Video released by Russian MoD seems to prove that Russia’s combat planes missed their targets in Syria!

September 30, 2015 Russia, Syria, Troubled Areas, War on ISIS
David Cenciotti

Russia has launched its first air strikes in Syria. But they may have missed their targets!

On Sept. 30, the Russian Air Force contingent based at Latakia launched its first air strikes against targets in Syria following the approval from the Russian Duma.

According to the Russian MoD, that has been quite active on Social Media all day, the air strikes targeted 8 ISIS targets in Syria and involved 20 sorties flown by Russian aircraft and hit “military materiel,communication centres, ammunition and fuel depots of IS.”

Now take a look at the following video, that shows some of the targets being attacked by the Russian warplanes.

Although we are unable to ID the weapons used against these targets it looks like that either the targeting pod was aiming somewhere else or the attack missed its target: the first part of the footage (most probably filmed by a drone) shows shrapnels from a bomb possibly exploded south of the target; the second part shows the same target and other shrapnels, but you can also clearly see the blast of a bomb at the bottom of the scene; the third one shows bombs (2 or 3) seemigly missing their target by several meters.

According to some photographs on Twitter, Su-24M2 may have been involved in the first air strikes in the area of Homs. And, as shown by the footage released by the Russian MoD, they probably used unguided bombs….

Image credit: Russian MoD

 

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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

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3 Comments

  1. Here, you get the official Russian Air Force reply:

    https://www.rt.com/news/317505-air-force-terrorists-raqqa/

    “Konashenkov noted the crosshair visible on the drone video footage is not a target, but merely a focus point of the UAV’s camera “maintaining control over an airstrike.” ”

    As such, it seems you were not the only one raising the point as it needed an official answer (let it be the real one or not). I cannot imagine a US spokesperson commenting that, it seems Russians are very sensitive on this kind of scrutiny.

  2. Although it is an extremely sad news, it is something that aviation-wise is far less interesting than the air war in Syria and the first Russian air strikes on ISIS, unless something different/more emerges.

    If you are looking for politics, general news, etc. you should read another blog.

  3. Well, first of all Serbia was under sanctions on buying weapons for a decade; second, it is 7million people country.
    And yet, we did shot down such”miracle”weapon by our air force, not by accident, even if overwhelmed by cowardly attack of 24 NATO countries on Serbia.
    I think we showed who is “big guy” there.
    Not to mention complete failure of US bombing of ISIL for a year, no results at all, it took new cities, more territory…
    Your air force is goos for attacking small poor countries with advantege 1000:1 …”big guys”no, you are small guys

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