I just love that they feel they need to station Land attack cruise missiles in a landlocked sea.
It's adorably crazy.
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NEWS Russia building barracks at Syrian airport
- Thread starter nittany03
- Start date
I just love that they feel they need to station Land attack cruise missiles in a landlocked sea.
It's adorably crazy.
You are assuming the Syrians will be able take advantage of Russian help, I still have serious doubt they will be able to. Another thing to point out, while the Russians may not have the same ROE that doesn't mean they will be able to use it to good effect, their weapons have to work and their pilots hav ego know what they are doing.
They actually give them a lot of flexibility to target almost anything they want for a considerable distance in any direction, powerful tools in that region of the world.
Also operational fires/messaging. "Look, these missiles we just got actually work, and we'll prove the WEZ to you by taking three times as long a shot as we could from the Eastern Med, because look at these nifty dip clearances we got from our BFFs in Tehran! Never mind the four smoking holes in their territory. Nothing to see there; move along now."
I do not know just how badly the Syrian Army has ben affected by desertions and combat loses to date. It would seem to me, however, that what they can deploy is the best trained and led ground force in the fight. They also have more heavy weapons than ISIS or the anti Assad forces. I think they will be able to take advantage of Russian help. Just how much, I don't know. I do know, that it is very likely that any advantage gained by Syrian Army from Russian help will be greater than the record of US aid to anti Assad militias. We have pissed money down the drain. As to relaxed ROE and taking advantage of that, you can't possible be saying that the Russian aircrew can't put a dumb bomb or six on a command building, strafe or drop cluster munitions on a formation of men, or guide the occasional LGB onto an artillery piece. They don't need to or are morally motivated to make ultra precision attacks to reduce collateral damage. The Assad government will not complain about civilian lives lost in fantastic displays of firepower. They won't deploy special forces to surgically remove senior enemy leadership from the battle field when a stick of dumb bombs will work just as well. Russia is certainly not a world class power.
They are not the top 10% of FWS (or whatever we call it now) but that isn't needed. We shouldn't filter their capabilities through our lens of acceptability. Frankly, all to often we are saddling up $90 tack on a $5 horse. I believe they are more than capable of the types of mission needed to satisfy their national interests in Syria.
Couldn't you do the same with a bomber that you can also redeploy to different parts of Russia as the situation dictates?
Maybe, but it is nice to have options like we do with both the Tomahawk and JASSM.
I think you are the one who is seeing things through a filter. While the Russians may have a few impressive weapons they don't have anywhere the same tail that we do to help them fight, and that doesn't include just logistics but intelligence as well. Merely finding the right targets to drop on will be a challenge for them, not just hitting them. The fact the Russians are in the country shows how desperate things are in the first place for Assad and his forces. All Putin is doing is getting himself sucked into a quagmire.
Shit or get off of the pot..........the bathroom door is closing behind us and the Russians are flipping through a magazine. This may be a good thing. I don't think we have the stomach anymore to police that shithole. The wildcard is Israel. This will get sporty.
But they do have the Mukhabarat, and I bet they have a better handle on this than our IC does.
Beyond the Iraqi dimension of ISIS, I think I'm content with leaving Syria alone and trying to contain things as best we can. It sucks for the thousands who have been killed and millions displaced, but Syria has had an adversarial relationship with the West for a long time, and I'm not sure what our involvement there really gets us in the long run. Let the Russians and Iranians spill their blood and treasure.
Then why have they steadily lost territory to the various rebel factions?
Never underestimate the ability of an Arab military/criminal organization to fuck things up.
I would not say it sucks for the millions displaced. They are leaving for Europe - estimates are over 3,000,000 Syrians this year. Then you have refugees and migrants from everywhere else moving into Europe. Sweden has taken in 1% of its population in the last 3 months. The political ramifications in Europe are immense. Whether this was Putin's plan or a lucky coincidence for Russia remains to be seen.
Sort of a different issue from this thread, but blame German guilt for this. The EU has lost their minds.
Sounds like a blast. Sign me up for that 1600 mile walk from Greece to Germany. I lived in the housing projects in France during the late 1970s, along with a bunch of poverty stricken Algerians, Moroccans, West Africans and Vietnamese. I can only speak to the French situation, but life as in immigrant or refugee is no walk in the park. In the larger cities, they're warehoused like animals in the banlieues. It's better than being blown up in your country of origin, or gang-raped by ISIS, but it definitely doesn't not suck.