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.
Upon Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s decision Russian Aerospace Forces launched operation against #ISIS in #Syria #BBC http://t.co/BJN0FVnjB2
— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) September 30, 2015
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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I don’t think the first two are cluster bombs, for both I first see on
the bottom corner of the screen a huge explosion on the ground before the rain of small
hits (who don’t look like explosions in my opinion). Cluster bombs explode in mid-air, not on the ground, and spray bomblets, each one more or less a mortar shell. So it looks more like
schrapnel or debris to me. What did these bombs hit, we can’t say, since the drone didn’t focus on the impact zone.
The simultaneous 2 are indeed a few meters’ miss, but that shook the hell out of those barracks for sure. Close enough for unguided (ergo cheap) bombs.
That being said, commenting the results of russian strikes upon a single video is quite irrelevant, so even if they missed in that case (and I say “if”) let’s not make it a generality, don’t you folks think ? And let’s not forget they don’t have to fly a long time to refuel and rearm.
The funny part is that it is not a drone footage: https://www.rt.com/news/317104-russia-strike-isis-video/
Crosshairs were pointing in the wrong direction or the pilot filming the attack had no clue what the actual target was. For me it’s a 100-150 miss and it’s a bit too much even for a dumb bomb.
When F-22 shoots down russian planes they will say it was “local militia”
When Russian planes shot down F-22, US will say that “the engine broke”
as when we in Serbia downed F-117a.
I remember it very well! We all went for a bear that day.
Only much later they confirmed that it was downed by Yugoslav army unit,using modified Russian anti-aircraft rocket
You just remember this, “comrade” … the USA has been engaged in continuous combat air operations for many years. Our arrows rarely miss. But you keep drinkin’ that beer, tovareesh.
I wouldnt necessarily call it a “failure” per se. When you don’t spend millions on “smart bombs” you obviously trade accuracy for cost effectiveness. Russia is just opting for more bombs rather than more accurate ones. In the end it probably balances out.
You sir have no qualification to comment on such matters. The munitions are anti-personnel and the target is a front line.
Do you know what those white things are? Are they missiles?
http://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2015/1-october-russian-war-planes-in-syria-/comments