Maybe eating raw liver sounds more moderate to you than chopping heads, I can’t say.

Maybe dropping barrel bombs indiscriminately on the rebel held parts of a city is acceptable to you, I can’t say, but I wouldn’t generalize this on all of the regime forces and consider them all vicious murderers.

Frankly, even I could not tell what the “western outlook” really is. Probably a peaceful secular country with the religious groups held in cages so that they don’t bite. And that is what Assad has been doing his whole life. With whatever means necessary, granted. But hey, he needs to be removed. I am just still struggling to learn why. Because Netanyahu can’t stand him? Because Saudis want a pipeline to Southern Europe? Or because he buys MiGs instead of F-16s?

That’s the general hypocrisy I’m talking about – it’s OK that he oppresses/tortures/kills any opposition to his rule if he also keeps all Islamist groups under control because we can deal with him.

Pipeline? F-16’s? Really? Assad is a member of the minority population which has finally for once managed to seize power through the military and the Baath party (the ideology of which was partly established by Syrian religious minorities seeing secular Arab nationalism as a way to participate in power in a majority Muslim country) and is willing to do whatever is needed not to relinquish that to the majority Sunni population. In the course of the greater Iran – Saudi conflict, the Sunni Islamist countries (Qatar, Saudis, Turkey, etc.) naturally want to remove him (as an ally of Shia Iran) and see some form of Sunni government (preferably Islamist, I presume) and the opportunity presented itself in the course of the Arab Spring rebellions. The US perspective is less clear, but probably comes from multiple factors. They could see him as an ally of Iran and lifeline to Hezbollah which would be brought under control with Assad gone. They could also see him as a constant destabilizing factor in the region whose corrupt regime has to be maintained by force destroying all secular opposition in the process and producing ever more radical religious opposition thus in the end doing more harm to their interests than good (at least, that was the Neo-Con outlook). Being an ally of Russia and providing them with potential staging bases in the Med outside of the closed Black Sea doesn’t help probably either. And of course, the Syrian regime was always in the opposition of the US (being naturally oriented towards the Soviet Union), the brief respite only happening in the eve of the Desert Storm when the US needed as many Arab nations participating in it as possible (and the Syrian regime seeing a chance to get more regional influence and power and thus strengthen its legitimacy and also open hands to resolve the Lebanese war to their liking for the small price of fighting Saddam who was their enemy anyway). So, it’s not like something suddenly radically changed in their outlook of him, but the opportunity presented itself to remove him and the US jumped on the bandwagon.

They have conveniently decided to ignore the fine nuances among al-Jabha al-Shamiya (aJaS) head choppers, al-Nusra head choppers and ISIS head choppers. Not that they are in any way more or less “moderate” than the rest, they all are simply having different sponsors and thus are involved in a gang war with each other.. Yeah, forgotten about those 50-60 left-over FSA trainees who have seemingly already joined the aJaS ranks because they did not want to be left alone. Anyway, for Russians, it’s all “ISIS” and that’s it..

Head choppers? I’m unaware of other major groups practicing that execution method besides ISIS? Same goes for gang wars which I don’t see being a major occurrence on the ground anymore (they seem to be forming alliances with occasional subduing of a smaller ideologically opposing group which is a standard occurrence in civil wars).

Now, the major issue here is drawing all Islamists groups as being the same as ISIS, just because their end goal is a Syrian state ruled by Islamic Sharia law (unlike ISIS which is much more brutal and wants to expand). I’m no expert, but there are probably many factors involved why these groups prevailed (e.g. being sponsored by Islamist states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey’s AKP, bad historical experience with secularism and “democracy” in Syria, the Syrian middle class being mostly in larger cities and probably mostly in exile by now, prolonged devastating civil war where religious fervor can be a good motivator, etc.), but is this enough to brand them as “terrorists” just because they don’t want to live by Western standards (which were practically imposed on them after WWI)?

The major question would be if that’s what the majority of the population wants (there’s no way of determining that in this situation) and even if so, how could the minorities ad those who would not prefer that be protected (the big problem here being the borders drawn long ago in the aftermath of the WWI when the French put several Ottoman provinces together and created Syria). Perhaps the solution would be in again dividing the country to some regions which would have significant autonomy, but this would probably lead to dissolution in the long run and thus might be considered a dangerous precedent by the neighboring countries having similar problems with significant minorities.

I can’t see what sense would it make. IMHO, the SM3 shall not be different from a SM, shape-wise..

You’re probably correct. I wrongly presumed TR1 was talking about the supposed new attack aircraft based on the Su-25UB.

No I suspect SOLT-25 will only be present in SM3, when the actual plane shows up (not the claimed SM3-but-really-SM upgraded so far). Seems like that attack Yak-130 has it too though.
SOLT-25 is optical + laser + thermal btw, my only concern is the viewing angles.

So, I presume you mean this new single-seat variant based on the Su-25UB as claimed here? It does look like the Su-25T also, but I presume they base it on the Su-25UB fuselage since that one was built in Russia, unlike the single seater which was built in Georgia AFAIK.

http://www.redstar.gr/Foto_red/Eng/Aircraft/Su_25Sm3.html

Not sure how authentic is the drawing, especially with that prominent gunpod on the bottom.

Gamma-S1, delivered to Eisk a little while ago.

Good find, thanks for clearing that out.

Such events happened twice in last 3 days and recent “Whose nationality cannot be identified” statement is an expected event which is more concerning for Russians than anyone else. IMO, Russians must not only operate with IFF, but also force Syrians to operate with their IFF active, because their Syrian “friends” are deliberately antagonizing Turkish side, and by doing so Syrians are playing with Russian pilots’ lives.

I don’t understand why would the Russian and Syrian (Soviet-made) planes have to operate with IFF switched on in the context of Turkey?

Thats OK, a Su-34 or a modernized Su-24 could probably operate from 6000 meters altitude to avoid MANDPADs and still hit a building or a camp sized target with sufficent accuracy. However, I would be more worried about Su-25s regarding MANPADs. Its high altitude kinematics are ill suited to operate in such fasion, I doubt if Su-25 can even climb to 6000meters with full fuel and some FAB-500s.

But why would you carry 500 kg bombs with a CAS plane if you have tactical bombers at your disposal?

I highly doubt that you can be precise enough with dumb bombs from 6000 m altitude. Weren’t there videos showing dumb bombs hitting way off the mark? I suppose these are the Gefest upgraded Su-24M2’s which should be much more precise with dumb ordnance, but I’d imagine it was envisaged to be used for low altitude release (e.g. one of the advertised features was that the airplane can now maneuver while closing to the target before release without jeopardizing the release calculations) whether direct or even toss.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe Su-30SM as an aircraft eclipses MiG-29SMT in any area. It has better maneuverability, Radar, ECM, RWR, range, payload, combat persistance, etc etc. It has better & more numerous chaff&flare dispansers, its a twin seater to facilitate coordination or target designation. It also has some gizmos (like the one below IRST) which maybe MAWS. My subjective opinion is its probably faster, and better in climbs/acceleration with significant A-G payload. There is no comparison there.

There’s nothing subjective about any of this – it’s a no-brainer since the SMT is a poor man’s upgrade of the plain MiG-29 (compared to e.g. the newer M/M2) and since they didn’t go for the bigger wing developed for the M/K series (with two additional heavy pylon points) is of very limited use as a multi-role fighter. It’s more like an interim solution to keep the fighter numbers up before some true replacement is procured (it remains to be seen what that would be in the end – there are resurgent rumors that a new lightweight fighter is being developed by MiG).

Looks you’re right.. no payload, just PTB drop tanks. Could be Su-24MR recon flights?

Maybe just a terrain familiarization (and presence demonstration) flights. I don’t see why you’d fly recon with Su-24MR in pairs.