Cyprus-Forum.com

[Paphitis]

But have you noticed Trump et al only mention the three chemical facilities? Over a hundred missiles for three small sites ........... then look at the before and after satellite images ...... does any of them appear they had been hit by some 35 missiles? My bet is that it is the same as Trumps last attack, many were stopped at sea (maybe through electronic 'interference) and the rest brought down by air defence and with old technology! So I tend to believe the 'shot-down' theory to the '100% mission accomplished' version.

Also listening to the radio this morning by far the greatest majority of people were opposed to this attack. Thankfully the views that a certain member gives on here about the coalition superiority and their God given right to attack anyone, at anytime and anyway ........ I didn't hear one person express!

Yes I saw the damage they caused. As a conscript I was in the artillery myself and kept wondering why they didn't use artillery to do the job?
It would cost much less than 1M US$. I guess Paphitis' remark that the Tomahawks and their similar are very accurate, provided the answer to that as the artillery shells may fall + or- 50 meters apart. Anyway I estimated we would need about 200 artillery shells to turn everything to dust in those small areas. And we could use special heads to destroy those reinforced concrete fighter jet hangars as well.
However the artillery shells carry 50 times less explosives than the Tomahawks (8-10 kg compared to 450 kg!)
In total 2 or 3 Tomahawks per target should be enough imo!

I am totally puzzled!! The numbers don't match up. If they really used 100 Tomahawks and all of them hit their targets then the ground should have melted

NB. 100 Tomahawks= 1/300th of the Hiroshima bomb

Artillery = boots on the ground and a big possibility of direct conflict involving our troops. First you need to get them there, and that would be a massive operation involving thousands of troops and probably some losses. It would have been very expensive too, because they would require a lot of Air Support.

Cruise Missile attack is the cheapest and easiest means of making a point.That is all the Americans wanted to do. They were not interested in getting stuck into Syria and not be able to get out, or change the situation on the ground or remove Assad. They said that clearly.

Next would be Drones, and then Air Strikes.

It's just as well they didn't go down the Air Strike path because if the Syrians were able to down 71 out of 103 Cruise Missiles, then chances are that most of our planes would have been shot down too, resulting in a lot of our Pilots getting captured by the Russians and Syrians and being paraded on RT and Syrian TV whilst being fed kebabs by their gracious hosts in between their electric torture sessions and sleep deprivation. Yes that would have been a major disaster.

This all despite the Coalition virtually losing no aircraft ever to either the Syrians or Russians.

[Robin Hood]

I think these also helped a bit? 550kts compared with Mack 3.8 ..... no contest! Operates at 0 to 3000m ........... 20kg fragmentation/ HE .......range about 18km .......... every little helps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir-S1

As others have pointed out ....... the damage shows that there were nowhere near the number of missiles fired at each of the US’s claimed and verified THREE targets, as you claim.

I also understand that the INS in the Tomahawk is used over water and terrain following and GPS/Radar kick in once over land. At least according to Wiki.

I also read that another wave of missiles was cancelled when the US saw that so many failed to reach the target.

According to Russian MoD - In total, 71 cruise missiles have been intercepted.
...
Four missiles targeted the Damascus International Airport; 12 missiles – the Al-Dumayr airdrome, all the missiles have been shot down.

18 missiles targeted the Blai airdrome, all the missiles shot down.

12 missiles targeted the Shayrat air base, all the missiles shot down. Air bases were not affected by the strike.

Five out of nine missiles were shot down targeting the unoccupied Mazzeh airdrome.

Thirteen out of sixteen missiles were shot down targeting the Homs airdrome. There are no heavy destructions.

In total 30 missiles targeted facilities near Barzah and Jaramana. Seven of them have been shot down.

Another Russian Mod list gives the numbers of cruise missiles shot down by each versus the number targeted:

• Pantsir - 23 hits with 25 engagements,
• Buk-M2 - 24 of 29,
• Osa - 5 of 13,
• S-125 - 5 of 13,
• Strela-10 - 3 of 5,
• Kvadrat - 11 of 21,
• S-200 - 0 hits with 8 launched missiles.

Pantsir and Buk-M2 are new systems, the Osa, S-125, Strela, Kvadrat and S-200 are Soviet era systems, some of which might have been partially upgraded.

I would say that probability says the Russian and The Einsteins assessments have the higher probability when compared with Trump’s claim ........ and yours of 100% success.

[Paphitis]

problem you have is that they hug the deck at probably not higher than 50m.

The Air Defence can't even see them until the pop over the hill and down the leeside and by that time its good night!

A Cruise Missile is deliberately a subsonic long range weapon that flies in the terrain's and earth's shadow and shield's itself from detection under any radar. They rely on their smarts to avoid detection, and don't require speed.

Syrians didn't start firing until AFTER they had already hit and when they did start firing, they were firing and crossing their fingers.

When these things are fired from an F-18, the F-18 just flies in formation with it for a while.

These things don't rely on speed. They rely on the terrain, and shadow towards the target via waypoint to waypoint. They fly to the target. They interrogate a flight plan.

[Robin Hood]

problem you have is that they hug the deck at probably not higher than 50m.

Actually down to 30m! But you assume that the defence missile is in front whilst the Tomahawk is just hiding behind the hill and can't be seen, which I find a rather naïve view.

The Air Defence can't even see them until the pop over the hill and down the leeside and by that time its good night!

What about the ones it just passed? At Mach 3.8 it will take seconds to catch up with it! Or even those at an angle to the tomahawks flight path. You are not a very good strategist, you need to consider more than just one scenario.

A Cruise Missile is deliberately a subsonic long range weapon that flies in the terrain's and earth's shadow and shield's itself from detection under any radar. They rely on their smarts to avoid detection, and don't require speed.

And you think that makes them immune from defensive missiles designed to see them at ground level, travelling slowly, then lock-on and chase them? Wishful thinking. I think you will find that designers tend to look at a lot more attributes and possible scenarios than you do.

Syrians didn't start firing until AFTER they had already hit and when they did start firing, they were firing and crossing their fingers.

If you say so ...... but, considering that, didn't they do well?

When these things are fired from an F-18, the F-18 just flies in formation with it for a while.

That is why the F-15/18's stay outside Syrian air space! Flying at altitude at that speed they are sitting ducks. So that surely answers your question as to why the Syrians don't shoot them down.

These things don't rely on speed. They rely on the terrain, and shadow towards the target via waypoint to waypoint. They fly to the target. They interrogate a flight plan.

I think you made that point already but that does not make them immune from missile intercepts, that is what the anti-aircraft/missile units are designed to do, bring down terrain following, low speed missiles, that have no evasive capability ...... then it's a case of 'Good-Night' !

You are over confident in your missile systems and far too quick to underestimate those of your opposition.

[Paphitis]

Contrary to what some of the cheerleaders have said here, that is actually have a very good question. The answer is that nobody really knows. The S-400 has only been fired on test ranges operated by the people who are trying to sell them. Until it actually does all of the things they say it will in actual combat against an actual threat nobody can say anything without any certainty.

The Tomahawk on the other hand has performed well and to spec under actual combat conditions, on a few occasions, and with no complaints whatsoever. The Tomahawk is actually an extremely potent weapon. Australia will be arming its new Shortfin Baracuda Submarines with Tomahawk, and that signals a new era for Australia. These Submarines will also be able to launch Sub Harpoons.

The Americans and Israelis have been testing their capabilities against the S300 through Greece, and they know exactly what they are dealing with and how to beat it. The Israelis specifically go to Greece to train their pilots against Greek Air Defence. Yes, Greece has turned out to be NATOs S300/S400 consultant and expert and so the Americans even have access to these weapons. The Russians will sell this weapon to anyone because they want the money. The Americans do not sell their weapons to anyone. Arms sales must be approved by Congress.

The real questions are, how will it operate in a 45 degrees C+ environment when it was designed to operate in Russia? How will it operate against a Mach 7 ballistic missile when they always tested it against a Mach 9 ballistic missile? How will it work in combat when your launchers crap out after Private Snuffy Smithinski had a vodka cruiser hangover and didn’t clean the intake filters of the generator after the last sandstorm? How will it operate after the radar tech only pounded the grounding rod in 30 cm instead of the 1.5 meters that is called for in the manual? How will it operate when its finely tuned computers are capable of countering all of the latest generation jamming systems and then someone flips on the switch of a 1950s era jammer? How well will it operate when Ahmed Greenstein forgot to shift the cables from the missile test simulator over to the real missiles and the four green missile lights in the launch control station turn out to only be only simulators?

There are so many unknowns and issues that can affect how a missile system will operate in actual combat that it is really impossible to say without seeing it actually perform. I have noticed that most of the S-400 cheerleaders on here either have no real knowledge of actual air defense systems other than what is on paper, or they have some vested interest in people thinking the system is infallible. I have big news here, when the bullets really begin flying nothing is infallible. All I know, however, is the TWO times the S-400 was needed in combat (Syria) to shoot down cruise missiles, it didn't shoot down a single one.

You see, the Tomahawk isn't going to rain down 1 at a time. They will come in batches of 40 to 50 and they will double tap. And when these Missiles come, the S400 will only have a very tiny window of opportunity of a few seconds (I am probably being very generous) to perhaps get a couple (the odds of this would be huge), if they are lucky (I mean very lucky). All whilst the Americans would jam their radar's and even send Drones and do other things to divert them. Anything is possible.

Electronic Counter Measures are not the only way to deal with S400. The Americans can, if they wanted to, destroy many of the S400 batteries with HARM. S400 is not the be all and end all. It isn't even close. It might be a good Air Defence Weapon, on paper, but its obviously not going to be a huge impediment to Tomahawk, Shadow, or Jassm, or even Coalition Aircraft. There are so many ways to deal with the S400. The Coalition has no problem in maintaining its operations in a theater where there are S400s operating.

here is the thing. The claim is that 71 out of 103 (cough cough) were shot (cough) down (cough). Well then, let's see just one piece of evidence. Why are there not showing us even 1 Cruise missile on RT or Syria TV? The only way I can believe that a Tomahawk has been shot down is to see the evidence. It shouldn't be an issue to provide some evidence if 71 were shot down. I am not asking for much. If 71 were shot down, there would be debris all over the city of Damascus and a lot of that debris could be identifiable as belonging to a Tomahawk.

[Pyrpolizer]

Artillery = boots on the ground and a big possibility of direct conflict involving our troops. First you need to get them there, and that would be a massive operation involving thousands of troops and probably some losses. It would have been very expensive too, because they would require a lot of Air Support.

Cruise Missile attack is the cheapest and easiest means of making a point.That is all the Americans wanted to do. They were not interested in getting stuck into Syria and not be able to get out, or change the situation on the ground or remove Assad. They said that clearly.

Next would be Drones, and then Air Strikes.

It's just as well they didn't go down the Air Strike path because if the Syrians were able to down 71 out of 103 Cruise Missiles, then chances are that most of our planes would have been shot down too, resulting in a lot of our Pilots getting captured by the Russians and Syrians and being paraded on RT and Syrian TV whilst being fed kebabs by their gracious hosts in between their electric torture sessions and sleep deprivation. Yes that would have been a major disaster.

This all despite the Coalition virtually losing no aircraft ever to either the Syrians or Russians.

Erm.... no thousands of troops in fact one artillery unit with 6 weapons serviced by maximum 60 soldiers per target area would be able to do the same damage within the same time limit. All you need is artillery that can fire from longer distance than that of the enemy.
The air defense necessary is also minimal. We are talking for fixed targets here with known coordinates which is actually a very easy task.
Of course they would need them on the ground at some distance about 20-30Km from each target. I don't see what would be the problem considering they already have men on the ground.

The Americans et al chose the most expensive method, and the most safe though firing from the sea or via airstrikes at known coordinates just to have zero losses. Money no problem. One other reason was to show off as much as possible imo.
Otherwise what else would the media have to show on TV if those spectacular rockets fcking through the skies were not used?
Look from how far away they were firing LOL.

[Pyrpolizer]

Tomahawk, Shadow, and JASSM also navigate with Inertial Nav Systems and Contour Mapping.

The chances of jamming them is pretty much zilch. these Missiles are tried and true and work as advertised.

Even if all 24 GPS satellites simultaneously failed, they will still hit at + or - 1 to 10 m accuracy with INS.

First of all do you know what Contour Mapping is and how it can be used to navigate?
Do you know how accurately you can navigate following contour lines?
Do you also know there are no Contour lines in the sea and at plains?

You used the right word. ALSO navigate with INS.
What does this mean? It means that in the absence or loss of a GPS signal the rocket can navigate for a limited time using INS.
The INS is by itself a very inaccurate system that would never hit a target at a considerable distance if the rocket was totally dependent on that. 10-20 seconds without GPS guidance and the rocket won't know where the heck it's going.

So you better believe it. If the Russians managed to mess the GPS signals it's doubtful whether more than 2-3 Tomahawks ever hit their targets.

[Paphitis]

Tomahawk, Shadow, and JASSM also navigate with Inertial Nav Systems and Contour Mapping.

The chances of jamming them is pretty much zilch. these Missiles are tried and true and work as advertised.

Even if all 24 GPS satellites simultaneously failed, they will still hit at + or - 1 to 10 m accuracy with INS.

First of all do you know what Contour Mapping is and how it can be used to navigate?
Do you know how accurately you can navigate following contour lines?
Do you also know there are no Contour lines in the sea and at plains?

You used the right word. ALSO navigate with INS.
What does this mean? It means that in the absence or loss of a GPS signal the rocket can navigate for a limited time using INS.
The INS is by itself a very inaccurate system that would never hit a target at a considerable distance if the rocket was totally dependent on that. 10-20 seconds without GPS guidance and the rocket won't know where the heck it's going.

So you better believe it. If the Russians managed to mess the GPS signals it's doubtful whether more than 2-3 Tomahawks ever hit their targets.

No it means that the Missile can Navigate with INS only. It can cross reference itself with Tercom and plot its position.

It doesn't need any contours on the ocean. It just knows that the height of the ground is Sea Level and will adjust its approach accordingly to lets say 20m.

Inertial Nav is just as accurate as GPS and utilizes an atomic clock for seed, time and distance. This is what Commercial Airliners relied on before GPS. Commercial Airliners still have INS today.

[Paphitis]

Artillery = boots on the ground and a big possibility of direct conflict involving our troops. First you need to get them there, and that would be a massive operation involving thousands of troops and probably some losses. It would have been very expensive too, because they would require a lot of Air Support.

Cruise Missile attack is the cheapest and easiest means of making a point.That is all the Americans wanted to do. They were not interested in getting stuck into Syria and not be able to get out, or change the situation on the ground or remove Assad. They said that clearly.

Next would be Drones, and then Air Strikes.

It's just as well they didn't go down the Air Strike path because if the Syrians were able to down 71 out of 103 Cruise Missiles, then chances are that most of our planes would have been shot down too, resulting in a lot of our Pilots getting captured by the Russians and Syrians and being paraded on RT and Syrian TV whilst being fed kebabs by their gracious hosts in between their electric torture sessions and sleep deprivation. Yes that would have been a major disaster.

This all despite the Coalition virtually losing no aircraft ever to either the Syrians or Russians.

Erm.... no thousands of troops in fact one artillery unit with 6 weapons serviced by maximum 60 soldiers per target area would be able to do the same damage within the same time limit. All you need is artillery that can fire from longer distance than that of the enemy.
The air defense necessary is also minimal. We are talking for fixed targets here with known coordinates which is actually a very easy task.
Of course they would need them on the ground at some distance about 20-30Km from each target. I don't see what would be the problem considering they already have men on the ground.

The Americans et al chose the most expensive method, and the most safe though firing from the sea or via airstrikes at known coordinates just to have zero losses. Money no problem. One other reason was to show off as much as possible imo.
Otherwise what else would the media have to show on TV if those spectacular rockets fcking through the skies were not used?
Look from how far away they were firing LOL.

You got the logic all wrong Pyro.

The Americans just can't put an Artillery unit on the outskirts of Damascus. If it was that easy, we might as well invade the capital and take Assad out but it isn't that easy at all. getting an Artillery unit into position would involve thousands of boots on the ground. In all likelihood, the Americans would have casualties as well. Lots of casualties.

A Tomahawk strike is the best option because there is zero risk of anything going terribly wrong. All that can happen is that they lose a few missiles, but they will just send more until they complete the objective.

Cheap, and none of our people get killed.

[Robin Hood]

Paphitis:

No it means that the Missile can Navigate with INS only. It can cross reference itself with Tercom and plot its position.

As Pyrpolizer says .... not for long, especially over the sea or flat terrain.

It doesn't need any contours on the ocean. It just knows that the height of the ground is Sea Level and will adjust its approach accordingly to lets say 20m.

That is only the vertical component of the flight to keep it at a fixed height above ground level. It needs way points to get the direction accurately updated. That is the external component .... which is GPS or RADAR

Inertial Nav is just as accurate as GPS and utilizes an atomic clock for seed, time and distance. This is what Commercial Airliners relied on before GPS. Commercial Airliners still have INS today.

INS is only as accurate as GPS if it has outside references. Commercial airliners use VOR radials and intercepts, and way point beacons on the ground to get the INS to do what is pre-programmed into it. Plus of course ATC and all the data from its own flight instruments. You don't just enter the data and sit back and have a kip until it wakes you up with an alarm call when you reach your destination. Although having had several commercial flights in the 'dickie' seat that is not exactly beyond the bounds of possibility.