Just try to think. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true. Look always who benefits from the incident. Certainly not Assad, but Al Qaida with their lovely little comrades, who are now clapping their furry hands. Either it is a false flag operation (as Simon Tan believes, who has almost always been right with his predictions on Tank-Net) or an unlucky hit on a stockpile (of White Helmet medicines :dev2:). Some are also suggesting that the reason of this was to try ground RuAF and SyAF as the rebels are trying launch new attacks in Hama and Latakia.

So, if we look back at various wars in history, we can see that all the leaders had absolute control, all the necessary information and them and their subordinates always made logical decisions? Like, e.g. Saddam’s war on Iran, attack on Kuwait, Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, US intervention in Vietnam or Iraq, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hitler’s attack on Russia, declaring the war on US, Japan’s strike at Pearl Harbor, etc. All more or less sensible decisions from their limited perspectives, but based on unrealistic presumptions which turned out disastrous in the end.

You’re also presenting the Syrian regime as like the current president Assad has absolute power in Syria, when he’s somewhat of a figurehead for the Syrian corrupted military elite and IRGC as he has no money nor enough troops so depends heavily on IRGC funding and their Shia militias (from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, etc.) whose officers run the show in many areas (IIRC, there was an incident where an SAA general was killed by one of these IRGC ran groups a few years ago).

As we have no idea from which level the order came from, the reasoning behind it can vary considerably. Since the recent surprise rebel offensive in Hama inflicted heavy losses on some of those groups (apparently including high ranking SAA and IRGC officers as well), I would presume that the attack was a either a direct retaliation against the city of the rebel units involved in some of these losses (as hinted by Fisk in this article) or a more generic warning to the civilians in Idlib that more such strikes might follow in case of further rebel offensives (as their usual method of barrel bombing obviously doesn’t scare the population enough).

Rebels apparently managed to take back Maardes from SAA Tigers group and Hezbollah.

http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2017/4-april-drone-footage-showing-saa-tiger-forces-and-hezbollah

The SAA is still on the counteroffensive around Hama. Supposedly they have retaken around 70% of the territory lost in the recent rebel offensive.

http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2017/31-march-btr82a-saa-counter-attack-in-hama-

I wonder if they plan to eliminate the whole Hama pocket this time around and push the rebels back to Idlib province.

There are some rumors of a friendly-fire incident. If true, it seems a group of Tigers went to Hama after all.

http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2017/26-march-tiger-forces-shaheen-group-commander-russian-russia

SDF captured the Tabqa airbase.

http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2017/26-march-al-tabqa-military-airport-is-fully-controlled-by

Also Su-25’s..

http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2017/23-march-ruaf-2xsu25sm-in-action-in-northern-hama–

There’s also an image of a rebel-captured T-90A being put to use in this offensive.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7rAb3bVQAEuyCg.jpg

Why need a new interceptor when PAK-FA can do the same thing? Unless they think the new interceptor is a PAK-FA variant.

Perhaps because that design is not optimized for this rather specific mission?

we got a glims of the backseater cockpit. Is that the layout of Mig-31BM?

It has R-73 pylons and MFD’s in the back cockpit, so, yes, it’s a BM.

When suffering a hit that causes ammo cook off, any tank will go “Jack in the Box” and blow off turret. There probably isn’t much of a difference in the % of time that occurs be the tank Russian, U.S., French, etc, even with the inclusion of blow off panels on ammunition storage. Having blow off panels to vent the explosive force may protect the crew in some circumstances, but it still happens. (Rare to see an M1 blow off a turret due to design, but they’ve cooked off from penetrations)

There should be a notable difference given how the Soviet designs keep all their ammo in the hull/turret, while the later Western tanks keep only ready rounds, reducing the chance those get hit directly during penetrations.

My point is that on the posted photo, one of the tanks has it’s whole front left hull missing so clearly this was no cook-off, but a mispresented photo which started the whole debate on the wrong foot.