A fourth newly deployed Su-25 attack aircraft has been spotted on a March 17 satellite image of Russia’s Hmeimim Airbase. Syrian pro-government sources llink the recent deployment of these close air support warplanes with the escalating situation in the Idlib ‘de-escalation’ zone where ceasefire violations and sporadic clashes are being reported on a constant basis.
Despite efforts undertaken in the framework of the Astana agreements, radical miltiant groups, first of all Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies, remain deployed near the contact line and even expanded their influence within the ‘de-escalation’ zone.
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Ah Netanyahu stop SPY on Russian Bases, you are spying too much on Khmeimim and lately you stuck your nose on Crimea/S-400.
“Ah Netanyahu stop SPY”
no, rather stop treating everyone israelis and not like imbeciles.
Oh Welcome John the neocon the neo-zio who must protect his Hebrews brothers.
Combat aircraft works in pairs, therefore the equal number of aircrafts, no surprise that a fourth plane would arrive.
A note to iSi: The “Grach” is not a fighter, its an attack aircraft.
inaccurate.
airframes are sometimes kept in reserve.
you can’t desume much from the number of planes at the base.
In addition, depending on the mission, CAS and bombers especially often fly in 3-ship formations.
I can confirm that, We fx had to have 3 airplanes in the air 24/7 from Incirlik. Actually we had 7 F16s there to do that and a big crew to keep all in good shape for it.
I dont think the pair part is for them. They might be protected by pairs until they spit out fx those many cruisers.
Russian attack aircraft work in pairs: when the leader goes in, wingman loiters above watching out for any threat to the leader, if any airdefence starts firing, the wingman goes directly for it without waiting for orders to do so.
Sometimes they attack in pairs, with another pair providing topcover/overwatch.
That is atleast the tactics used in Afghanistan and both Chechny wars and since they worked pretty good, i doubt that they will change it, unless technology or weapons justify a change.
The Russians do regularly rotate their aircraft in and out of Hmeimim,but I fail to see how it would benefit them to rotate out interdiction and deep strike aircraft like the SU-24, SU-34 and even the SU-30 in favor of close air support aircraft like the SU-25, if all these aircraft get to do is to carry out interdiction and disruption attacks deep inside Idlib in retaliation for Al Nusra attacks. For those kind of attacks the SU-25 is not really the best choice.
Since I doubt that Russia will let the SAA undertake an offensive into Idlib without Turkey being on board I suspect this rotation may be a way for Russia to put pressure on Turkey to cave in. As in now may be for Turkey to come to an agreement that’s more in its favor then if they wait to long. Of course the Turks might see through this bluff and a game of international chicken will occur.
The SU-25 in SM3 variant has much enlarged the mission scope of the type.
The aircraft is now able to fulfill all the spectrum of air to ground tasks, with the exclusion of strategic bombing.
“For those kind of attacks the SU-25 is not really the best choice”
wrong. There are other considerations when deploying assets to missions that often are missed by people blinded by pentagon/israel style of propaganda.
The SU-25 ranks probably first in operational readiness parameters not only among Russian planes but in combat planes in general.
This basically means that 4 SU-25 can perform 1/3 or 2/3 more missions than 4 planes of other types, because of ease of maintenance, speed of rearming/refueling and all those things that make an air force win wars, while other ones engage in drawing dicks in the sky with smoke.
Well said John! What some armchair tacticians also don’t take into account is that Russia is re-equipping/upgrading the planes in the light of the experience of the last few years. So they are not going to launch anything until they are ready and their SU-25s are optimised for the operations required.
“Russia is re-equipping/upgrading the planes in the light of the experience of the last few years”
It must be said that the SM3 variant was designed to give the type the ability to perform CAS operations outside the range of portable SAMs and traditional anti-air batteries.
In this respect, the SU-25 followed basically the same line of development of the A-10 from version A to C – except that the latter is a purely subsonic aircraft, that cannot survive in contested airspaces aside the standoff capability; while the SU-25 operates at transonic speeds with the ability to enter supersonic regimes in clean configuration.
Given the overall low costs of production and updating, and the already large availability of airframes, the type is likely able to fullfil the Frontline/Near Frontline missions for the next decades efficiently..
Yep, and then there are the upgrade tweaks that won’t be announced until next year, even though they’ll be using them now.
The Russians should start taking detailed satellite images of all Israeli bases and start posting them all over the internet.
The Israelis are playing a dirty game with Russia.
Luckily for the Israelis that the Russians are soft as marshmallows roasting on the side of a camp fire.
Its my belief that if Tel Aviv nuked Moscow, Vladimir Putin would call and apologize to netanyahoo.
Russia isn’t interested in publishing pictures of Israeli airbases, because Russia isn’t engaged in that kind of childish, petty, nonsensical propaganda using themes like “nothing escapes the eye of Israeli satellites”.
Besides, these sats are not even israeli.
It is true Israel and USA NATO like to exposed Russian military bases and movements.Which is actually breaching of clandestine and security system.USA in particular have more then 40 bases in Syria which their Kept secret from their civilians in USA and world.
You dont know what bases are at all.
Wikipedia has current list of Pentagon’s publicly acknowledged, albeit illegal, US military bases in Syria – however, this list does not necessarily include all US Special Forces or CIA locations within Syria, that are not subject to US public records disclosure, scroll down page by location to Syria:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases#Syria
Your right USA is prerty open and overt . They blab about everything…just listen.
At google earth You can see car seize.
Google Earth routinely blurs out sensitive installations – to comply with legislative and security requirements of many states.
Oh, dear. Another one who can not see further than his nose.
I disagree.
There are way more sattelites watching russia than anywhere else.
Next thing you know there will be a new putinsat tv channel streaming putins location 24/7.
You want that? USA and israel would love that!!!
They are pulling our leg ; Offensive in Idlib is looming ??? How many month is the offensive looming ? As long as Putin dare not confront Erdogan, there won’t be an offensive. For Putin the sale of the S400, the sale of nuclear power plants and South stream is much more important than Idlib. Seven month already that Turkey is reinforcing HTS and other terrorist organisations. Disgusting.
Agreed,however I would imagine that there is a lot more going on that we know about or that is being released to the media?
As soon as Turkey will get the S400, Syria will be unable to recover Idlib. Turkey will protect Idlib. Putin is outsmarted by Erdogan.
Nonsense, you shekel making knob head.
As soon as Idlib is back under Assads rule, will be when the Turks get S-400.
The Turks have already crossed the US on this issue, too late now for the Turks to do anything other than be good boys to Russia.
Russian military bases re-enforcement or action are monitored by same Israel and USA NATO western partners.