How far off is “stand-off” for air-delivered missiles? Were the aircraft loitering over Israel (easy, and easy if made public), Jordan (also easy on the first, just a little on the second–I think the B1s were launched from Qatar, eg), the Med, or penetrating in-country?
ETA:
Also, re in-country operations, is it within the realm of possibility, without too far a stretch on how these things go, that we inserted Tactical Air Control Special Forces, or perhaps were aided by Israeli teams in place? (Surely the intelligence from Israel on these cites and defenses must have been most useful.)
Well we did tell the Russians the strike was coming and when. US spokesman claimed it was for airspace deconfliction purposes (there’s going to missiles flying here, here, and here). However, the French said it was much more specific. If one believes the Russians didn’t tell their client state Syria, then I have a doozy of a newsletter I can sell you.
The attack was at night (good for tactical surprise and hiding the missiles from ground visual observation) but that also reduces the chances of occupancy. Not killing workers who have probably no other choice is good - not killing the chemical weapon designers and overlords is bad. Compromise is just destroying the facilities. You can find “wag the dog” arguments in the PIT (butt hurt trump takes to twitter again).
(cite, [URL=“https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/us-trump-syria”]cite and cite)
UK’s Storm Shadow - range of 400km/250 miles. That means they could have almost launched from their airbase in Cyprus. ISTR seeing that they were still relatively close to Cyprus but don’t recall where.
France also used the Storm Shadow under a different name (SCALP-EG) with the same range. Firing from international waters over the Med was also a possibility for them. Since they were flying from France firing from the Med would reduce their flight time.
French MdCN - sea-launched with a classified range. Some estimates state 1000 km / 620 miles range. Launched from the Med.
US JASSM - range of 370km / 230 miles and an extended range variant 1000 km / 620 miles.
Tomahawk - 1500 km range. Launched from ships in the Mediterranean along with the Red and Arabian seas.
If you look at the map in the third cite at the top, two of the targets were near, in long-range standoff missile terms, to the Syrian coast on the Med. All of the British and French-specific weapons went into those targets. (Cite from the transcript of the after action briefing by the Pentagon.) The Barzah facility is in the salient surrounded by Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. That makes overflight for the missiles from the B1s, Red Sea and Arabian Sea an issue. Ranges are long enough there’s a lot of options though.
It’d be a very lucky shot. It’s a small target - 2’ diameter, 18’ long - and it flies low (100-150’) and fast (550 MPH). Also, it’s the middle of the night, and this thing is powered by a turbofan, not a rocket, so you won’t have any kind of glowing exhaust plume to tell you where in the sky to even look for it.
Even in broad daylight, with that kind of speed, a shooter would need to lead the target by a large margin; to succeed at this without tracers would pretty much be a fluke.
By firing so many missiles did they expect some to be intercepted?
I imagine part of the plan would have been to saturate air defenses.
Route planning for the missiles would have also included at least some being routed to avoid known fixed air-defense sites, but having the Russian AWACS-equivalent doing lookdown detection would have reduced the effectiveness of that in any area in its coverage. Saturation may have been more effective – it doesn’t matter if they can see your missile inbound if their AA guns and SAM launchers are already at 100% utillization.
The DoD claims their SAM launchers were at 0% utilization while the missiles were inbound, and that the Russian systems weren’t activated. I strongly suspect the Russian AWACS-equivalent wasn’t passing any information to the Syrian IADS, if it was even airborne at the time of the strike.
Maybe they were ‘killing two birds with one stone’? :rolleyes:
Other tidbits. The attacks would have been coordinated with satellite overpasses (US, GB, France). ELINT aircraft would have been sniffing for Russian/Syrian air defense radars and radio communications. Radars popping up have very different signatures in search mode versus targeting/illumination mode. And drones - always the drones!
I believe this strike was the first combat use of JASSM.
You are correct.
According to Wikipedia, you can retarget them while in flight. If someone turns on a radar, might one be redirected to hit said radar?
While this is probably technically feasible, I doubt it would happen in most cases for policy reasons. Take this most recent strike for example: The DoD probably spent a good long while vetting the targets, and I imagine doing things like ensuring that approach angles and other factors would minimize the risk of civilian casualties. If a radar suddenly lit up in the middle of a JASSM’s ~1 hour flight, I’d be shocked if DoD could get all the approval and sign-offs needed to allow striking it before the missile had already struck the original target (or ran out of fuel). In this Syria case in particular, they’d want to make sure that it wasn’t a Russian radar, or a radar possibly manned by Russians, or with Russians in the vicinity, before they’d authorize a strike against it.
I suppose in a real balls-to-the-wall all-out war, the re-targeting capability might be used.
I see your point. The bad guys could put their radar on the roof of a school building.
And, worse yet, staff it with Russian military personnel.
It’s cynical, but I suspect the calculus of the current mission would be more troubled about killing one Russian enlisted technician than blowing up a schoolhouse full of Syrian children.
So, no, there would be no pop-up targeting. We gave them several days of advance notice so that the Russians could amble to safety. I don’t think we were going to ruin that by taking snapshots at opportunity targets.
We don’t have a lot of “old” stuff around because that is the equipment we sell to other countries. Last I read, the United States is still the biggest arms dealer in the world.
Yup, Lockheed Martin alone has sold more than the second-biggest country (Russia) in recent years, probably thanks to the F-35 program. It doesn’t take a lot of sales when you’re selling jets for ~$100M a piece.
Military weapons and equipment that are sold to other nations such as Saudi Arabia is typically new production or manufacturer refitted equipment, which is often necessary in order to both meet ITAR restrictions and to operate within the purchasing nation’s miltary infrastructure. The United States does sometimes gift surplus weapons and materiel to allies or third parties after it has been obsoleted but this is generally done with poorer nations such as Iraq or Afghanistan which cannot afford to purchase modern weapons systems so as not to undercut potential new weapons sales by military contractors. It should be understood that a good portion of the profits from the sale of complex systems such as Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) or the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are the maintenance and upgrade contracts which can provide sustaining income for decades and eclipse the original purchase cost.
The US military does, in fact, have a lot of “‘old’ stuff” in its inventory; weapon systems which are still functional but obsolescent are often transferred to Reserve and National Guard units, used as targets for testing, or just stored at substanial expense to the taxpayer. Some systems, such as the B-52 and B-1B strategic bombers or the LGM-30G ‘Minuteman III’ ICBM, go through periodic technology upgrades and aging surveillance to improve capability and assure reliability. Many of the critical strategic and major tactical systems the the US uses are getting quite long in the tooth as development cycles get longer and experience more delays and cost growth; the F-35 was supposed to replace the F-16, F/A-18, AV-8B, and A-10 but because of production delays and cutbacks due to cost growth (as well as numerous reliability and safety problems with the F-35 despite being declared operational), all of these planes are still intended to be flying in service for the foreseeable future.
As for the recent strikes, the efficacy at eliminating the Assad regime’s capability to produce or acquire chemical weapons is unclear, but it is apparent that by attacking Syria directly the United States has engendered support from within Syria for Assad by supporters who view foreign intervention as an attempt to impose Western control over the region, which given recent history is not exactly a baseless notion. Even if the US and allies can manage to depose Assad, there is the question of what will come afterward; Syria has been in the grip of a multifaceted civil war and intrusion by radical Islamic elements from Iraq, and leaving the country without leadership will almost certainly result in a resurgence of ISIS activity that could threaten other nations in the region. The potential for a confrontation with Russia, while not inconsequential, is of less eventual concern than the growth of radical elements and the authoritarian regimes which have cropped up ostensibly in order to contain it. While there isn’t a clear way to deal effectively with this problem, a few air and missile strikes is not going to measurably improve the situation and without some kind of strategy for follow-through does not inidicate any long term thinking of the eventual consequences.
But hey, Amercia, fuck yeah! What about Russian election meddling again? We ain’t got time for that.
Stranger