Israeli F-16 down amid clashes in the Golan Heights

a reply to: roguetechie

And your opinion that Syria wanted to lure Israel into Syria for an attack isn't comedy gold?
look
There is no proof of the UAV, besides Israel has run drones over Syria for years without reprisal.
An attack mission? lol
The chances of a drone being engaged over Israel at the exact same time(or close to) the first downed Israeli jet in decades and after hundreds of strikes, is too remote to be believed.
deny ignorance or wallow in it.

a reply to: roguetechie

Well that makes sense. I bet it was a big surprize for Israel...in fact I'm surprised Syria was able to take out one of their jets. I'm guessing that's because they were not expecting to be cornered that way. I did read that Israel retaliated and took out strategic locations after their jet was taken out. I feel like this could be the start of something bigger, worrisome, and also why I think it's important to really look at how exactly this happened, as we watch for what comes next.

a reply to: all2human

My "opinion" or the Syrian government releasing a statement about the op being a "strategic decision"..

I mean, you'd think the Syrian government would have a good idea what happened...

Also this is the first combat loss inflicted on an Israeli fighter jet since the early 80's which the Syrians are damn proud of inflicting for various reasons.

But yeah, let's call the guy actually following Syrian government statements the one wallowing in ignorance. GMAFB

a reply to: tiredoflooking

In a lot of ways this incident may have served to calm things down a bit because it's going to make the Israelis FAR less likely to go off half cocked, and will likely slow down even their operational tempo of launching missiles off planes technically in Israeli airspace which then strike well inside Syria.

The Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government have all basically made it clear that if they have to they will fire missiles into Israeli airspace to get at aircraft launching at them from this airspace.

That's probably a good thing.

a reply to: roguetechie

Name
Source
link
or your opinion

I would be amazed to find the Syrian government inviting Israeli airstrikes
You aware there were two airstrikes?
Even if it was true, that there was a (full retard) plan to trick Israel into bombing Syria by Syria
It absolutely has a right to defend it'self
which brings me back to Israel deserving It.

Looks like Haaretz has some more info on what happened. Still looks like a combination of Syrians just waiting to ambush them and Israeli carelessness:

"In Saturday’s exchange of fire Syria scored a rare success, downing an Israeli F-16 fighter jet with an antiaircraft missile, apparently taking advantage
of a vulnerability in the way the crew flew the jet. Israel however destroyed nearly half of President Bashar Assad’s air defenses, according to military
estimates."

"From the initial investigation it appears that at least one of the Israeli jets remained at high altitude, apparently to verify that the missiles that were
fired at the Iranian trailer actually hit it. At that point, Syria’s aerial defense system fired an unusually large number of missiles, more than 20, of at
least two types – long-range SA-5s and shorter-range SA-17s."

"Israel Air Force sources believe that a warning regarding the antiaircraft fire also reached the crew that abandoned their aircraft, but for a reason that
is still not clear, the crew did not manage to take complete evasive action. It’s possible that the crew was too focused on its aerial bombardment and
therefore reacted in a way that made the plane vulnerable to being hit."

www.haaretz.com...
(via thedrive)

All they can do is debrief the pilot and see what went wrong.Might have been a lucky hit by a guy with an Ak47..Why its called Combat I guess.

a reply to: Blackfinger

Statements of the pilots have already been leaked to the Israeli media.
According to them, a missile (either a SA-5 or SA-17) exploded at some distance to their aircraft. Shrapnel cause severe damage to the aircraft resulting in an immdieate loss of control and also injured the pilots. They had to bail out within seconds which indicates that they werent far into Syrian Airspace (if at all) when it happened.

www.jpost.com...

its a big bang..From Wikipedia

The warhead is either 217 kg (478 lb) high-explosive fragmentation (16,000 × 2 g fragmentation pellets and 21,000 × 3.5 g pellets) triggered by radar proximity fuse or command signal, or a 25 kt nuclear warhead triggered by command signal only. Each missile weighs around 7,108 kg (15,670 lb) at takeoff.[8]

a reply to: all2human

See you use this term deserving it like it means something in warfare... It doesn't, which is why you'll see me talk about an operation maybe being a dirty trick or high level real politik but not really making comments about who is right or wrong. These are militaries not sports teams, I own neither an IDF or a Syrian military licensed official jersey. If you want to get into highly subjective and totally irrelevant moralistic based coverage feel free to take what I bring to ATS and put your moral spin on it!

I though, do not feel in the slightest compelled to do so beyond very tongue In cheek side commentary I pepper my posts with.

Sorry kid I'm not gonna go back through the 2000+ entries in my history to dig up the source of the statements for you that were made in the first few hours after the initial f16 shoot down... Just not gonna happen, but if you look at my posts you will notice that I do make it clear what I have read from actual sources and what is my speculative take on the information.

Your comment about being amazed to find the Syrian government inviting Israeli airstrikes kinda says everything about your actual grasp on this situation and military operations in general...

The ambush, and the ambush using a sacrificial lamb of some sort is literally a tactic so old that it is literally shown in cave paintings!

This was just such an ambush!

An extremely nicely laid ambush that achieved all the basic goals the Syrians really wanted achieved, but not achieving some of the "stretch goals" to borrow a Kickstarter campaign term that they hoped for.

The really funny thing though is you are the one calling the Syrian plan retarded because you're nowhere near smart enough to get even the basic premise of it let alone the subtle intricacies which made it downright brilliant AND contributed to materially improving the situation for the Syrian government and military at the cost of mostly replaceable hardware which they will be given more of by Russia.

I've read through all 8 of your posts from the beginning of the situation and none provide any credit to what you are alleging

I get that we all have speculative tendencies/ opinion's, don't belittle members that may vary from yours, unless you can back it up.
I admit to being errant on the subject of the UAV, though the jury is still out whether was in Israeli airspace.
seems awfully convenient.

I'm not going to engage in this back and forth with you

I agree ambush's have there uses, but in this case I disagree and that's ok

As for materially improving the situation for Syrian government and military, it has been said they lost half there air defenses, put Iran in the cross hair's and have made a very aggressive neighbour looking for payback.

originally posted by: roguetechie
a reply to: all2human

This was just such an ambush!

An extremely nicely laid ambush that achieved all the basic goals the Syrians really wanted achieved, but not achieving some of the "stretch goals" to borrow a Kickstarter campaign term that they hoped for.

I'm not so sure the Syrians are entirely happy with the results. They paid dearly for it, apparently the Israeli follow up strikes severely degenerated their AD network in the region south of Damascus (between 30 to 50% according to the Israelis), they certainly wont be able to repeat the feat when the Israelis strike again. And Israel will come back for more, they are just waiting for an excuse to work on their target lists. And with Netanyahu facing in the political battle of his life due to looming corruption charges, he might be very tempted to leave office with a bang.

a reply to: mightmight

They still got their first Israeli aircraft since 1983 which is a HUGE deal to them, I know some actual Syrians and the humiliation of not taking down Israeli aircraft burns in them in a way that is frankly hard for people like us to understand.

Also though, they really are already partway into the process of getting a whole bunch of brand spanking new AA equipment from Uncle Vlad. Also if you look at who else is currently getting brand new AA gear shipments, aka the guys whose order is being filled currently it's none other than Iran! This all kinda adds up to a fairly large question mark as to how long the Syrian AA network will stay weak after this. There's also the fairly high likelihood of them having turned off and moved their good stuff and the Israelis having destroyed not nearly as much real hardware as they think they did... You know like happened to us in Kosovo?

On the Israel thing and their PM though, to think we can't ever seem to even get ex politicians in the courtroom much less the do not pass go do not collect $200 on your way to prison from the PM's chair of Israeli politics! Not to mention you have the whole emerging and rapidly solidifying Israeli Saudi alliance. Plus a bunch of other really odd and or outright disturbing things going on in the region to include hundreds of billions in large Western weaponry purchases and all the weapons factories in Eastern Europe running nonstop to meet demand.

a reply to: all2human

See my post below for a bit more information... It might not make sense to you why the Syrians would consider this worth it, but for them it really could be. Iran was already in the cross hairs and papers like haaretz etc have been getting more and more shrill about this "Iranian threat" for awhile now.

There's also been a bit more cross border back and forth than has been being reported in the mainstream media, which is partly why many people don't find any of this surprising.

Also, when it comes to the nature of SAM'S, air defense networks, and post SEAD/DEAD (suppression/destruction of enemy air defense) Battle Damage Assessment, as well as SAM ambush tactics in general I probably have a slightly better understanding of these things than your average bear.

There's a whole lot of reasons why this entire incident as reported (EXCEPT the true extent of damage to the Syrian Air Defense Network and the Making Iran a Target thing) is extremely plausible. The problem is that in order for me to lay it all out for you, I'd have to take 2-5 vacation days from work, completely ignore my girlfriend for the entire 2-5 days, and write you a post that including skimming the bare minimum of information from the 50 or so sources would probably take you 4+ hours to wade through!

Aka, it would be a tremendous pain in the ass for all involved and f*** up my Valentine's day plans to boot!

None of us wants this right?

We all know that you don't flub Valentine's day unless you want to hear about it until at least the next one!

Plus, you guys don't seem like the missile geek types who really care all that much to know these things anyway. (since surface to air missile systems are just SLIGHTLY less sexy than a model train addiction)

I mean, I put together my take on events (which is really not in the slightest bit controversial or outlandish mind you) that I posted here only after surfing around looking at pictures of the various SAM's that crashed in surrounding regions and then identifying what system they came from by identifying unique features on the crashed missiles and the like, and asking other geeks who do the same geeky stuff when I couldn't figure them out myself.

a reply to: roguetechie

Wow, that business trip you have to leave for the day after Valentines Day really came up unexpectedly! Right before President's Day weekend to boot! What a coincidence...

On the flipside, it would be interesting to run a simulation of the shoot-down on CANO (if you are familiar with it)

a reply to: The one?

CMANO is a great game but is too rng dependent under the hood for using it to accurately simulate real world events like this. And dont get me started on their AtA model. They have some really odd underlying design philosophy which may have worked to simulated AtA combat from twenty or thirty years ago, but is not applicable with todays technology and doctrines.

originally posted by: roguetechie
a reply to: mightmight

Also though, they really are already partway into the process of getting a whole bunch of brand spanking new AA equipment from Uncle Vlad. Also if you look at who else is currently getting brand new AA gear shipments, aka the guys whose order is being filled currently it's none other than Iran! This all kinda adds up to a fairly large question mark as to how long the Syrian AA network will stay weak after this. There's also the fairly high likelihood of them having turned off and moved their good stuff and the Israelis having destroyed not nearly as much real hardware as they think they did... You know like happened to us in Kosovo?

I dont think 'Kosovo' is a valid argument against the validity of Israeli BDA. Thats almost like using the Vietnam era performance of AtA missiles to rant against todays BVR doctrines.
Israeli recon and surveillance on Syria is lightyears ahead of what Nato was capable of during Allied Force. This is not a hit on Nato, it just was almost twenty years ago and technology and systems have changed rapidly since then. Also Israel is in the buisness of monitoring the Syrian military since, well, its existence, they should know what they are doing at this point. And finally, hiding stuff in the Golan Heights and the Hauran Plateau is comparativley difficult, not much dense vegetation there.

Anyway, if anything, the loss of an airplane will ensure the IAF refocusing on the SAM threat instead of pretty much ignoring it. Further raids will be accompanied by avery robust SEAD/DEAD package, making it rather difficult for the Syrians to score again. A few dozen SA-22s or some Iranian systems wont change that.

a reply to: mightmight

I'm just not inclined to believe that the Israelis absolutely cannot be fooled. Further, if they can be fooled, the team and overall situation you have in Syria right now would pretty much be the people to get it done. If anyone could do it they could, especially since everyone is playing the game of you can pop x and y emitter but do not FOR THE LOVE OF GOD pop emitter Z game! There's room for all kinds of fun and games to say the least.

Btw I brought up the Kosovo thing in the meta sense of people can be fooled especially in the first 24-72 hours after a back and forth event like this, not in the hurr durr dey could just do exactly what they did in Kosovo way.

And on the Valentine's day thing LOL I'm just saying that as fun as you guys are, she's way more entertaining.

a reply to: GrumpyBollocks

China is a pocket Israel lover. Iran's adversaries but Chinese gear, so do the Iranians, as do the terrorists. Business is good. China wouldn't have such an insight into Western aeronautical thought without Israel. Long friends at opposite sides of a long silk road

a reply to: roguetechie

Oh come on you just making stuff up at this point with no proof to back it up.
Can you fool the Israelis? Of course, anyone can be fooled.
But its another story entirely to effectivley hide the true extent and capabilities of your Air Defense Network from the guys literally next door, who not only were monitoring all your military activities for decades, but also repeatedly and sucessfully penetrated your network.
So no, i dont believe the Syrians were able to hide relevant parts of their AD from the Israelis. Especially not with everything else going on. The Syrian Regime and its army have been involved in extremely costly war and their Air Defense Network actually degenerated in recent years. They are very much not the people right now to play funny games with the Israelis at this point in time.
They got their # together and got an lucky hit on one Israeli Aircraft after a couple oft hings went wrong on the Israeli side. And they go hit bad in the IAFs follow up strikes. As its natural for them they claim victory and celebrate the shot down of one airplane while ignoring the destruction of a significant portition of their own AD network in the region– by a tiny fraction of their enemies total firepower one might add.
To get political here for a second, if roles were reversed in this the Israeli society would be all up in arms about this mess and demand consequences. But of course this isnt possible in an arab society and dictatorships in general, instead of confronting realities they choose to ignore it and continue to believe in their made up vicotries. Which will only result in them getting their a** handed to them time and again. Its a damn shame, really.

a reply to: mightmight

I interpreted the bit about hiding more advanced AD assets to mean they moved them to bunkers and were not radiating. I believe that is possible, correct me if I'm wrong. I do however agree with your insinuation that Israeli intelligence has long since cataloged the numbers and posture of the Syrian IADS.

From what I heard the 2nd strike package received something like 20 SA-5 and SA-17 missiles. #, even I can kill a dove if I shoot 10 shells at it.