Syrian conflict.

[Belesarius]

Crosspost to aerospace thread.  With thanks to Max Popenker. Tu-160 has it's combat debut against ISIS.

 

[LoooSeR]

Looks like those are parts of missile engines. Our missiles. Our big missiles. 

[LoooSeR]

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/16/australia-excluded-from-syria-peace-talks-after-russian-objection

 

lol

 

 

Australia excluded from Syria peace talks after Russian objection

[LoooSeR]

Kh-55 engine? Started to appear in the morning, today. I am on the work, so i am not very fast with news... 

[LoooSeR]

This French newspaper claims that Russia launched missiles from Middeterranian sea, with missiles flying over Turkey.

http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/11/17/syrie-deuxieme-raid-aerien-francais-contre-le-fief-de-l-ei_4811377_3218.html?xtmc=russes_tiraient&xtcr=1

[LoooSeR]

Parts of missile engine (?) near Idlib.

[LoooSeR]

Possibly another one.

[LoooSeR]

[LoooSeR]

Khan Sheikhoun,  #Idlib

[LoooSeR]

 

Russian diesel-electric submarine "Rostov-on-Don" makes a transition from to the Northern Fleet in Novorossiysk, struck from the eastern Mediterranean using cruise missile "Caliber" at targets around the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital banned in Russia "Islamic state ", said to RBC source close to the Defense Ministry.

[Belesarius]

I have to say I'm totally unsurprised at the Russian escalation.  FSB just confirmed that the airliner was downed by a bomb.  There are rumors flying around western media that there is a substantial reward being offered for those responsible. 

 

Fuck it.

 

GO RUSSIA!

[LoooSeR]

hmmm

 

The goal of strikes by DPL "Rostov-on-Don" were training bases, headquarters, warehouses with arms and ammunition, items dislocation militias. The blow was not done by grazing, but ballistic trajectory at an altitude of several kilometers in order to avoid accidents due to the busy shipping in the Mediterranean.

 

Kalibr missiles are now 'battle' tested with 2 types of trajectories.

[LoooSeR]

Jobar-grad

[LoooSeR]

 

Great news: #SAA and allies have captured the village of al-Hadath just north of #Mahin E #Homs #IS fighters

http://wikimapia.org/#lang=ru&lat=34.312532&lon=37.093964&z=12&m=b

[LoooSeR]

No idea how true/false it is.

 

Video. Russian  cruise missiles  from Mediterranean spotted over  Idlib in the way to Raqqa.

[LoooSeR]

 

"Jaysh al-Islam" HQ in #Idlib province destroyed by a Russian air raid 

[Belesarius]

LoooSer is a posting MACHINE.  Jesus, how do you find stuff so damned fast to post.  I read quick, and then I refresh the page and there is another 6 posts.

[LoooSeR]

 

This cheerful jackal inside of this 6-ton wagon tried to commit suicide on the eve of a breakthrough on the airbase Kuveyres. Identified as an Egyptian national Abu Munzer al-Masri

 

 

Jabhat Al-Mad val Maxerin 

[LoooSeR]

 

Agathocle deSyracuse ‏@deSyracuse 4 ч.4 часа назад

#Syria : 15 rebels brigades from #Aleppo and #Idlib join US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces #SDF

#Syria #SDF : the 15 brigades from Idlib and Aleppo include Arabian and Kurdish factions

#SDF / new 15 factions include (1) : Jaysh al-Thuwar, Quwat al-Furqat 30, Brigade Shuhada Rif Idlib, Brigade Ayan Jalut, Infantry Brigade 99

#SDF / new 15 factions include (2) : Brigade al-Hamza, Brigade al-Qaeqae, Brigade al-Maham al-Khassat, Brigade al-Salajiqah (Seldjusks)

#SDF / new 15 factions include (3) : Regiment 102, Harar al-Shamali, Aleppo tribal forces, Jabhat al-Akrad (Kurdish), YPG/YPJ (Kurdish)

 That smells bad. Cockroaches are trying to survive. They could call themselfs "Army of Friends of Syria". 

[LoooSeR]

Shoigu said in a live report that 34 cruise missiles were launched (from Tu-95 and Tu-160).

Sorties will be increased by 2 times, will use long-range aircraft and Tu-22M3.

 

 

 

Details on #ruaf escalation in #syria: two dozen strategic bombers have joined air operation vs #jihadists. Number of sorties to rise more

 

 

#Moscow is massively expanding its operation in #Syria, will add 25 strategic long-range bombers, launching strikes from bases in #Russia

 

 

#Putin tells generals on live TV to make direct contact with the #French and "treat them like allies."

 

 

 

 

Now #Russian Mediterranean fleet got a direct command from Putin to cooperate with #French carrier group

 

 

#ruaf, #ruNavy to coordinate anti-terror mission with aircraft carrier-led #french naval battlegroup as 'allies'. Finally a true coalition?

[LoooSeR]

 

[Priory_of_Sion]

Forces from the "New Syrian Army" attacked an ISIS controlled oil field near Tanaf after being dropped off by helicopters from Jordan. 

[LoooSeR]

Syria becomes a complete mess of factions and interest.

[Glattrohr]

 

Is my interpretion of the situation correct? 

• Airforce operating from Syria remains the same
• Tu-22M3's will provide long-range bombing missions from Russian soil
• T-95MS's & Tu-160's are participating in cruise missile launces from Russian airspace

Any ideas what kind of munition the Backfires will use / have used?

[cm_kruger]

The Daily Beast has published two interviews with a defector from ISIS.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/15/confessions-of-an-isis-spy.html

 

Abu Khaled felt compelled to sign up because he believed America was an accomplice to global conspiracy, led by Iran and Russia, to keep the tyrant Bashar al-Assad in power. How else could it be explained that the U.S. was waging war only against Sunnis, and leaving an Alawite-run regime guilty of mass murder by almost every means and its Iranian Shia armies untouched?

 

Also, Abu Khaled was curious. “I went there practically as an adventure,” he said. “I wanted to see what kind of people were there. Honestly, I don’t regret it. I wanted to know them. Now they are my enemy—and I know them very well.”

 

 

Before the fight for the Kurdish town of Kobani last year, the caliphate had an aura of invincibility, and people from around the world were rushing to envelop themselves in the black flag of messianic victory. But in that battle, which lasted for months, Kurdish paramilitaries backed by U.S. airpower fought well, while ISIS—at least as far as Abu Khaled characterizes it—needlessly sent thousands to their slaughter, without any tactical, much less strategic, forethought. The jihadist army had lost between 4,000 and 5,000 fighters, most of them non-Syrians.

 

“Double this number are wounded and can’t fight anymore,” Abu Khaled told me. “They lost a leg or a hand.” Immigrants, then, are requisitioned as cannon fodder? He nodded. In September of last year, at the apogee of ISIS’s foreign recruitment surge, he says the influx of foreigners amazed even those welcoming them in. “We had like 3,000 foreign fighters who arrived every day to join ISIS. I mean, every day. And now we don’t have even like 50 or 60.”

 

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/16/how-isis-picks-its-suicide-bombers.html

 

 

ISIS’s heralded end of the artificial borders imposed by European imperial powers has led to the unintended consequence of jihadist imperialism. The ISIS leadership, after all, is mainly Iraqi, and if there is a political, as opposed to religious, objective underlying all its activity, it is the restoration of Sunni power in Baghdad. Indeed, the franchise in Mesopotamia can be considered more “nationalist” in orientation than the one in the Levant, where muhajireen drunk on the “end of Sykes-Picot” seem not to realize they’re being exploited by the former henchmen of Saddam Hussein.

 

 

The entire apparatus was honeycombed with semi-autonomous fiefs, often tasked with keeping track of what the others were up to. “A general intelligence department reported to the ‘security emir’ for a region who was in charge of deputy emirs for individual districts. A head of secret spy cells and an ‘intelligence service and information manager’ for the district reported to each of these deputy emirs. The spy cells at the local level reported to the district emir’s deputy. The goal was to have everyone keeping an eye on everyone else.”

 

This naturally puts one in mind of the KGB or Stasi—hardly a coincidence given that many of the top-ranking ISIS officials are former members of Saddam Hussein’s mukhabarat and therefore past pupils of Warsaw Pact security organs. In fact, the man who constructed the ISIS franchise in Syria, the now-deceased Haji Bakr, had once been a colonel in Saddam’s Air Defense Intelligence Service.

 

Abu Khaled told me that the ministry of fear Haji Bakr built has only thrived since.

 

“A week before I defected, I was sitting with the chief of Amn al-Kharji, Abu Abd Rahman al-Tunisi. They know the weak point of the FSA. Al-Tunisi told me: ‘We are going to train guys we know, recruiters, Syrians… Take them, train them, and send them back to where they came from. We’ll give them $200,000 to $300,000. And because they have money, the FSA will put them in top positions.’”

 

“This is how ISIS took over Syria,” said Abu Khaled. “It has plants in the villages and areas run by the FSA, and its people are in the FSA.”