Syrian conflict.

[LoooSeR]

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   MOSCOW, September 18 (Itar-Tass) - RIA Novosti. As a result of irresponsible Israeli actions in Syria, 15 Russian servicemen were killed, said the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov.

   "As a result of the irresponsible actions of the Israeli military, 15 Russian servicemen were killed, which is absolutely not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian-Israeli partnership"

Idiots in action.

1) Create a situation of 3rd countries bombing Syria when and where they want to bomb

2) Not respond to any bombings for years, while having personal on the ground and in the air of Syria

2) Whine about this situation when obvious result was reached

 

Shoigu, after telephone call to Lieberman, blamed Israeli actions for deaths of MoD personal

 

[LoooSeR]

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Fragments of the bodies of crew members and wreckage of the aircraft are brought on board Russian ships in Syria

The plane fell 27 kilometers to the west of the village of Banias in Latakia province.

The ship "Seliger" with deep-water vehicles is sent to the crash site.

 

[Mighty_Zuk]

1 hour ago, LoooSeR said:

Idiots in action.

1) Create a situation of 3rd countries bombing Syria when and where they want to bomb

2) Not respond to any bombings for years, while having personal on the ground and in the air of Syria

2) Whine about this situation when obvious result was reached

 

Shoigu, after telephone call to Lieberman, blamed Israeli actions for deaths of MoD personnel.

 

 

Those aren't idiots. It's actually very reasonable. Most of the blame should go towards the SAA which is known to just fire frantically in every direction, without verification of what each target on the radar is, but to lay part of the blame on the IAF is not unreasonable, especially considering the level of competence of the IAF and the fact that Israel did not want the downing of a plane.

 

1)The situation of Israel bombing in Syria is part of Russia's interests and contributes to its grand scheme. Russia does not want Iran to get a foothold in Syria in order to get all the restoration contracts to itself, and can ensure Syria's security on its own. If it can avoid conflict with a neighboring state more powerful than Syria, and even be on good terms with it, then that's a huge bonus in itself.

 

2)Relates to point 1.

 

3)These results are not obvious. As you said, the bombings lasted for years, and occurred several hundred times already. This is, however, the first time such an incident occurs.

 

Israel is at least to partially blame for the very short warning time that probably was not even sufficient to inform the Il-20 crew of an impending attack.

 

Of course, short warning times are most likely the result of admitted fears that these warnings are then transmitted to Iranian forces, which then gives them time to escape, but that is still a calculated risk, and not a justification when accidents occur.

[LoooSeR]

9 minutes ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

 

Those aren't idiots. It's actually very reasonable. Most of the blame should go towards the SAA which is known to just fire frantically in every direction, without verification of what each target on the radar is, but to lay part of the blame on the IAF is not unreasonable, especially considering the level of competence of the IAF and the fact that Israel did not want the downing of a plane.

 

1)The situation of Israel bombing in Syria is part of Russia's interests and contributes to its grand scheme. Russia does not want Iran to get a foothold in Syria in order to get all the restoration contracts to itself, and can ensure Syria's security on its own. If it can avoid conflict with a neighboring state more powerful than Syria, and even be on good terms with it, then that's a huge bonus in itself.

 

2)Relates to point 1.

 

3)These results are not obvious. As you said, the bombings lasted for years, and occurred several hundred times already. This is, however, the first time such an incident occurs.

 

Israel is at least to partially blame for the very short warning time that probably was not even sufficient to inform the Il-20 crew of an impending attack.

 

Of course, short warning times are most likely the result of admitted fears that these warnings are then transmitted to Iranian forces, which then gives them time to escape, but that is still a calculated risk, and not a justification when accidents occur.

   It is nice to see you being telepate and knowing exactly why Russian politicians decided to participate in Syrian war. We already discussed this with @Collimatrix in details, i am too lazy and angry to write it again, it is on our discord. Turkey is more important to Russia than Syria. Iranian influence in Syria for Russia is not doing anything against Russian politicians interests in Syria. In light of Russia allowing Turkish interests to be presented in Syria, i am not even speaking about Iran, with which our politicians want to have a good business (up to going against US sanctions)

 

   

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Reasons of this event:
1) Tactical - coordination is not automated between SAA and Russian forces (old equipment, organisation of units), no AA protection from Russian forces during any Israeli strikes also puts Syrians in situation when they are on their own and need to cover any sector by their own systems, instead of having Russian systems covering our own sectors opens a chance of syrian missiles flying above/near our forces

 

   2) Strategical - strikes were done in areas near Hmeymim AB, where VKS is located. This is totaly nuts when Israeli jets bombing targets in such proximity to our base in the first place. This situation became possible because of political reasons, will tell about my view a bit later on this reason. Syrian army don't have proper country-level air defence system. They have point air defence with limited radar coverage of routes that Israeli jets are using. Almost no early-warning systems/radars, no automated work of existing AA systems make it easy to overload each AA point defence position or/and suppress it with EW.
   We also refused to provide any serious AA systems (like S-400) to Syrians multiply times (political reason), so they have nothing to hit targets at large distance (other than S-200) that also had IFF. Buks and Tors/Pantsirs are only part of proper system of country defence from air attacks.
   And because Lebanon have nothing to cover their airspace, Israel AF almost always use it to conduct strikes in Syria. We could take this airspace under our "supervision", but it was not done, leaving big hole in defence/early threat detection. If we had proper coverage of it, plane would had way more time to get away.

 

   3) Political - this whole situation, when our forces are operating in a country, that is frequently bombed by 3rd party is just asking for troubles. Our leadership decided that "allies" means "we can sell them anyway", so we left Syrians open for cruise missile strikes, bombings and so on, completely without showing "red lines" and where is end of other countries impudence. Which created a situation when areas near our base are bombed. And not only near our base, but places where our forces were located were bombed before (T4 AB for example). So deaths of our people from Israeli strikes was just a question of a time, as those bombings were not rare and targets were different + no good coordination on top of that. 
   Instead of helping SAA with defending their country, we decided to not do that, leaving them underequipped and with limited abilities to fight back. Syrian AD is doing what it can do to protect their country with what they have at their hands. It is not reasonable to expect SAA to be world class army after 7 years of war inside of their own country. Even best armies like US army had number of frendly fires situations, and SAA is not any better. In fact, because of equipment and technologicaly outdated tech, they are worse, chances of such events are higher.
   Our base should have been far from any strikes from 3rd countries, but such lack of order in skies of Syria created lawlessness where any ficking body can bomb anything he fucking want.

 

[LoooSeR]

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"... According to the Israeli authorities, responsibility for the destruction of the IL-20 and for the death of people also lies on Iran and Hezbollah,

[LoooSeR]

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Russia summons Israel's ambassador to Russia over downed of Russian Il-20 military aircraft.

We will hand our official hard-hitting, heroic and powerful concern about this.

 

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Israelis have known that the Russian plane was present in the area, but this did not stop them from executing the provocation.

 

[LoooSeR]

 

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According to available information, plane that was shot down was IL-20M with the registration number RF-93610 (factory number 173011504, serial number 115-04) of the Russian VKS. The aircraft was built in 1973 and underwent major repairs in 2011.

 

No information about crew.

[Scolopax]

It's kind of disappeared behind the downing of the Russian plane, but do we know what the French ship fired at and why?

[Alzoc]

46 minutes ago, Scolopax said:

It's kind of disappeared behind the downing of the Russian plane, but do we know what the French ship fired at and why?

 

No official info yet.

 

The army denied shooting at the plane but strictly speaking they didn't denied firing at something.

Everything below is just my own speculation:

 

Doubt that it was an Exocet since there was no naval target.

 

Could have been an Aster 15 on auto defense but against what kind of threat?

Those AA missiles only have a range of 30km against aircraft and a mere 15km against missiles, so it's really point defense.

 

That leave MdCN cruise missiles which isn't impossible since French and Israeli services have a long history of sharing intel regarding potential terrorist threats and cooperating to physically remove said threats in each other area of influence.

So it is very possible that we decided to jump on the occasion of the Israeli raid when we became aware of it.

 

There are however 2 problem with that theory:

 

1) Why taking risks exposing ourselves when we could have left the job to the Israeli?

 

2) A cruise missile launched from the sea is most likely slower to reach the target than a GBU-39 launched from low altitude and given that it's unlikely that the ship was closer to the target than the F-16 the Russians should have then detected the launch not "around the time communication was lost with the ELINT plane" (which was probably busy registering the signature of our new toy) but way sooner.

 

So all in all nothing certain but if it's true that the FREMM fired missiles (not taking that for the truth yet) my bet is that it was an Aster 15 fired at a stray S-200 which was menacing to crash in an area too close to the ship for safety (don't even know if it's technically possible).

 

That's my 2 cents.

[LoooSeR]

1 hour ago, Scolopax said:

It's kind of disappeared behind the downing of the Russian plane, but do we know what the French ship fired at and why?

I suspect reports are false, and Israeli jets actions were reason for this.

[Mighty_Zuk]

The radars simply detected the firing from the FREMM's vicinity, and believed it was a French attack. 

They also noted that they lost communication with the aircraft at 11PM.

 

This raises several questions: 

 

1. If they have believed, for several hours, that the source of fire was a French ship, how could they have so accurately tracked the F-16's route from such a great distance? 

 

2. If they were able to track the F-16 from such a great distance, why were they not able to warn the Il-20 beforehand? If we judge by the released map, the distance between the bomb drop point and the edge of the map (to where the dotted line continues) is approximately 170km, which would leave a warning time of 10 minutes at least, or even more if we take into account Russian radars can see the planes taking off, meaning at least more than double that amount of time they were tracked.

 

3. If the bombs were released between 2200 and 2210, and the bombs were indeed glide bombs and not loitering munitions, then by 2300 when the Il-20 was downed, wouldn't they already be inside Israel, and the Il-20 above land, which would both match the Israeli MoD's claims?

 

4. If Russia's claims of fully integrating its air defense network in Syria, with that of the SAA in August 2017 (i.e more than a year ago) are true, and they do share the same clear view of the airspace including IFF equipment which can be accessed by Russia's systems at least, should the SAA not have had access as well to IFF data and thus known there was a Russian plane in the vicinity?

 

5. If Russian forces have seen the planes coming from hundreds of miles away, on a path that is known to be typically used for the frequent airstrikes, isn't their great confusion through a matter of hours showing the soldiers weren't in fact observing the radar feed at the time?

 

6. If they were not looking at the radar feed, or were looking but failed to inform anyone, and the Syrians failed to observe IFF data that according to Russia's own statement was supposed to be accessible to the SAA, doesn't this point to a criminal neglect on the part of Russian armed forces and the SAA? 

 

 

To me it seems Russia just hurried to point a finger at any (numerous) direction(s) without checking for consistency of their version, or is trying to hide incompetence within its own ranks when it should be putting soldiers on disciplinary trial, and also tries to avoid blaming an ally whose political support is greatly needed.

[LoooSeR]

1 hour ago, Mighty_Zuk said:

The radars simply detected the firing from the FREMM's vicinity, and believed it was a French attack. 

They also noted that they lost communication with the aircraft at 11PM.

 

This raises several questions: 

 

1. If they have believed, for several hours, that the source of fire was a French ship, how could they have so accurately tracked the F-16's route from such a great distance? 

 

2. If they were able to track the F-16 from such a great distance, why were they not able to warn the Il-20 beforehand? If we judge by the released map, the distance between the bomb drop point and the edge of the map (to where the dotted line continues) is approximately 170km, which would leave a warning time of 10 minutes at least, or even more if we take into account Russian radars can see the planes taking off, meaning at least more than double that amount of time they were tracked.

 

3. If the bombs were released between 2200 and 2210, and the bombs were indeed glide bombs and not loitering munitions, then by 2300 when the Il-20 was downed, wouldn't they already be inside Israel, and the Il-20 above land, which would both match the Israeli MoD's claims?

 

4. If Russia's claims of fully integrating its air defense network in Syria, with that of the SAA in August 2017 (i.e more than a year ago) are true, and they do share the same clear view of the airspace including IFF equipment which can be accessed by Russia's systems at least, should the SAA not have had access as well to IFF data and thus known there was a Russian plane in the vicinity?

 

5. If Russian forces have seen the planes coming from hundreds of miles away, on a path that is known to be typically used for the frequent airstrikes, isn't their great confusion through a matter of hours showing the soldiers weren't in fact observing the radar feed at the time?

 

6. If they were not looking at the radar feed, or were looking but failed to inform anyone, and the Syrians failed to observe IFF data that according to Russia's own statement was supposed to be accessible to the SAA, doesn't this point to a criminal neglect on the part of Russian armed forces and the SAA? 

 

 

To me it seems Russia just hurried to point a finger at any (numerous) direction(s) without checking for consistency of their version, or is trying to hide incompetence within its own ranks when it should be putting soldiers on disciplinary trial, and also tries to avoid blaming an ally whose political support is greatly needed.

 

1) They painted approximate area with a size of Cyprus or Lebanon. Is this look to you as "accurate"?

 

2) they didn't had accurate data on Israeli jets movements. And probably were not expecting strikes near VKS AB. That route (or similar) was used several times already, i posted photos and videos of IAF F-16s flying above Lebanon.

 

3) I posted this map several times and you didn't bothered to look at it. IL-20M was downed at 22:07.

 

4) IDK level of full integration. But i know how S-200 was able to shot down several planes that were not intended target. 

 

...

 

6) Yes, i posted earlier that Russian side is not without a blame. Doesn't change a fact that Israeli aggression triggered this whole event. 

[Mighty_Zuk]

1 hour ago, LoooSeR said:

 

1) They painted approximate area with a size of Cyprus or Lebanon. Is this look to you as "accurate"?

-map-

 

2) they didn't had accurate data on Israeli jets movements. And probably were not expecting strikes near VKS AB. That route (or similar) was used several times already, i posted photos and videos of IAF F-16s flying above Lebanon.

 

3) I posted this map several times and you didn't bothered to look at it. IL-20M was downed at 22:07.

 

4) IDK level of full integration. But i know how S-200 was able to shot down several planes that were not intended target. 

 

...

 

6) Yes, i posted earlier that Russian side is not without a blame. Doesn't change a fact that Israeli aggression triggered this whole event. 

 

1)To me it seems more like a line that shows the entire path of the airplanes, not just some doodled approximate area of where the fighters could be. Because if it was the latter, then I don't think they'd be in a position to make any assumptions about an alleged use of the Il-20 as decoy. Does any official source say whether this is supposed to be a large area or an accurate path?

 

2)Then they should have, because this is clearly within the range of their radars and if they want their joint IADS to work they have to monitor it, otherwise they're setting themselves up for failure.

 

3)I have looked at it but went with info I read on, I believe, sputnik, or RT, on the matter. Either way I'll go with the 2207 claim. Seems a bit strange to me they were able to track its exact path, point and time of communication cut-off which shows that someone was at least watching the skies.

 

4)Yes, in scenarios like in Ukraine I believe, is what you're referring to? Not exactly an example of top notch technology. It's not just about the reckless firing, but the fact that either the Syrians did not bother to check for FF, or somehow did not see it on their systems.

 

6)I think it's quite disingenuous to call this "aggression". Israel and Syria are de jure and de facto at war. A war that started as early as 1948 and officially and practically never ended.

Israel and Iran are also, de facto but not de jure at war, since pretty much the 1980's.

What is happening right now is that Iran is trying to gain foothold in Syria, and Israel does not agree to that, so they're having this war of attrition, or more like a cat and mouse game, where Israel has the legitimacy to bomb however it wants because Syria chose to reject the peace treaties that were offered to it during Olmert's term, that would officially end the state of war between them in exchange for the Golan's transfer to Syria.

 

Israel has been countering Iran's movements in Syria for a long time, long before Russia became involved in the war, and will continue to do so, otherwise it'd jeopardize its own security. This is necessary self defense, not aggression. 

If I were asked to point towards the aggressors, I'd point towards the IRGC and their militias, who are (likely deliberately) putting Russian forces in harm's way by concealing their infrastructure and weaponry very close to centers of Russian presence.

Why else would they position themselves inside Latakia? You mentioned T4 airbase before, from which Iran launched drones into Israel. Why station their troops there if Russian forces could be nearby? 

 

 

[LoooSeR]

Possible list of IL-20M crew

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1. Sergey Gavryutin
2. Konstantin Nazarov
3. Alexander Vechernin
4. Timofei Baranov
5. Pavel Tkachenko
6. Alexander Burlaka
7. Grigory Zinoviev
8. Denis Gordov
9. Roman Dolmatov
10. Victor Kvasenkov
11. Alexey Sedanov
12. Vladimir Yakovlev
13. Alexey Arzumanov
14. Andrey Sergeenkov

 

[LoooSeR]

ISIS pocket south of Palmyra, captured ISIS scum and trophies

 

Spoiler

 

[LoooSeR]

Another version of events from Wael (i guess, his old account is no longer active, pic taken from https://twitter.com/Syrian_SR)

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We’re highly certain that #Israel also used their Dolphin subs to attack the #SAA positions.

 

[LoooSeR]

Possibly photo of a crew of that IL-20M.

[LoooSeR]

One of destroyed objects:

 

 

http://wikimapia.org/#lang=ru&lat=35.532017&lon=35.829678&z=15&m=w

Just 17 km away from Hmeymim AB

 

[LoooSeR]

 

Spoiler

 

[LoooSeR]

Possibly this IL-20M was being tested, to be sent to Syria

[LoooSeR]

[LoooSeR]

HTS meanwhile is preparing for "de-escalation" in Aleppo province

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Mighty_Zuk]

On 9/19/2018 at 3:06 PM, LoooSeR said:

Another version of events from Wael (i guess, his old account is no longer active, pic taken from https://twitter.com/Syrian_SR)

 

Far clearer than any version so far due to actual timeline, but are they real about an S-400 launch? 

[Mighty_Zuk]

This version seems to stem from the Israeli report, apparently.

IAF reports that Syrian AD kept firing for about 40 minutes after the attack has ended.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-fired-missiles-for-40-minutes-after-israeli-strike-hitting-russian-plane/

[Mighty_Zuk]

NEWS that Russia is not pleased with IAF's report and request a new one instead.