Still seeing rather a lot of unguided ordinance. It’s the 21st century so this is somewhat disappointing.

Would this mark the first confirmed employment of guided bombs in a conflict by the Russian Air Force? I’ve never heard of Russia using guided bombs, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t and that it’s been confirmed.

Soviets used PGMs in well-documented cases in Afghanistan and the RuAF has used them in the second Chechen war (possibly in the first, but I’m not 100% sure) and also in Georgia.

Mi-28NE for Algeria:

Nice sky blue belly. Retro.

Would’ve thought the Algerians might request a full defence suite… Appears they didn’t.

… so says Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/russia-coordinate-syria-military-actions-israel-150922045752894.html

Exclusive: Russia sends drone aircraft on surveillance missions in Syria – U.S. officials

Any speculation on which drones this could refer to… Would be amusing if they were one’s purchased from Israel.

Of course it is goddamn bogus, jesus christ.

I’m not saying it’s not bogus… but it’s not bogus:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/john-kerry-fears-russian-military-in-syria-could-increase-refugee-flow

Only kidding, it could still be bogus but it does seem more of the story is emerging.

1,000 advisers do not an intervention make, however, the Russians could just be testing the waters (i.e. the US reaction) before deploying more personnel and matériel.

Russian has however some excellent SALH systems also, like Kilotov guided artillery or KAB bombs: so in the case of AT weapons this preference has to be considered the result of a deliberate choice, and not of some technological shortcoming.

Part of the rationale behind laser beam riding in the AT role is that this guidance method is less likely to suffer from battlefield smoke and is also less likely to set off the target’s LWR. To overcome the fact that the target has to be painted throughout, the Russians appear to favour fast missiles as a solution to shortening the amount of time the delivery platform is exposed.