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Cost Effective Aerial Campaign: Russian Airstrikes In Syria and the SVP-24

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Cost Effective Aerial Campaign: Russian Airstrikes In Syria and the SVP-24

Su-24M

Written by Hadi Gholami Nohouji exclusively for SouthFront

Since the beginning of the Russian aerial campaign in Syria there have been different kinds of analysis about the results, effectiveness and the costs of the operation of Russian Aerospace Forces (RuAF) while few have decided to focus on the details behind it.

At times the aerial attacks of the Russian forces have been described as inaccurate and analysts —mainly those critical of Russia in general— have questioned the effectiveness of an aerial campaign in which the bulk of the air force used are planes at least 30 years dated and lack many of the modern features that their western counterparts have.

Also a great part of the bombs and munitions used in the RuAF are from the late Cold War era and are mostly unguided —also known as “dumb bombs”— that do not have a guidance system of any sort and by themselves are very inaccurate.

Still, considering this situation and the financial hindrances and limitations Russia faces, the RuAF detachment in Syria, with the relatively low cost of almost $3 million a day (U.S’s campaign in Syria reportedly costs $12 million a day) has been able to significantly facilitate the advance of the Syrian army and its allies against its opponents whether they are of the Syrian Rebels or the Islamic State terrorists.

One of the main reasons for that would be the use of the SVP-24 guidance system. This weapons system is installed on the planes and allows them to drop the unguided bombs (mostly the OFAB bombs family) with a reported precision of 2 to 5 meters which is very good considering the fact that the bombs themselves do not have guidance systems.

It is important to note that this system has been installed on Su-25, Su-24M, Su-22M3 and even on the Kamov Ka-50 and Ka-52 attack helicopters while there have been unconfirmed reports that some have been installed on the L-39 trainers which are now being used as bombers.

The interesting part about these systems is the fact that the pilots are required to just fly over the target and the SVP-24 will first measure the environmental parameters (humidity, pressure, windspeed, speed, angle of attack, …), compares the position of the aircraft using the GLONASS system and then automatically releases the dumb bomb at the precise moment that they need to be released in order to hit its target.

Also this system reportedly works in all weather conditions and times of the day while also it is possible to use well over the 5000 meters altitude which is out of the range of Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS).

It is worth noting the United States also came up with a solution to try to turn its dumb bombs into smart ones and it was the JDAM kit (Joint Direct Attack Munition) which would be installed on every unguided bomb and would turn it into a precision weapon.

Still, this kit costs 25,000 dollars per unit which overall makes the SVP-24 more cost effective since it is installed on the aircraft and can be reused any number of times is it required without having to install additional pieces on the bombs.

This system also gets additional info from datalinks from AWACS aircraft, ground stations and other aircrafts which can greatly contribute to the precision of the strike and reduce possible errors that could jeopardize the bombing.

The Russians claim this system has a very low error rate while media —mainly the western ones— question its accuracy and point to the fact that the system, as opposed to similar ones used by the U.S, can only track one target at a time in order to question its usefulness.

Still, this system, with all its problems, has proved to be useful in Syria and the latest advances of the Syria forces are testament to this while data shows that the Syrian government, with the help of the RuAF, has been able to recover vast areas in this Arab country.

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Ranaimuye Nkya

The Russians can do with $3 million what USA does with with $ 12 million in Syria seems to be the case in other aspects may be including the GDP. If this is the case the US is not that far ahead of Russia as it seems. The Russians are extremely smart which explains their ability to overcome even extreme obstacles.

Jesus

The Russians fly a lot more sorties with fewer planes than their American counterparts.

YuiYui

Reminds me of an old joke: “When americans went to space, the astronauts complained that the regular pen doesn’t work well in zero gravity. After a long period of research and many millions of dollars spent on R&D, NASA finally introduced a functional pen that works in zero gravity. The Russians used a pencil.”

LX5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_in_space You can support the troops by buying a Pentagon branded space pen: http://www.spacepen.com/

My personal joke is that Soviet Cosmonauts could use a pencil because under their communist system they did not need to sign contracts.

Barba_Papa

Its not a true story, but it does highlight the difference between the American and Russian approach. High tech versus low tech. Or more like complicated gadgets vs. tried and trusted simple solutions. It’s one of the things I like about the Russians.

Jesus

The Russians have high tech weapons, the combine high tech with reliability and simplicity, making the weapon easy to use, reliable and rugged. On the other hand recent US weapons emphasizes high tech in totality, at the expense of reliability, simplicity and ruggedness. You have to build weapons that are competitive technologically on the battlefield, without getting carried away with exotic technologies that supposedly promise much and deliver little.

John Whitehot

it’s a bit of a cliche really. try putting a yank pilot in the cockpit of a SU-34 and see if he figures how to employ weapon systems and sensors.

Jesus

The yank pilot has to learn the basics of how Suk 34 is configured, and learn how or read Russian.

John Whitehot

what I meant, is that all the “high tech”, “low-tech”, “reliable or not” discourses aren’t really that relevant.

Of course, in the west we’ve been bombarded by the propaganda made by military industrial complexes – more or less since Desert Storm – that technology alone wins wars and so on (aberrations like the F-35 being the utmost product of said mindset).

Guided bombs were nothing new to knowledgeable people in 1991; actually they were used in Vietnam by the US and A-Stan by the Soviets, by the French in small African wars and so on.

Yet they made a wondrous impression in the impressionable minds of lots of people, taking off their consciences many weights related to “going at war”, especially with smaller countries.

The bottom line is that technology is only a component in a larger national device made up to perform wars.

The only measure that is important is the ability to complete the mission given. This is true at every level: from the single assault rifle armed infantryman, to the entire national armed forces of a given country or coalition.

Tudor Miron

High tech vs low tech really? Was that the reson behind low tech Russian was first in the space?

That’s more about bribery other than tech.

Blaine

When your defense industries are at least partially state owned you just plain get more for your $, a lot more, and you get what you ask for.

When the defense industries are all privately held, corruption reigns unchecked and the return on each buck is greatly reduced by intentional inefficiency, corruption, lack of delivery etc etc.

SG

DARPA is owned by the US government, is not the only “defense” company owned by the US government. There are some private shareholders in US government companies, there are also friends, relatives, and cronies of US politicians who own shares in privately owned companies that also manufacture weapons. I also heard that one of John Kerry’s family members also owns shares in companies that manufacture bombs dropped on Libya, Syria, Iraq, ,Yemen, and elsewhere.

Blaine

DARPA doesn’t actually make anything to the best of my knowledge. They pay others to develop technology and then pay again to make use of it, with the DoD paying a third time if/when any viable products are made from it. The taxpayer pays three times in some cases to help develop tech that will in fact put them out of a job.

Rayethon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Colt, etc are all privately held.

Yes, individual politicians own shares, but as individuals not as representatives of the People. They have a vested interest in NOT getting a good return on tax dollars. This is how other countries spend a fraction of what we do as a measure of GDP, yet manage to field armed forces that are larger per dollar spent. Not that every military doesn’t have issues with waste and corruption…

YuiYui

Actually, state owned firms tend to be way more corrupt than privately owned. The reason why US system fails on so many levels is that they allowed to transition to an oligarchy, where most fields have a company holding a monopoly (and thus no competition that would force them to drive the costs down or even to provide a decent product) that in turn controls the government. This is masked by the company creating many different sub-companies with their own brands that make it seem like there is a competition on the market, but if you actually trace their ownership, you’ll find that every industry in america, be it the food industry, the defense industry, or even just the internet, is controlled by one or very few companies that either hold a monopoly or run a cartel together. It’s one of the reasons why US healthcare is so ridiculously expensive and why there is no middle class in america

John Whitehot

corruption must be reasoned on a more general basis – it’s inherent to human behavior and it does not depend on private or public. The employer who steals money from a public enterprise will keep stealing it after he is transferred to a private one.

That said, there is a generic tendency in medias to underline corruption in public organization rather than in private ones, for several reasons – some good, some less good.

What the medias never tend to investigate though, is the corruption that generates from the interactions between public and private business: in particular, what happens in ALL western countries is that firms like Boeing, Lockheed etc pay billions in bribes to congressmen, senators, ministers and so on, so to have their products purchased with taxpayer money instead of their competitors.

An example of this is the adoption of the US armed services of the Beretta M9 as standard sidearm: the pistol was clearly inferior to the competitor (Sig Sauer), but someone in the public committee leaked the Sig Sauer offer to Beretta executives, so that they could make an offer just slightly inferior and win the tender.

YuiYui

A private company tends to have an owner who has vested interest in making sure the company runs well, and thus makes sure to discover and eliminate any corruption that would harm it. In a state-run company, there is no such person, and such companies then become immensely corrupt through and through. Corruption and inefficiency in the Soviet block state-run companies (which was the majority of companies at the time) was legendary because of this. Furthermore, corruption in a private company causes great losses to the company, but not to the state itself, whereas state-run companies tend to be subsidised from public funds.

What you are describing is indeed correct, but the solution is definitely not state ownership of companies, like Blaine suggested.

Gary Sellars

Private companies may have owners, but they rarely run the companies themselves, instead using paid employees (executives) to run it for them, albeit operating to the owners KPIs. Executives work to achieve their KPIs and secure their bonuses. They don’t fight corruption simply because of ideology.

Public companies are really no different. The execs govern their enterprise to meet their KPIs. If the government wants them to fight corruption, then they need to insist that they do, and sack them if they don’t.

At the end of the day, there is no appreciable difference, and much of your post is simply comprised of outdated assertions, eg Soviet enterprises were corrupt and inefficient. In reality they were NOT corrupt, as the Soviet state was ruthless in its punishment of theft by officials. They were however inefficient, but that was mainly because of their relaxed expectations on workers output, driven by the “workers paradise” ideology and unwillingness to squeeze labour to produce more for less (as was SOP for capitalist societies).

YuiYui

Owners do not run companies, but they damn well do make sure to prevent somebody robbing them under their nose. What a good owner does is dig through the costs and profits, to inspect the various deals and sales, and find is there’s some sort of leakage that’s costing him money. If he doesn’t do that, the company’s going to tank.

The Soviet state was ruthless in punishing theft from public funds, yet it still happened, and happened often. Just go to the countries of the eastern block someday and ask them about what they did under Soviets – falsificating reports to make it seem like you did more work was commonplace, stealing and then pawning off government shit was also normal (example: when my father did his time in the army as an officer, they had rations for the soldiers. But the soldiers usually went to eat in a nearby town and didn’t want the rations. So he kept a few in reserve in case anybody actually wanted them, and sold the rest of them to a nearby eatery. Think anyone ever found out or cared?)

“Workers paradise” my ass, the reason for all this was that everyone was a state employee, and nobody in state employ gave a single fuck about any of this. He got paid the same whether shit worked or not, and since there was no unemployment and most professions paid roughly the same, even if he got fired it would make no difference, as they’d just transfer him somewhere else where he’d also do fuck all. In theory, such behaviour would be punished, but again, who cared? The ones supposed to enforce this shit were guilty of the same behaviour, and if they had to arrest every lazy fuck, they’d have to convert half the nation into prisons. Of course, if someone was really blatant about it, they would act, which is why most people just pretended to work. A classic example would be a person loading a truck with sand, driving it to a construction site, unloading it, and writing down “3 loads of sand delivered”. The local foreman would give the pile a sideway glance, figure it could be something like that if he loaded the truck light, and sign the paper, since he also didn’t give a fuck.

Gary Sellars

“The Soviet state was ruthless in punishing theft from public funds, yet it still happened, and happened often.”

Yup, and the “uncorrupt” west still has its Maddofs and Enrons, and they are just teh tip of the iceberg that we plebs know about, so there is really little difference. Its all about human nature, and the need for a dose of authoritarianism to stop people reverting back to their lazy, stupid, selfish natures. You don’t need private ownership to do that.

BTW I don’t believe in any “Workers paradise”, that was always pure BS. Failures of the Soviet system do NOT provide evidence that unfettered private ownership of every fucking thing of value in a society is desirable or somehow magically improves everything it touches or banishes “corruption”.

In any case define “corruption”. Our western capitalist society is chock-full of corrupt practices, but we’ve made them legal and they are openly embraced by the rich & powerful and their bought-and-paid-for minions in government and the elites media assets.

YuiYui

Corruption: a : dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity b : decay, decomposition the corruption of a carcass c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery) the corruption of government officials d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct the corruption of a text the corruption of computer files

Gary Sellars

Oh c’mon… what is this, amateur hour? You think a clinical dictionary definition is what we are debating?

Note how the definition cites “illegal” or “unlawful”? If the ruling elite specifically legalises the corrupting activities which empower them (eg freely facilitating the movement of funds from private individuals & enterprises to politicians) then by this definition, such practices are no longer deemed as corrupt…..

YuiYui

Corruption, by definition, is illegal or at least somehow dishonest. If it is practiced openly, then it is no longer corruption. The word you are searching for is “immoral”. But that’s mostly semantics.

Gary Sellars

“but the solution is definitely not state ownership of companies”

The solution is public business units, ie publicly funded but run with the same operating culture and practices of private businesses, and managed by professional private industry executives, with KPIs set by government. Government and the public bureaucracy has NO SAY in how the enterprise is run, but they are able to hire and fire execs for non-performance (just like any private enterprise can) .

Execs and workforces work according to the enterprise culture and enforced operating standards, and the profit or lack thereof isn’t a determining factor in how well people work. People work for their own personal gain (salary & bonuses) and these are linked to successfully meeting KPIs. Government sets the KPIs, and the enterprise works to achieve them (and enrich themselves as a result).

The great advantage of such a system is that KPIs do not need to be linked exclusively to some mix of profit and stock value. Governments have the option to sacrifice profit in pursuit of some other non-monetary national gain, eg cost-price for state contracts, maximisation of domestic content over imported, relocation of manufacturing to new growth hubs, workers benefits & compensation (feeding into the local economy) etc etc

goingbrokes

“Corruption and inefficiency in Soviet state-run companies…” This is hugely exaggerated in the western media. Corruption exists everywhere without exception. For now anyway. The soviet system had its own peculiar kind of corruption. The fact that the capitalist system by its nature always over-produces and creates wasteful surpluses is taken as a sign of its efficiency. Is it really efficiency or just wastefulness? Soviet state run enterprises had real strengths. US space programme is still dependent on Russian manufactured rocket engines conceived and developed during the soviet era. Soviet space programme was about 10x larger that the US equivalent, which is often overlooked. The aerodynamic frames of the Russian fighter jets were conceived during the soviet period. Pretty good hey? In US General Dynamics or Lockheed Martin may be “owned” by shareholders, but when the entirety of its business comes from the government, and without which it would barely exist, what’s the difference to state-owned? The fact that they (mic) directly control the Armed Services Committee (48) members, with financial contributions around $700,000/member/year suggests a pretty deep corruption to me. This corruption aspect of the Western “model” is entirely overlooked by most of the media.

Gary Sellars

“This corruption aspect of the Western “model” is entirely overlooked by most of the media.”

The West ignores its own corrupt practices, and has long ago legalised them. Making them legal is just a fig-leaf. If we legalized the act of burglary of ones neighbors, could we really pretend that such practices wouldn’t be overwhelmingly negative in its impact on society?

Blaine

M9 is a pretty good handgun actually.

They are replacing it with a Sig, but CZ makes a better handgun than either of them for the $, and Steyr is better than CZ, and cheaper than all of them.

John Whitehot

you should define what you mean by a pretty good handgun.

Probably you did not hear about the primary defect of the M9 – the tendency, after having fired a certain number of rounds, of the slide to break and fly off in the face of the shooter – normally hitting him under the right eye if lucky.

They had to retire hundreds of guns from both US and European markets to rectify the problem; the Beretta is a generally unsatisfactory gun for military usage, it’s not robust and reliable enough and becomes worn out very early.

It may be sufficient for police and self-defence usage but it’s not a military pistol. Add to that the slide design dating to ww2, the heavy weight (even if it breaks all the time), and a form that tends to entangle in the clothes of the bearer and you know why they had to bribe officials to sell it.

I’d also say that in the military only DAO pistols should be issued, at least if the personnel is trained right, but that’s a personal opinion and many shooters disagree with me.

Blaine

Only the earliest of the production units experienced this type of failure, leading to 4 injured individuals. Yes it is large and heavy, and I wouldn’t have chosen it even back in the 80s, but it is every bit as reliable as the 1911 design out of the box, if not more so, and notably more accurate (customized 1911s not included).

All in all I agree about the DAO, the only safety a well designed handgun needs is a good holster and an operator with a clue. That said, many of the later variety DA/SA have trigger pulls smooth enough that the first DA round will be just as accurate as the SA ones or very nearly so.

Terra Cotta Woolpuller

Steyr is all those manufacturers of SIG, Baretta, and CZ , but in all practicality the CZ is more reliable for military use and more rugged while maintaining accuracy.

Goran Grubić HardyVeles

Take care: ČZ is not the same as CZ. As the Češka Zbrojevka is the best 9mm duty handgun on the planet (I love it!), the only duty handgun allowed for Olimpics, I believe you were talking about Zbrojevka and not about Crvena Zastava (Serbian counterpart). CZ 9mm is half of ČZ price – some claim it is not just half of the overall quality, but I’m not so convinced.

Blaine

I owned a polymer framed CZ that was manufactured by Tanfoglio, can’t recall the exact model #. It wasn’t a genuine CZ, but it was still a tack-driver.

roger temple

My, you do blow your mouth off a lot.

John Whitehot

i’d keep the manhole open if i were you.

Hugh Fakerton

I’m not so sure this is true. Considering that the US adopted a command economy during WW2, which is what a state owned system is. It did this for efficiency reasons. A command economy is more stream lined and efficient. The strength of a command economy is in its ability to stream line and produce a very limited range of products with maximum efficiency. The weakness of a command economy is to diversify effectively. This is where you see corruption kick in in a place like the USSR. It required such an enormous bureaucracy to TRY and diversify the economy enough to provide effective and efficient production of all types of consumer goods. You also have a case of the state favoring and therefore giving more resources to one department or the other. So, military spending might get preferential treatment over agricultural, or entertainment spending.

A command economy needs a large bureaucratic footprint to run properly when it takes on more and more aspects of a nations needs, to the point that the efficiency gained in a limited number of areas, is completely swamped when the state tries to do it all.

A market economy on the other hand has virtually no bureaucratic footprint, and it is self propagating without state interaction. If suddenly the people decide they must have a Zing-Ma-Hookie-Whatsitdo, then that need will be filled organically without state intervention, whereas if the state needed to do that, it just adds to an ever growing and unyielding state run bureaucracy.

However, make no mistake about it. The market economy of the west has been shut down in every single major war of the 20th century in favor of a command economy for military production.

Jesus

Not only privately held, but without any competition. In the 50’s and 60’s there were hundreds of defense contractors in the US competing with each other, today you have only a handful, without competition that get away with exorbitant prices and poor quality weapons. That is why the US defense budget is so bloated, between the expense of maintaing hundreds of bases world wide, and spending trillions on ineffective weapons projects, the value the Pentagon gets for the dollar is very low. People boast that the Pentagon’s budget is many times over China’s and Russia’s, the reality is, the weapon procurements of China and Russia combined exceed the weapon procurements of the Pentagon for the last 5-10 years.

Nigel Maund

Very good article. But remember the Western Mainstream Media is controlled by the US and EU Military Industrial Complex who would prefer to sell smart rather than dumb bombs; hence, they have a vested interest in fooling the taxpayers who fund all this largess.

FlorianGeyer

If we look at the evidence of US bombing anywhere it is never very ‘smart’ and reflects the US Military as a whole :)

Gary Sellars

Agreed. The US military may have “smart” weapons, but its still filled with dumb people.

John Whitehot

ahahah. the jokes coming out from the “smart bombs” theme xD.

Nigel Maund

Pity is they’re not jokes! I think you’re totally missing the points made – which, indeed, are hard to rufute?

John Whitehot

lol the fuck u talking about?

which points can one miss in the phrase “The US military may have “smart” weapons, but its still filled with dumb people”?

Nigel Maund

They’re very good with their smart JDAM bombs at hitting “Allied” troops and those of their “Proxy Armies”, not to mention so called “collateral damage” such as public gatherings, weddings, schools and so on. So much for smart weapons in the hands of crass, or utterly cynical, mission planners. Strange the RuAF and SAAF don’t seem to make the same mistakes?

Gary Sellars

Agreed. No-one can drone a 16-yo kid searching for his father like the US military can…

FlorianGeyer

This is just more evidence, if anymore were needed , that expensive military toys to not make an efficient or honourable army without men and women of virtue and officers with wisdom and erudition.

John Whitehot

“The Russians claim this system has a very low error rate while media —mainly the western ones— question its accuracy and point to the fact that the system, as opposed to similar ones used by the U.S, can only track one target at a time in order to question its usefulness”

There is no plane on earth that “tracks more than one ground target at a time”, although it’s not even clear what the western journo in question had in mind.

It’s also flawed in logic, as even one that does not know anything on ground attack should be able to realize that “tracking more than one target at a time” does not make munitions more precise – actually one would say quite the opposite.

The other significant difference between the SVP and the US JDAM type of targeting not mentioned here, is that the SVP cannot be degraded by EW- while the JDAM is based on GPS signals, which can be jammed with a 50 dollars emitter available on eBay.

The SVP is not a new concept: it’s a CCRIP calculator which takes in input many more parameters than other systems. CCRIP is a way to release bombs based on release point, instead of the more known CCIP, based on impact point.

That said, the idiotic jealousy of western military press again forgets to say a couple of relevant things:

1- Syria isn’t a contested airspace, hence the Russian SVP equipped aircraft can perform their work without limits to their capability. 2- the RuAF has also largely used guided munitions: the difference is that they don’t use them if there is no need to. In fact, guided weapons are needed only against moving targets. A system like the SVP makes possible to perform unguided bomb runs in a much larger engagement envelope.

And note that the western press describes the JDAM kit as “unexpensive”, with 30/40000 dollars per bomb dropped. Besides, it’s the taxpayers money, LoL.

chris chuba

A system like the SVP makes possible to perform unguided bomb runs in a much larger engagement envelope.

True. The only vulnerability would be GLONASS spoofing or interference between the Jet and the satellites. This would not be an issue in Syria but in other combat situations could the Russians overcome this? I was wondering if the Russian AWAC equivalent aircraft would be able to relay an more reliable signal from the GLONASS satellites to the jet under more challenging combat situations.

John Whitehot

that is not correct, let me explain why. The SVP does not need GNSS to fix the target’s position.

Since we are talking non-moving targets mostly, the coordinates would be acquired through a range of other means, notwidhtstanding the availability of GNSS.

There are factors depending on the mission: You could have a mission where targets are pre-dialed into the nav-attack system. Or, you could have one where a plane is sent into a general map-square to seek and attack certain targets. In this case the pilots dial the targets coordinates once they found it.

But in both cases, GNSS is not essential to accomplish the mission like in the US JDAM system. As an example, using a combination of Inertial Navigation and laser rangefinder you can pinpoint a target without any need of satellites.

The article isn’t also very exact on AWACS – I believe the “command post” planes assigning mission and targets are the ISR Tupolevs, although it’s fair to assume that missions are assigned following a range of recon/command means. Nowadays recon assets transmit data in realtime, the times to process that data and finalize a mission based on it are very short, to the point you can launch planes much before the recon drone has landed.

Tudor Miron

This is mentioned in the article – in short, A-50 planes are used as another (better protected) link to satllites butt also provide a lot of their own intel to the jet.

Solomon Krupacek

EW- while the JDAM is based on GPS signals

hahaha, in article is dependency upon glonass :PPPPP

John Whitehot

The article isn’t exact but there is a misconception by some people reading it. Things are as follows, the simpler possible explanation:

JDAM is based on GPS: it cannot work without GPS. SVP can use GNSS but does not need it. it can work without GNSS.

that’s all.

chris chuba

Does anyone know the altitude at which point the accuracy of SVP starts to degrade?

There has to be some point at which the change in atmospheric conditions and wind cannot be adjusted for properly and still meet the 2 – 5 meter specification.

John Whitehot

it does not depend on altitude. without other parameters changing it’s safe to assume that the system does not accumulate any significant error based on altitude only.

This means that theoretically you have the same accuracy dropping from 1500 meters rather than from 7500.

In practice, the higher the altitude, the greater the time bombs take to reach the target. This means that any parameters (mostly, wind) changing, from the instant of release to the instant of hit, are more likely to degrade the accuracy.

electron

Cost effective is to be commended; however, we are seeing dash completely regroup and out plan, out perform, and out think Ru military chain of command/action in S. Raqqa. They have pushed back saa 30 kms back from DZ City, taken A. Ubayd oil field and are threatening to encircle saa troops in a pocket at Ghanem Ali.

Gary Sellars

SAA are busy elsewhere, and the forces in the Euphrates are mainly tribal fighters with some regular support. SAA will reinforce them if an IS breakthrough looks likely, otherwise they will be content to bleed IS and keep them exposes while RuAF carves a swathe thru them.

There is no pocket at Ghanem Ali. Government forces are tactically retreating as IS reinforces and surges forwards. They are limiting their casualties and holding the line until SAA finishes crushing IS orcs in East Hama pocket.

Now, kindly cease your pro-terrorist BS.

Attrition47

I think you’re drifting into the realm of fantasy.

Johnny Palomba

Why don’t you have a look to the maps? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/377ab51284ca4311c5f2b34b90325706d2006e88cf492c623b136329d54fb715.jpg

Tudor Miron

Why should she do that? It was never about true facts or anything resembling reality.

Tudor Miron

I bet you jump in joy and glory now :) Another chance to sh$t on SAA and Russia. This is especially precious because supply of this kind of good news (for nwo sheakheads) drys out very rapidly now. Enjoy yourself while you can, Those days are numbered.

roger temple

Your foolish comment was 8 days ago. Now look at the barbeque of daesh fools going on.

LX5

The American ‘smart bombs’ are from Cold War era thinking where you are attacking important targets belonging to top tier professional militaries such as military HQs, anti aircraft batteries, heavy tanks, maybe even individual snipers. The Russian ‘dumb bombs’ are probably more cost effective when attacking small caliber weapons mounted on pick up trucks. Enemy air defenses will not disrupt the aircraft’s motion so the on board computer can work. I am an arm chair General based in the USA.

Gary Sellars

Russians have smart PGMs as well, but they don’t use them for everything. They use cheap iron bombs when such is adequate, but they use PGMs when needed (eg for the leadership decapitation strike in Raqq that killed the ISIS “Caliph” al-Bagdadi and dozens of his subcommanders).

The US uses so many PGMs because they create mega-profits for the owners of US MIC, and those profits are then recycled back to their minions in USGov by methods of legalized corruption.

El Diablo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIKCyXS8eFw

El Diablo

Not the best singed version, but with the most cute child :D

Solomon Krupacek

child abuse

Alex Black

Better than your countrymen enslaving blond girl into sexual slavery.

Solomon Krupacek

my not

you are sick nation 9 movies from10 only about war.

Alex Black

Russians are proud of their glorious past, you cant say the same thing. Your israeli goons are pretty good at killing the arabs, but its not anything to be proud of, is it?

Solomon Krupacek

be proud =/= only about make movies :P

this is simply stipidity

Alex Black

Russian movie industry aside, your anti-Russian hate speech is weak, you literally have nothing to go on other than lies an exaggeration. Pathetic.

Solomon Krupacek

hehehe, i have some russian movies. you are able to make perfect movies. but ypu waste your money, time for stupidities. therefore are you dying civilization :-O

Alex Black

Chem bogat, drugova net.

Tudor Miron

I have a feeling that this little rat is so hateful to our nation because it’s a real threat to his talmudic deams :) “dying civilization”(c) – your kind is trying hard for centuries but still we are here :)

roger temple

Funny thing is they are actually proud of it. Can’t somebody nuke israel, and get this bunch of greedy, selfish thugs out of the way?

Volker Burkert

How is the singing child being abused? Don’t children have the greatest interest in having soldiers protect them from the threat of terrorism? I think they do.

Solomon Krupacek

for war things

Solomon Krupacek

if glonass falls out, the bombs became dumb

DJ Double D

Just for you to understand what this article is all about: During the 90’s, I was in Russia and easily started a Lada car parked outside an Apartment building on a -40 degrees weather. When I came back to US, I sometimes struggle to start a Mercury Sable at -10.

Bob

The JDAM is very effective bolt on kit – but like anything military there are organizational issues. If read any number of analyses from US army officers they have stated that it is tedious to get USAF to use them for army support. They are expensive and require permission from the USAF-up-chain to deploy – meaning USAF tends to hoard them and prefers use for own missions – with reluctance to be used for support missions.

Rui Teixeira Neves

Terrorist dictator Assad is bound to the gallows…

Tudor Miron

Hillary? Is that you? Calm down and join McCain watching his headchopping friends bombed into dust.

roger temple

Yes, to a seat in the front row to watch western daesh supporters being hanged. Ha ha.

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