Syria: Plenty of Nuthin'

[hellfish]

I just found out about "War Nerd" today so instead of doing anything about work, I've been reading his archives. Really interesting stuff. I think this article on Syria is worth a read:

First, a little endzone gloating: I scooped the big papers' military correspondents once again. And all I did was sit at home and watch the networks' war coverage. But I watched smart. I watched careful. Not like a lot of you guys, who believe every crap story out of the Pentagon press/psyops factory.

In my last column, "Lynch Mobs and Apaches," I said the AH-64 Apache attack chopper that was supposed to replace armor in the original Rumsfeld GW II plan didn't cut it in battle. And sure enough, a week later, Slate ran an article by Fred Kaplan titled, "Chop the Chopper: the Army's Attack Helicopter Had A Bad War."

The good part about the Kaplan article was he was "embedded" so he got the skinny on what happened. Here's his version:

"The U.S. Army's only disastrous operation in Gulf War II (at least the only one we know about) took place on March 24, when 33 Apache helicopters were ordered to move out ahead of the 3rd Infantry Division and to attack an Iraqi Republican Guard regiment in the suburbs of Karbala. Meeting heavy fire from small arms and shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenades, the Apaches flew back to base, 30 of them shot up, several disablingly so. One helicopter was shot down in the encounter, and its two crewmen were taken prisoner....After that incident, Apaches were used more cautiously - on reconnaissance missions or for firing at small groups of armored vehicles. Rarely if ever did they penetrate far beyond the front line of battle."

Kaplan went on to say how it was the poor old A-10 that did CAS for the rest of the war: "Though the statistics aren't yet in, the A-10s seemed to do well in Gulf War II, especially now that the Army, Air Force, and Marines are more inclined to coordinate their battle plans."

I should find a bookie to take my bets. I'd be making money on this war.

Meanwhile I've been checking out the Syrian Army, because Syria's being set up as the next target. Bush's people are claiming Saddam and his WMDs are in Syria. By the way, have you seen any proof of WMDs in Iraq? I haven't. Nobody even seems to ask any more. That's what I mean about how trusting you suckers are.

But if Bush's people want to invade, they'll invade. Trying to stop them right now would be like a girl telling Mike Tyson that second base was as far as he was getting on a first date.

If they do hit Syria, it'll be because of this idea they have in DC: make a "crescent of democracy" stretching from Iraq to Syria and on to Lebanon, all the way from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Now that democracy is bursting out in Iraq, all we have to do is franchise it out to Lebanon, the bloodiest, most messed-up country this side of Afghanistan. Should be a piece of cake. That was sarcasm, by the way.

But the first part of it, blasting the Syrian Army -- that part really will be pretty easy, as far as I can tell. Like a lot of Arab countries, Syria has a decent-sized army: 215,000 fulltime soldiers and another 200,000 reserves. But then, as you may remember, we were all supposed to be scared because Iraq had "the fourth-biggest army in the world." That was before we found out that it was more like the fourth-biggest looting and fleeing team.

If I was commanding an American unit, I'd rather fight 100,000 Iraqis or Syrians than 100 North Koreans or Vietnamese. Because the Asians would fight, and the Arabs wouldn't, no matter how many there were.

The only time the Syrian Army even looked good was in the first days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when they took the Israeli lines in the Golan Heights. Judging by what I've read, it wasn't so much that the Syrians attacked well as that the Israelis' intelligence had failed totally. So the Israeli lines were nearly empty, everybody on leave for the holiday, and the Syrian tanks just had to drive in. But the Syrians were so weirded out at the easy way they'd rolled in that they sat there, jabbering about how it must be some clever Israeli trick. They Egyptians, who really were fighting well down in Sinai, supposedly begged the Syrian commanders to do their part of the coordinated attack by sweeping down from the Heights and attacking the Galilee. But the Syrians just sat there on their plateau, scared ****less. The Israelis finally woke up, warmed up the tanks and rolled back the Syrians in a few days. They would've headed all the way to Damascus if the US hadn't ordered them to stop.

Once the Syrians were sure the Israelis weren't going to Damascus, they started talking big again, trying to get the Egyptians to attack Israel. I read a great line in one Egyptian's story about this. He said, "The Syrians were willing to fight Israel right down to the last Egyptian." And the Egyptians weren't buying it anymore. They made peace and left the Syrians to deal with Israel on their own.

The Syrians' next showing was their worst. In 1982 the Israelis invaded Lebanon to force out the PLO. The Syrian Air Force sent 90 of their Russian fighters to take on the Israeli AF. The result was the biggest turkey shoot since the last battles in the Pacific in '45. The Israelis shot down every one of those Syrian planes without losing a single plane themselves. 90-0. That's what you call a decisive score.

Then The Israelis went after the big, expensive, Soviet-built Syrian air-defense network. They knocked out 17 of 19 Syrian SAM sites in a day -- and yep, they didn't lose a single of their own planes doing it. From there on, it just got worse for the Syrian armed forces. For one thing, they depended on the Soviets more than any other country. All their hardware was Russian, and they haven't been able to maintain or repair it since the USSR went out of business. Like a lot of Russian client states, they went for the big, impressive numbers instead of coming up with a sensible force mix. They bought 5,000 Soviet tanks, but half of them are T-55s, old enough to draw a pension. The newer ones, T-62s and T-72s, could be tough with real soldiers manning them. But the Syrians turned most of them into wheeled artillery, basically put them up on breeze blocks like old cars in a Mexican neighborhood, and let them rust.

The AF is in even worse shape. Losing 90 planes out of 90 in your last war can't be good for morale. Besides, the Syrian AF is all-Soviet, nothing but Sukhois and MiGs. And they can't get Soviet repairmen to make house calls to Damascus anymore.

Tanks can run for a while without an overhaul (especially Russian tanks) but fighters take more fuss than racehorses. You can pretty much take it for granted that the Syrian AF won't be flying if there's a war. And once you give an American invasion force total air supremacy, it's all over.

There's one wild-card, and that's WMDs. Saddam didn't have any, but the Syrians might. After their air force and SAM network got smashed in '82, they invested in bio- and chemical-weapon components. It was like a poor man's nuke program -- a last-ditch Hell weapon to use if anyone invaded.

Thing is, even if the Syrians do have some chemical weapons, there's no way they'll ever use them. They're not crazy. They're cowards, but they're sane cowards.

There's only one country on earth that really would use everything it's got against us, and that's the one country nobody wants to talk about: North Korea.

http://www.exile.ru/2003-May-03/war_nerd.html

[MikeyD]

I recall when Syria recently pulled out of Lebanon much of their equipment was in such a delapidated state that it broke down trying to get over the first line of hills! BFC said they were going to have 'old' and 'new' Syrian equipment so we should have plendy of chances to thoroughly thrash a large ramshackle force at some point.

About preferring to fight 100,000 Syrans over 1,000 N. Koreans, I get the feeling when a N. Korean war's finished the 'glorious leader' will tell everyone to stop fighting, they'll immediately stop, and they'll all go home. In Syria the troops may refuse to fight for their corrupt commanders, but they're more likely to keep up dogged IRA-style resistance for decades to come. So when it comes to which you'd rather fight its six of one half-dozen of the other.

[zmoney]

I think war nerd is actually Jason C.

[Yair Iny]

Mr. Picky notes that Israel first destroyed Syria's IADS network in Lebanon, and only then did the Syrians, in panic, order their airforce to take the skies, only for 82 of their A/C to lose the skies shortly...

[Peter Cairns]

In addition, when Syrain pilots ( in mig-23's and 27's against F-15's) lost contact with their ground controller they did as they were tarined and went in to a figure of eight pattern waiting for contact to be reesatblished....

A pretty suicidal tactic,really, and it was.

Peter.

[oren_m]

Here's a nice story,

In the winter-spring of 2002 my regiment was holding the line of the south Golan hights, near the border triangle of Israel-Jordan-Syria.

In the outpost i was in we had an OP with 120x60 mm binoculace, and we were bored all the time because nothing happens there, during the day we were looking at the Jordanian and syrian soldiers, the Jordanian are really cool, they have Hammers and Landrovers, they also have m16, and very nice cammo uniform.

On the other side of the border, the syrian soldiers are a real mess, first of all most of them dont have uniform of even shoes!

They dont have pesonal weapones, the only ones who has weapones are the officers.

In the middle of their outpost (which we call "Pita") there's a 30mm x2 barrel AA gun, which was really rusty, when the Syrian soldiers are not sleeping of playing soccer, they use the AA gun as a carrousel.

I remember that one day the Syrian soldier tryed to shoot at a Jordanian B212 helicopter with the AA gun, i dont know why, but they did.

In another incident, one of our tanks was patroling along the fence, the Syrian was a little alarmed and i saw them looking at the tank with a binoculace, oh yea, and one of the soldiers had an RPG, i think it was RPG-7.

Well that is my impression of the syrian army near the Israeli border.

Dont forget that it is the Syrian strategy, they have "layers" of defence, when the first forces to comabt the enemy are the weakest, and the next ones are getting stronger, around Damascus they have their republican guards which are the elite forces of the Syrian army.

Oren_m

[Imperial Grunt]

Well that is my impression of the syrian army near the Israeli border.

Dont forget that it is the Syrian strategy, they have "layers" of defence, when the first forces to comabt the enemy are the weakest, and the next ones are getting stronger, around Damascus they have their republican guards which are the elite forces of the Syrian army.

Same-same for Iraq. It's in the Arabic Dictator's playbook.

And I would rather fight 100,000 Arabs than 100 N. Koreans as well in a conventional war. A war in North Korea would be very tough on the ground. Unless China intervened and the US did not escalate further (as the US decided to do the first time), then N. Korea could not sustain a war as long as the S. Koreans and the US could.

It would be another great CM:SF scenario, along with Taiwan.

[David Chapuis]

The only time the Syrian Army even looked good was in the first days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when they took the Israeli lines in the Golan Heights. Judging by what I've read, it wasn't so much that the Syrians attacked well as that the Israelis' intelligence had failed totally. So the Israeli lines were nearly empty, everybody on leave for the holiday, and the Syrian tanks just had to drive in. But the Syrians were so weirded out at the easy way they'd rolled in that they sat there, jabbering about how it must be some clever Israeli trick. They Egyptians, who really were fighting well down in Sinai, supposedly begged the Syrian commanders to do their part of the coordinated attack by sweeping down from the Heights and attacking the Galilee. But the Syrians just sat there on their plateau, scared ****less. The Israelis finally woke up, warmed up the tanks and rolled back the Syrians in a few days. They would've headed all the way to Damascus if the US hadn't ordered them to stop.

From what I have read of the Yom Kippur War, his narrative throws a very heavy slant on the facts. I imagine that is true of the rest of his article too.

[Peter Cairns]

LtCol West

Wrong, an army marches on it's stomach, and with three quarters of the NK force in the southern quarter, any interdiction aimed at logistics would quickly get results.

Target their food and water supply and they couldn't sustain an attack for more than two weeks.

Peter.

[Keith]

I have a friend and his wife in the State Department that served a couple of years in Egypt. They made friends with some of the Egyptians, in particular with a college-educated woman. Apparently every year the Egyptians celebrate the Yom Kippur War as a victory! We are talking parades, etc. When my friends informed the educated Egyptian woman that Israel decisively won the war, she refused to believe it. My friends gave her some books and she did some research and - surprise The Arabs are spoon fed a steady diet of B.S. propaganda from birth.

[Peter Cairns]

Keith,

But it's true, Egypt over ran Israel and then installed it's own puppet government who even today pretend to be jewish to get aid from the US government.

Just ask John Kettler, he'll tell you all about it.

Peter.

[Tarquelne]

When my friends informed the educated Egyptian woman that Israel decisively won the war, she refused to believe it. My friends gave her some books and she did some research and - surprise

Maybe they're just happy they weren't beaten worse.

I think that'd be an entirely reasonable attitude.

[TufenHuden]

Problem with taking on NKPA-is that it's all

mountainous-and all forest-weather like Chicago,

but they have worse winter then us.

But like the NVA-they can survive on rice-

but I've been at the DMZ also-all mined/booby

trapped/tank traps.

But having ROK-Army/Marines would help

tramendously-but like in the 1st Korean

war China would jump in and Chinese

equipment isn't no slouch-T-95's isn't a shabby

tank-but they have thousands of tank and more

then million-men.

Only really threat in Arabic is Iran-they

have nukes/there getting updated soviet stuff,

got a bunch of free Mig-29's/Mirage-III's

from 1st gulf war when they retreated-

there armor cosists of T-55/59/69/72/80's

maybe some 90's-and they might fight as well-

they put up a good fight against Iraq-Chinese

wave style-but I think today they might be

smarter.

Also thanks to the Ruskies-if this is right

the sunburn anti-ship missle-capable of

Mach-3-about 5x more lethal the exocet missle,

I hope the phanax cannons can shhot them down.

Renember the little shirmish Argentian in the

80's well same example-couple HMS ships got hit bad...

Well you are right about Sryia-not much a fighting force-pretty much this new game will

be one sided but the new updates will be interesting....

[Yair Iny]

Actually, even though Israel eventually won the Yom Kippur war, it was a victory of sorts for the arabs, especially the Egyptians. Through their intensive preparation, strategic intelligence deceit, and realistic war aims, they were able to achieve the initial campaign goals.

The IDF was truly rattled, thinking the Egyptians were out to destroy Israel (they were not, not in that war at least), and counter attacked frantically. It took about a week for the IDF to get a grip on itself and roll them back (especially through Sharon's audacious crossing of the Suez Canal), eventually handing them a decisive defeat.

But for the Egyptians, who were until then humiliated and defeated in their previous wars with Israel, to be able to achieve a limited gain and hand the Israeli armored forces and air force a few painful blows (via the Sagger, the SA-6, and Shilka), it was a victory of sorts.

The good thing, for both sides, is that it restored Egypt's pride in itself, enough to make a peace agreement with Israel.

In fact, in the Israeli Air Force, they said, after the 1973 war, that the "Missile Bent the Airplane" and it wasn't until 1982, and the aforementioned destruction of Syrian IADS in Lebanon, that it was back to the "Airplane Bent the Missile".

[MikeyD]

"Only really threat in Arabic is Iran-they have nukes"

Actually, its Pakistan who has the nukes. And when the current junta-du-jour finds itself overthrown by the next junta-du-jour we'll most probably be looking at the same hard core of tough guys who actively supported (and still support) the Taliban with their finger on the big red button.

[hellfish]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

"Only really threat in Arabic is Iran-they have nukes"

Actually, its Pakistan who has the nukes. And when the current junta-du-jour finds itself overthrown by the next junta-du-jour we'll most probably be looking at the same hard core of tough guys who actively supported (and still support) the Taliban with their finger on the big red button.

I think thats why we're suddenly buddy-buddy with India. Granted, I think we should have been closer to India a long time ago...

[Miska]

It was little surprise to me that russians manufactured MBT's also for export only.

Is there any chance that this is also modelled for syrians or it is just too expensive?

http://armor.vif2.ru/Tanks/MBT/b_eagle.html

[Sergei]

Originally posted by TufenHuden:

Only really threat in Arabic is Iran-they have nukes

No, Iran does not have nukes. It is not even an Arabic country (although only some half of the population are Persians). Some precision, please.

[Bigduke6]

Nah, that puppy lost out to T-90. It's a white elephant the Omsk tank factory has designed, but couldn't find buyers for. None in production, so none for the Syrians.

Here's the article I dredged up:

http://lenta.ru/articles/2005/06/15/omsk/

Originally posted by Miska:

It was little surprise to me that russians manufactured MBT's also for export only.

Is there any chance that this is also modelled for syrians or it is just too expensive?

http://armor.vif2.ru/Tanks/MBT/b_eagle.html

[hellfish]

I think India has more T-90s than the Russians do.

[Miska]

Thanks Bigduke6 but unfortunately i dont understand Russian language

[Battlefront.com]

Miska,

It is quite common for competitors to sell their "losing" designs overseas. Sometimes the items passed over are better than the ones accepted because of politics being as important as it usually is. For example, India is about to hand out a $2 Billion USD for 400 artillery systems. One of the major competitors, a South African company, was rulled out because it was found guilty of bribing Indian government officials. Now it looks like one of the two remaining companies, Bofors, was also engaged in similar practices. This could mean that the third company, Soltam (Israeli), winning the contract by default! This does not mean it is the best system, just the one that might be selected.

Also, I think you should get some sort of price for the lowest number of posts for months registered. Impressive

Steve

[TufenHuden]

Well-your right about Pakistan/India having

nukes and I still have a gut feeling that-

Iran has them too-with 3 nuclear reactors-.

Right know Pakistan/India is our Allies-

With Pakistian that could change...

I've seen pics about that new Ruskie

BlackEagle tank-got some pics too-

surprised about it only export only...

Does look powerful-but we only know when it's battle tested-China might have some prototypes-

as well-also if that 152mm gun is used-lots

of reactive armor on it....

[Peter Cairns]

These things are for export only because to all intents and purposes the Russian armed forces are bankrupt.

The Russian airforces limited upgrade of it's various Su-27-30's has been founded on the back of the sales to China and India , with the Russian airforce getting the less advanced rebuilds while the exports are new aircraft.

It looks like the chnaces of getting their Mig-29's updated to the latest Mig-35 standard are pretty much dependant on the Indians ordering it to get production up and running.

Peter.

[Miska]

Based on website warfare.ru (i dont know how reliable it is) the new russian T-95 remains in development

due to financial restrictions here is the story

A new new Main Battle Tank, which was initially planned to enter service in 1994, remains in development due to financial restrictions. It is under development at the Uralvagonzavod Plant in Nizhniy Tagil [Potkin's bureau] which was responsible for all recent Russian tanks apart from the T-80. "URALVAGONZAVOD" (Ural Carriage-Building Plant) in Nizhny Tagil has manufactured a variety of products, ranging from universal type 8-axle rail cars and tanks of the highest quality to the T-34 tanks which had no rivals in World War II.

State acceptance trials of the new tank started at the Kubinka Proving Ground in August or September of 1998. Very little information is publicly available concerning this vehicle, including the official designation, which is apparently still designated under the developmental "ob'ekt" nomenclature. It is suggested that this new tank will weigh about 50 tons, though with a lower silhouette than other recent Russian tanks. The primary armament is reportedly a 152mm smoothbore gun / ATGM launcher with an ammunition load of at least 40 rounds, which may be placed in an unmanned gun pod on top of the hull to lower the silhouette and increase survivability. The new design also places far greater emphasis on crew protection than in previous Russian tank designs through a unitary armored pod inside the hull.

This new tank is apparently in competition with the T-80UM2 "Black Eagle" modification, and may remain unable to secure production funding due to its higherr cost and the potential for upgrading the existing T-80 inventory to the "Black Eagle" standard.

-----------------------------------------

So maybe the Omsk factory has still hope.

And yes i was registered when i bought my first Combat Mission game (a bundlepack actually)

and now i read about this new game and i wait it very excited