© AFP 2016/ GEORGE OURFALIAN
The Syrian Arab Army and its are going to launch an attack on the ISIS capital of Raqqa and its stronghold of Deir ez-Zor. The announcement was made Russia’s envoy to the UN Office in Geneva Aleksey Borodavkin.
Russia will officially provide an air support to this operation. From the other side, it’s clear that Russian military advisers will participate in planning and coordination of the operation.
Borodavkin noted the importance of continuation of the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups, such as Al-Nusra Front.
Deir ee-Zor and Raqqa are one of the most important locations for the terrorist organization, due to the number of oil fields in their vicinity.
In January, ISIS deployed about 2000 fighters had been deployed to the area of Deir Ezzor in order to strengthen the defense lines there.
Thats doenst look like smart ammunition… saddly more like dumb bombs.
The Russians use GPS controlled guidance and drop to make their dumb bombs accurate within 2 to 5m. It’s called SVP-24. I found the following article very interesting. http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/technology-sitrep-how-russian-engineering-made-current-operation-syria-possible/ri12135
That might even be a cluster bomb for all I know. It has that cannister type of shape that I see with cluster bombs but I am not an expert. People go ape crazy over cluster bombs but they are no worse than artillery shells. The wrap against cluster bombs is that a percentage of them do not explode making them as bad as residual mines. The Russians are likely using them sparingly as the Syrian Army obviously doesn’t want to want through a field of unexploded ordnance. Who knows, maybe the new stuff decays better, don’t know. I just know about the traditional arguments against the munitions.
In any case, Deir Ezzor has been under very persistent attacks and air support has been needed to supplement the ground based artillery on occasion.
Russians don’t use laser guidance, they use extreme accurate Navigation/GPS computational targeting to get the bombs on target. Russian bombs will never be “smart” as it’s more cost effective to use the latest technology to do the bomb calculations and keep those computers on the plane itself.
Thx for pointing out that the russians try to target the best as they can in an other way then laser guidance. Didnt know that. It wont be 100% fullproof, but laser guidance aint either.