seem relatively exhausted by now for any major breakthroughs which is a necessary precondition for any further steps.
ijozicChances are there will be havoc after the vacum of Assads. US knows this, but they do not care. Just like in Libya etc. They failed in Iraq and Egypt as well. Help building a nation has never been in US toolbox. They are much better at tearing them down.
There already is havoc, but I’m surprised you don’t see this in big part as a consequence of 40 years of this particular dictatorship which maintains it’s minority control with brutal force and secret police and leaves no power sharing culture behind. It also doesn’t help that Syria is an externally created mixture of different ethnic groups so once this enforced amalgam is removed, this is what people fall down to. Same goes for Libya, basically, but I don’t see how Egypt relates to this and how US is involved with its regime changes.
ijozicBut if we take the continual bleeding of Syria as it is today, drawing it out will only kill more people in the long run IMO, and to that extent I favor an expansion of the current Russian commitment. Half-assed aerial campaigns don’t end wars.
Half-assed aerial campaigns can maintain the status quo which is a way to end a war when the opposing sides realize they can’t make any decisive progress. The problem with your logic is that the Assad regime cannot win this war as it represents the minority of the population (the middle class from the cities probably prefers the regime to the Islamist militias, but that doesn’t mean they are motivated to fight for the regime) so it depends on various semi-criminal groups (like the Tiger militia) and IRGC-provided Shiite mercenaries to hold the lines and wage limited scope offensives which don’t go far (if at all lately) even with the Russian air support. Thus, escalating the level of Russian support would just escalate the level of material help for the opposition by Turkey and the Gulf countries and perhaps even force the US to get involved which would only end in bringing the regime down in potentially a much messier way than we’ve seen so far since the regime holds the areas with the biggest population levels.
I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing that corrupt and ruthless regime going down in flames as they deserve, but it should be done in some transitional way rather than in a messy rout of the regime forces by revenge fueled Islamist groups because the civilians (end especially the minorities) will bear the bulk of it.
ijozicTo be frank, the F-14As were not that great, either.. The radar was excellent but the TF30 engines sucked big time.. The re-engined F-14Bs were much much better..
They sucked on the F-14A at altitude IIRC, but were pretty good at deck level, so they were a good fit for the F-111 probably.
ijozicSeems a bit strange to go to the effort of retaining and upgrading a mere half-dozen Su-33s in service with unique training/logistics requirements when you have those shiny MiG-29KRs. It isn’t like Russia has extra flattops lying around begging for an air wing…
To begin with, I’ve read (an article in latest Air International) they don’t have enough MiG-29KR pilots yet. Hence why they only sent 4 MiG-29KR on the Kuznetsov deployment to Syria and even those are apparently mostly piloted by test pilots involved in the K development and testing on the Gorshkov/Vikramaditya.
It would be interesting to see what’s the maximum fuel+payload combination the MiG-29KR can take off with from Kuznetsov compared to the Su-33.
ijozicNice insight into the situation in Aleppo and US policy in Syria by senator from Virginia Richard Black. This is not what you usualy hear in the ‘free’ US mainstream media, right?
“Nusra” breaking the Aleppo siege with 40,000 troops and 100 tanks? Yes, that’s definitely something new. Mindblown.
ijozicAnd US is again showing that they has no clear goal in Syria. At least Russia has openly stated that Syria is better of with a centrilized govermental body vs tearing up the country with removing Assad. And what freakin vacume is he talking about!? The real vacume of power comes if Assad is removed.
And what goals do you expect them to have? Their options are rather limited to trying to deescalate the situation politically as they have absolutely no influence over Russia and Iran (IRGC) and are losing what influence they had over Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which are providing most of the weapons and financial aid to various rebel groups). And since they have no vested interest in Syria, they certainly won’t risk a conflict with Russia over it.
I’m surprised that you see maintaining an Assad Baath-party dictatorship enforced by force as a realistic position here. Putting their habit of bombarding their own cities and civilians into submission aside, they don’t seem to have a capability of regaining control over the country militarily as they would have probably lost the war already had it not been for vast Iranian-provided financial support and cannon fodder, plus the later Russian air support.
ijozicA threat obviously. An empty one too.
So his suggestion is to let the terrorists go free, so they then can harm Russia and continue to harm Syria, or kill them off and somehow face terror? Russia has faced Islamic terror for decades, if not for a century or more. Kirby not only sounded like a complete idiot but also gives the impression that they control the terrorist groups. Which then proves the tinfoil hat conspirators correct that US is a terrorist sponsoring nation (this was obvious during the Soviet Afghan war though).
A good response is go ahead and try, and continue to bomb US assets (terrorists and personnel if embedded with terrorists) in Syria.
It’s no threat, just a warning. All they’re saying is that by continuing to fight the “terrorists” (which like it or not include various rebel groups and civilians) will only prolong the chaos in Syria as the other parties will stock up the rebels with more weapons and the end result will be more widespread radicalization and more dangerous terrorist groups filling the void and taking advantage of the situation.
ijozicSu-25SM3 deployed to Syria? How many SM3 would you RuAF have at this point?
That’s obviously a two-seater which would mean UBM’s are also deployed.
ijozicHey uh, is this thread about air operations, or……?
It’s kind of hard to qualify the air strikes on East Aleppo as simply “air operations”.
ijozicMiG-29s and Mi-25s do not have any kind of thermal system which you could use for night time attacks. The KOLS IRST ball of the MiG-29 is used for A-A only.. and their Mi-25s are basic models without FLIR.. Kaira-24 is a TV system combined with a laser designator, again, no thermal imaging capability..
IIRC there some news recently about the Russians delivering Su-24M2’s to the SAAF (which I presume would be from their own stock of two dozen airframes)?
E.g. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-army-received-new-russian-su-24m2-attack-aircrafts/
ijozichttp://atimes.com/2016/09/un-halts-aid-after-convoy-attack-kerry-says-ceasefire-not-dead/
There were some other US leaks since, though nothing official.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN11Q1NR
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