The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has issued a statement on last week’s US-led coalition attack on Syria which backs up Russian assessments that the majority of the missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defense. The Observatory put the figure at 65 out of 105 missiles intercepted.
While there were reports of missile interceptions within minutes after Friday night’s US-led attack on Syria, the exact number has been heavily contested. Syrian state media reported 13 initially, but the figure continued to rise. Meanwhile, the US claimed zero missiles were intercepted.
65 out of 105 would be a remarkable feat, considering these are missiles, and considering the Russians did not use the advanced S-400 in any of the interceptions. That said, the US claim of 0 was never very credible, as video footage purporting to show interceptions was readily available the first night.
In addition to Syria’s S-200 and S-125 systems, mostly designed as anti-aircraft systems, Syria used 2K12 Kub systems, as well as 9k317E Buk missiles, shorter range designs meant to counter missiles and smart bombs. They appear to have been quite successful in doing so.
There are still not good figures on casualties from the attacks, but they would’ve been much larger had nearly two-thirds of the missiles not been intercepted. The US clearly would be interested in downplaying interceptions, but if the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory is making similar claims, it will be difficult to maintain that narrative.
Fact: the latest Amerikastani missiles aren’t any match for decades old Soviet origin technology.
Conclusion:
Either:
1. The Amerikastani missiles are pretty much useless and the military industrial complex is a gigantic exercise in making money out of the average public.
2. Soviet origin weapons are far better than they are given credit for.
3. The defences were tipped off in advance when and from which direction the Amerikastani missiles would be coming, so they not only evacuated the targets but were ready and prepared to shoot Trump’s penis-substitutes out of the air.
4. Several or all of the above.
None of which is flattering to the Imperialist States of Amerikastan.
5. even older missile launcher installations are in need of maintenance and do at times receive upgrades like on electronics, radar or command vehicle operation. The specs normally remain highly secret and might not have been used by all the commercial parties manufacturing the cruise missiles. For example advanced electronic decoy tactics might not have fooled the launchers after all. Or “time to launch” was shorter or the old Kub missiles were less easy to detect or predict. These are all actual very much battle tested weapons after all. Those cruise missiles had not many, if at all, any difficult, contested missions in real life so far. Not from possibly recently upgraded material AFAIK.
Trump’s penis-substitutes
Good one.
You’re welcome.
And this was accomplished with only S125 and S2@@. Imagine when Syria gets the S3@@, can you say SOL?
getting your hopes up?
Get Ready, Russia and China: The U.S. Air Force Wants 400 New ICBMs
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/get-ready-russia-china-the-us-air-force-wants-400-new-icbms-18318
Wow! 400 New ICBMs?
Nothing greater idea than putting U.S further in national debt as the Reytheon boys laugh all the way to the offshore bank.
” the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory”
But one could argue that they would have a vested interested by suggesting the attack partly failed and implying Syria has such strong air defenses. It would seem for them more likely the US-coalition would then have reasons to stay and correct or repair their dented image? Just wondering.
I would be cautious about the interpretation of interception success rate. High interception can still be low effectiveness. If one recalls Theodore Postol’s criticisms of the Patriot missiles, interception can mean anything from ‘exploding near one of the parts of the incoming missile’ (which could be a discarded tail) to actual destruction of the warhead before impact.
I mean, it’s possible that the success rate is what it appears since a Tomahawk is slow and doesn’t discard its tail , but someone should at least ask the question.
Well: Both sides are going to make claims. The claims of both sides are likely to include at least some falsehood or disinformation, for both propaganda purposes, and for purposes of not revealing useful information to an adversary.
Given that, Occam’s Razor suggests that the safest assumption is:
The Russian/Syrian defenses intercepted more missiles than the US will admit and fewer than the Russians/Syrians will claim, with better results than the US will admit and results not as good as the Russians/Syrians will claim.
But, given the two sets of claims, I’d put a little more faith in the Russian/Syrian claims than in the US claims, simply because the US claim — no interceptions — is a little too over the top to be believable at all.
Sure, I accept that it’s valid to do a best guess but my point it it’s not only about who do you believe, but also about understanding what the claims mean. And then there are apparent contradictions with the success rate of patriot missiles or iron dome.
Yes who to believe the Americans that said they would launch missiles into Syria or the Russians puppets that said they would stop them and target the militaries involved? Who to believe antiwar Zombies,who to believe??? Hahaha
Yes smart guy , it’s pretty safe to assume that the Americans are usually lying. It’s one of the perks of democracies that they rely on PR so much.
Says the person advocating for a dictator that’s gassing his people.Like I said you and your brain dead comrades are so funny.
Yeah. I guess you forgot the fake WMD in Iraq? Or the fake 2ed Gulf of Tonkin attack. Sure. THIS time the government is telling the truth. Fool someone once shame on you, fool someone twice shame on THEM. ……
Of course someone that allows themselves to be fooled again and again and brags about it is both a fool and beneath contempt.
Anti war zombies? Really? The U.S. military hasn’t been able to win in Afghanistan. Despite spending more than that countries entire GDP for years …… Interventionist morons. Tell you what… If you believe in such, how about you paying for it and sending your own family to fight. Leave the sane people out of it.
Save the rants and attempted equation of America’s mission to wipe out ISIS with what you think we’re in Syria to do.Sane isn’t a dumb ass with a biased perspective that advocates for a dictator that’s gassing babies. You’re just mad because we said we where going to do something and we did it, the people you rooted for didn’t do shiii….DEAL WITH IT
Oh, so it’s “we,” huh?
Why do I suspect that all YOU did was talk shit while sitting in your underwear eating chocolate covered pork rinds?
Delusion. Fact is the USA and Israel armed and trained the Jihadists. Assad and Russia were the most effective forces in suppressing those. Fact is you are a friend of the terrorists. Just not smart enough to understand that.
Meanwhile MoonOfA says http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/syria-pentagon-hides-attack-failure-70-cruise-missiles-shot-down-.html that a high success rate of modern missiles against cruise missiles is realistic because they’re slow and fly straight and low. He also concludes from the publicly available info that the attack was a lot more aggressive than the descriptive ‘symbolic’ but simply failed to reach the main targets, being the airports.
And the vintage S200 is inadequate..
To defend against cruise missiles you can do something you can’t against ballistic missiles – you can simply saturate the airspace in front of them with high volumes of primitive, WWII style anti aircraft fire. A heavy machine gun can shoot down a cruise missile just as effectively as a SAM can.
I wish I could remember which briefing but it was CNN where some Pentagon guy claimed that the Syrian air defense was ‘wildly unsuccessful’. That the Syrians fired the AD weapons after the U.S. missiles had hit their target. I think the guy was having flashbacks to Libya circa the 1980’s. Did anyone else pick up that account?
Our Patriot missiles have missed almost all the missiles they’ve tried to intercept. For a long time that was not clear. Why? Because missiles fired are expected to come down, and it can be hard to distinguish a miss from a shot down.
Those cruise missiles flew at a low altitude and high speed in challenging circumstances. Pilots call it “controlled flight into terrain” when a manned aircraft does that, despite better choice of circumstances and all the very best instruments and a person there too.
I doubt the antiaircraft systems set any record for shooting down difficult targets. I also doubt that all the missiles flew to their targets perfectly as intended. Somewhere in there a lot of error must be accounted for.
I guess the new narrative for the antiwar Zombies cult on this enemy sympathizer propaganda platform is America’s missiles are obsolete and really had no impact on anything. I gotta give it to y’all for being so claiming to be so informed the people on this forum really are very gullible or have tunnel vision. America and it’s allies bombed Syria and suffered no losses or casualties and the response is to criticize the missiles….You guys put a smile on my face daily but I guess when the predictions of nuclear war and thousands of America troops that are killed in Syria by Russia,and Chinese ships that never came to the rescue fizzle out the new strategy is criticize the missiles that bombed its targets. Thanks antiwar Zombies for the many smiles you provide daily,you’re the best.
You don’t sound like you’re smiling.
Costs dummy. The extremely high priced weapons are being countered at a tiny fraction of what the U.S. taxpayers are being charged. This isn’t the only weapons system where this is happening either. The trillion dollar F-35 is one of MANY cost/ results failures. Fact is the US is spending more and getting LESS. US projection of power via aircraft carrier battle groups is based on a false premise. Those military assets are very vunerable.
I just heard Trump say in Florida that every one of the missiles hit their target in Syria. Who do we believe?