Consolidated Syria Conflict Thread

[Bison]

Yup.  Obviously the most important thing to consider right now is a 5 year old tweet. 

[Sir Slash]

The President who says he never tells his enemies what he is going to do, told the Russians what he was going to do so they wouldn't hit by our missiles. I hope he made them promise not to tell the Syrians so they could get out of the way too. War is too complicated for me to figure-out today. 

[Con]

There weren't any Russians at that airbase and we gave the Russkis a heads up before the strike.

Lets hope you are right.  What I was reading earlier was that the Russians were pretty deeply embedded with Syrian forces

CNN Now reporting Russians were at the base - and I am guessing our heads up was probably those loud noisy booms and red hot shrapnel is our tomahawks - start ducking

Russians were present at the base the US struck Thursday night, a US defense official said, though the role of those Russians was not immediately known.
Tillerson confirmed that the US military contacted their Russian counterparts about the attack ahead of time, in accordance with deconfliction policies between the US and Russia over military activities in Syria.

[GDS_Starfury]

Tomorrow, and probably the day after, will provide the answer.

as a cold war kid the phrase "the day after" is sketchy

[MikeGER]

the real interesting fact:
As far as we (the public) know the Russian S400 bolstered air defense system didn't engaged the cruise missile wave

- so either Ivan couldn't detect a possible stealthy sub variant in use
or
- they didn't want to give away response time and saturation limits
or
- they just didn't want to waste billions of Rubles on a secondary airbase, where doing harm to Russian soldiers and Russian high grade equipment was avoided as good as possible for good measure
(which is atm a good thing, nobody wants a placeholder war between Sunni (Saudi Arabia) and Shiite (Iran) turn into a global conflict) 

It also was a demonstration of power by the US side that the air defense network can be saturated .... i duno how many launchers the Russians have operational in Syria, but i guess not enuf.       

[bayonetbrant]

^^^
Or the US called ahead and said "duck"

[mirth]

There weren't any Russians at that airbase and we gave the Russkis a heads up before the strike.

Lets hope you are right.  What I was reading earlier was that the Russians were pretty deeply embedded with Syrian forces

CNN Now reporting Russians were at the base - and I am guessing our heads up was probably those loud noisy booms and red hot shrapnel is our tomahawks - start ducking

Russians were present at the base the US struck Thursday night, a US defense official said, though the role of those Russians was not immediately known.

That changed from what was initially reported. What a CF.

[Gusington]

CNN reports 6 dead at the Syrian air base. I am guessing none were Russian since the Russians are not freaking out as they would if they took losses.

[bayonetbrant]

6?
I'm not a bloodthirsty warmonger or anything, but it took us 10 tomahawks to kill each dude? Clearly we need to improve our aim

[bbmike]

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un be like:

[mirth]

6?
I'm not a bloodthirsty warmonger or anything, but it took us 10 tomahawks to kill each dude? Clearly we need to improve our aim

You can be sure those six are very dead.

[bayonetbrant]

6?
I'm not a bloodthirsty warmonger or anything, but it took us 10 tomahawks to kill each dude? Clearly we need to improve our aim

You can be sure those six are very dead.

made me think of this

[Pete Dero]

6?
I'm not a bloodthirsty warmonger or anything, but it took us 10 tomahawks to kill each dude? Clearly we need to improve our aim

A report with some video of the airbase (a belgian reporter could visit the airbase last year and took these images, but without permission) :

http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/buitenland/2.49345?eid=1.2944465  (sorry but it is in dutch)

They claim the airbase doesn't have a central building but many smaller buildings, explaining the need for a large number of missiles. 

[DoctorQuest]

Tomorrow, and probably the day after, will provide the answer.

as a cold war kid the phrase "the day after" is sketchy

You know that's right.....

[JasonPratt]

The impression given this morning was that the Hawks were destroyer-launched, although I was thinking of subs, too.

The low casualty count suggests eyes on the ground giving real-time updates to strike coordinates, intended to smack low-pop areas. But I've also heard a major target were the runways themselves. Not many people out there. Although unless those Toms had Durandal capability I don't know how much good cratering the runways would do.