Russian army under equipped?

[IMHO]

@akd,

Dec, 31:

1. Official and semi-official information is it was MRLS and mortars. Rockets were shot down by Pantsyr but mortar rounds could not have been.

2. Everyone's impression MoD is hiding something. Either full extent of casualties and damage or methods of attack or who might be the perps or something else.

Jan, 5-6

7 hours ago, akd said:

Arabs are too stupid to do this narrative, must be CIA

1. MoD does not mention CIA they talk about "a country possessing advanced technical capabilities". I guess they may have worded it this way for a reason as the most obvious culprit could be Turkey.

2. You're right, overall tone is quite ridiculous. Seems like RUS MoD PR people do believe a plane flying is pure magic.

[IMHO]

Google-translated RUS MoD statement:

The system of ensuring the security of the Russian airbase "Khmeimim" and the logistics center of the Russian Navy in Tartus on the night of 5 to 6 January 2018 successfully prevented the attack of terrorists with the massive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) With the approach of the dark time, the Russian air defense facilities at a considerable distance identified 13 small-sized air targets of unknown origin approaching Russian military targets. Ten UAVs were approaching the Russian airbase "Khmeimim" and another 3 - to the point of logistics in Tartus. Six small-sized air targets by Russian electronic warfare units managed to take control, intercepting external control. Of these, 3 were planted in controlled territory outside the base, and 3 more UAVs at detonation detonated from a collision with the ground. Seven UAVs were destroyed by the regular air defense missile systems "Pantsir-S" of Russian air defense units carrying round-the-clock combat duty. There are no injured or material damage to Russian military facilities. The Russian air base "Khmeimim" and the point of the MTO of the Russian Navy in Tartus continue to operate in the planned mode. Currently, Russian military experts are carrying out a detailed analysis of the design, technical stuffing and homemade ammunition, captured drone UAV. As a result of the decryption of the data of the intercepted UAV, the exact place of their launch is determined. Terrorists for the first time massively used UAVs of aircraft type, launched from a range of more than 50 kilometers using modern guidance technologies based on satellite GPS coordinates. Technical expertise of captured aircraft showed that such attacks can be carried out by terrorists from a range of about 100 kilometers. Engineering solutions used by terrorists in attacking Russian facilities in Syria could be obtained only from one of the countries that possess high technological capabilities to provide satellite navigation and remote control of the dumping of professionally assembled improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in designated coordinates. All UAV terrorists are equipped with barometric sensors and servo-drives to control the elevator. In improvised explosive devices of terrorists attached to an aircraft-type UAV, fuses of foreign manufacture were used. Currently, competent Russian experts establish channels for supplying terrorists with these technologies and devices, as well as the type and origin of explosives used for IEDs. The fact of use by militants of drone unmanned aerial vehicles of an aircraft type indicates that the militants have transferred technologies that allow carrying out terrorist acts using similar UAVs in any country.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Sounds like a very well coordinated, long ranged and not unsophisticated attack, we've seen ISIS use similar drones in Mosul (presumably Raqqah too although I've seen no video), but never in such concentration, at such range, or in such a coordinated way.....If that didn't raise at least a little suspicion they wouldn't be doing their jobs properly, in my opinion. 

 

Edited January 9, 2018 by Sgt.Squarehead

[IMHO]

8 hours ago, IMHO said:

1. MoD does not mention CIA they talk about "a country possessing advanced technical capabilities". I guess they may have worded it this way for a reason as the most obvious culprit could be Turkey.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-summons-russian-iranian-envoys-over-syrian-regime-strikes-in-idlib-125487

[akd]

I was kinda joking with CIA part, but then...

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/. A US Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was detected cruising between Tartus and Hmeymim during a UAV attack on the Russian military facilities in Syria, which was carried out by terrorists, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

"…it is a strange coincidence that during a UAV attack on the Russian military facilities in Syria, a US Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was cruising for more than four hours over the Mediterranean Sea at an altitude of 7,000 meters," the source said.

http://tass.com/defense/984293

Edited January 9, 2018 by akd

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Now that would have my 'Spidy-Sense' tingling too under the circumstances. 

[Machor]

14 hours ago, IMHO said:

the most obvious culprit could be Turkey

I do not see the basis for this. Just two days ago, Chechen jihadists in Idlib suffered a huge loss after their HQ was attacked with a VBIED presumably by a rebel group that supports the Astana agreement, and yesterday, a Turkish military convoy was ambushed in Idlib, presumably as retaliation. Ever since it adopted the 'contain the YPG first' strategy, Turkey has stayed very close to the Russian line. It is understandably mad at Assad exploiting the civil war among the rebels to gain territory, but this is not a motive to attack Russia. In fact, in light of the S-400 procurement and calls among pro-government circles for Turkey to withdraw from NATO, abetting an attack against Russia would be outright bizarre.

Do note that the fuses and explosives that were captured may well be of Turkish or US origin, which proves nothing as they were most likely taken from existing stock, and may have been bought or captured from third parties. What will be of interest is the analysis of the parts that would have required precise machining. Whoever used the UAVs should have known that some were highly likely to be captured intact, so they would have taken steps to hide where the parts were sourced.

One thing that seems certain is that both attacks were carried out by the same group and with a symbolic intent, as they fell on New Year's eve and the eve of Russian Orthodox Christmas.

[Machor]

This just in:

"Who is attacking Russia’s bases in Syria? A new mystery emerges in the war."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-is-attacking-russias-main-base-in-syria-a-new-mystery-emerges-in-the-war/2018/01/09/4fdaea70-f48d-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop&utm_term=.32c85e2ed4f8

"Perhaps the biggest question of all, however, is who was responsible. What makes the attacks especially unusual is that there has been no claim, triggering a frenzy of speculation in the Russian and Syrian news media over who may have carried them out.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday appeared to accuse the United States of supplying the technology for the drone attack, saying that assault required a higher level of expertise than any armed group in Syria is known to possess. Compounding the suspicions, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page that a U.S. Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was in the skies above the area for four hours during the drone assault.

Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said the allegation was “absolutely false.” The Islamic State has often used armed drones against U.S.-allied forces in eastern Syria and Iraq without “significant impact” he said, adding that small drones are readily available commercially.

But the nearest Islamic State positions are hundreds of miles away from the western coastal province where Khmeimim is located, making the group one of the more unlikely culprits.

Most of the Islamic State drones used against U.S. allies, moreover, had a range of no more than one to two kilometers, according to an analysis by the defense consultancy IHS Markit group. The Russian Defense Ministry statement said the drones used in the Khmeimim attack came from between 50 and 100 kilometers away, making them far more sophisticated and expanding the pool of potential suspects, the IHS analysis said.

One of the myriad Syrian opposition groups is the most probable suspect, Suchkov said. But, none of the rebel groups is known to be within mortar range of the base, and they typically assert responsibility for all their operations. “If it was the opposition, they tend to put everything online and boast about it,” he said.

Among the theories circulating widely is that disgruntled Alawites from Assad’s own minority sect were responsible. A statement about the attacks on the base, which is in a predominantly Alawite area, was posted online in the name of a shadowy group called the Free Alawite Movement. It warned Alawites who support the Syrian regime that the attacks proved Assad’s hold on power is not secure but did not explicitly claim that it carried out the attacks. A number of Alawite opposition members said they did not think the group is real and speculated that foreign intelligence agencies are seeking to create the impression of strife among regime loyalists.

Another claim made in Syrian opposition news outlets is that an Iranian-backed militia fighting on behalf of the regime and located in the government-controlled hills nearby, was responsible. According to that theory, Iran wants to thwart Russia’s efforts to impose a peace settlement on Syria that would undermine Iranian interests."

One thing that seems certain is that CMSF2 couldn't be timelier. 

[IMHO]

MOSCOW, January 10th. / TASS /. The unmanned aircraft attacking Russian military facilities in Khmeimim and Tartous on the night of January 6 were launched from the de-escalation zone Idlib, the Russian Defense Ministry said on January 10. "The launch of the drones was carried out from the area of the village of Muazar, located in the southwestern part of the de-escalation zone" Idlib ", controlled by the armed formations of the so-called moderate opposition," the Russian Defense Ministry's commentary published in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda says. In this regard, the Russian military department sent letters to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Turkey, General Akar Hulusi and the head of the National Intelligence Organization Hakan Fidan. "The documents indicate the need for Ankara to fulfill its obligations to ensure compliance with the regime for the cessation of hostilities by the armed forces under control and to intensify the work on setting up observation posts in the de-escalation zone of Idlib with the aim of suppressing such attacks by the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] ", - noted in the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

[IMHO]

6 hours ago, akd said:

…it is a strange coincidence that during a UAV attack on the Russian military facilities in Syria, a US Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was cruising for more than four hours over the Mediterranean Sea at an altitude of 7,000 meters," the source said.

RUS MoD PR continues in its remarkable tradition of passing off video game clips for combat reporting. I'd rather be careful with them and many Russian wanna-be-politicians. In many cases these acts are not the signs of official beliefs of sorts but rather holier-than-thou PR stunts meant for internal consumption.

Edited January 10, 2018 by IMHO

[IMHO]

3 hours ago, Machor said:

In fact, in light of the S-400 procurement and calls among pro-government circles for Turkey to withdraw from NATO, abetting an attack against Russia would be outright bizarre.

Turkey's loosing the most should the current SAA Idlib offensive succeeds (and so far An-Nusra front is crumbling). Turkey's now effectively controlling all of Idlib but here's the map of de-escalation zones as agreed in Astana and reported by Turkish press.

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I'm seeing suggestions that the Russians are claiming that the drones were acting as a swarm.....If that's actually the case then I'd strongly suggest this does imply technological capabilities significantly beyond that of any of the local moderate head-choppers. 

[Wicky]

Drone swarming software (Buzz) is open source and readily downloadable so it could be used by anybody computer savvy and with time on their hands to fine tune it to their needs.

http://robohub.org/buzz-a-novel-programming-language-for-heterogeneous-robot-swarms/

https://github.com/MISTLab/Buzz

 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Wicky

[IMHO]

27 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I'm seeing suggestions that the Russians are claiming that the drones were acting as a swarm.....If that's actually the case then I'd strongly suggest this does imply technological capabilities significantly beyond that of any of the local moderate head-choppers. 

ECM took over control of the six drones. Means drones used simple analogue protocol. ECM wouldn't have had time to quickly decode an encrypted control channel. A swarm and an unencrypted exchange do not sit together well.

Actually, imho, unencrypted comms is what breaks MoD's story of heavy use of a foreign advanced technology. The correct MoD press release should say: "We thought we were fighting brainless camel-f###ers but it turns out they know the math and are able to Goggle things. We weren't prepared for these."

PS BTW, do you remember an RQ-170 story?... 

[IMHO]

[akd]

9 hours ago, IMHO said:

RUS MoD PR continues in its remarkable tradition of passing off video game clips for combat reporting. I'd rather be careful with them and many Russian wanna-be-politicians. In many cases these acts are not the signs of official beliefs of sorts but rather holier-than-thou PR stunts meant for internal consumption.

You miss my point: I was initially exaggerating when I wrote MoD was claiming attack must have been carried out by CIA (when in fact they had made a vague claim of technically-advanced foreign power), then MoD in short order stepped up and did pretty much that.

Edited January 10, 2018 by akd

[IMHO]

@akd, sorry, I didn't get your point. My fault. I just wanted to say that I do agree with you that RUS MoD PR is doing great disservice to MoD itself when they drag into discussion as feeble an "evidence" as Poseidon flight.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

13 hours ago, Wicky said:

Drone swarming software (Buzz) is open source and readily downloadable so it could be used by anybody computer savvy and with time on their hands to fine tune it to their needs.

That genuinely surprises me.....Imagine a dozen moderately chunky drones positioning themselves on the glidepath into Heathrow! 

[Holien]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-42643790/ces-2018-intel-s-swarm-of-drones-lights-up-vegas-night-sky

Warfare is changing and firework displays too...

[Erwin]

Fascinating. Thanks...

[Machor]

"Black Market Sold Drones Used in Russian Base Attack"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/black-market-sold-drones-used-in-russian-base-attack

"... days before the unique, jury-rigged drone bomber surfaced in the attack, a seller in a rebel social media arms market based in Syria’s Idlib province posted an advertisement for an identical-looking model of rickety homebrew drone along with similar munitions, casting serious doubt on Moscow’s tales of high tech transfer.

...

... the black market drone advertisement, posted on Dec. 31 in a Telegram arms market where rebels trade everything from motorcycles to machine guns, suggests that the weapon may have been available to any rebels who had the cash to buy it. The seller offered the drone alongside two small, grenade-sized munitions. “Brothers,” the author wrote next to pictures of the weapons, “reconnaissance plane which drops shells for sale.”

...

In a Facebook post after the air base attack, Russia’s defense ministry wrote that its electronic warfare systems defeated six of the drones and that its Pantsir air defense systems shot down an additional seven during the attack. Photos accompanying the post reveal a nearly identical drone to that seen in the Telegram arms market with the same boxy fuselage covered in green plastic wrap and tape, capped by a wood casing surrounding the engine.

Captured munitions from the photos posted by the Russians also show starkly similar munitions to the ones offered on Telegram, with semi-transparent casings, white plastic fins, and a thick metal hook to attach them underwing. The bombs contain “BB’s embedded in epoxy around an explosive core and then placed in an aerodynamic plastic shell,” says Nick Waters, an analyst who researches for Bellingcat, an investigative journalism nonprofit. “They were designed for fragmentation rather than destroying planes.”

But the Hmeimim incident wasn’t the first sighting of that particular model of slapdash drone in the wild. On Jan. 1, the day after the black market drone posting, Saray al-Areen, an Assad regime-aligned militia, posted pictures of another identical drone with similar munitions fragments on its Facebook page, writing that it had captured “two aircraft with munitions outside of Qeraha and Jablah,” villages not far outside the Russian air base at Hmeimim. “The explosions heard today at noon are the results of these shells,” the group advised.

The capture followed a New Year’s Eve attack on Hmeimim which killed two Russian troops and which Russian authorities subsequently described as a mortar attack.

Then again on Jan. 2, wreckage from what appears to be another of the same model drone surfaced in a separate attack. The Russian publication Rusvesna published pictures of wreckage sporting the same same green tape, plastic and plywood-covered engine, claiming that the aircraft had been launched by the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham rebel group at a Russian military engineers’ training facility in northern Homs province before being shot down by local troops.

The aircraft has a unique, improvised design, which doesn’t appear to come from any known commercial models or kits, suggesting a stronger connection between the drone offered for sale on Telegram and the models captured by Russian and Syrian forces. “From what I can see, this ‘drone’ was fabricated using wooden parts and tape. Perhaps the servos and engine were purchased online, although it’s more likely been scavenged from a model airplane,” says Mike Blades, a drone industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan."

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Great post, that fills in a bunch of gaps. 

Edited January 11, 2018 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Machor]

Bellingcat investigation by Nick Waters, an ex-British Army officer. Lots of images, an alleged video of the January 6 attack, and thorough analysis:

"The Poor Man’s Air Force? Rebel Drones Attack Russia’s Airbase in Syria"

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_mans_airforce/

 

[akd]

Meanwhile (skip to 0:55 or so):

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

That 'dud bomb' fell very conveniently exactly behind him didn't it.....Looked Photoshopped to me.  Some of the nearby explosions seemed a little light on shrapnel to me too.