The US Central Command joined a parade of excuses over the questionable results of the US missile strike on the Syrian Shayrat military airfield launched by President Donal Trump last weekend. (more here)
The reason you don’t generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2017
Let’s recall the core of the issue: The US military launched 59 Tomahawks cruise missiles against the Shayrat military airfiled operated by the Syrian Air Force near the city of Homs. 
However, the Shayrat military airfiled became operatinal in just few hours after the US missile strike. Such “great results” made significant jitters in the social media. As a result, the mainstream media, “anonymous US defense sources” and even President Trum have been trying to explain this “success” since Friday. Now, the CENTCOM joined the game.
.@CENTCOM Spox: It was not our intention to make the #Syria Shayrat Airfield inoperable (1/3) — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 10, 2017
It’s also interesting to note that CENTCOM is sure that there are some “chemical weapons storages” (!) at the Shayrat military airfield and the US Navy avoided targeting them. Unfortunately, the CENTCOM is not able to provide at least a satellite photo of a chemical weapons depot. Most likely, it’s “top secret” evidence.
.@CENTCOM Spox: It was our intention to degrade Syrian’s capability to perform chemical attacks #Syria (2/3)
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 10, 2017
.@CENTCOM Spox: We targeted fuel reserves, aircraft, and did not target chemical weapons storages #Syria (3/3) — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 10, 2017
The whole story with the US missile strike on Syria looks like that somebody made a very bad move and then started trying to explain it as a success.
No doubts, if the new administration continues to act this way, it could start a regional war, involving Russia an Iran. is this the goal?
Syria all ready is a regional war involving Syria and Russia.
Sounds like Centcom is in full damage control control mode. 59 missiles and they didn’t want to damage anything? Just send a message by killing a couple of civilians and a few soldiers?
The obvious inferiority of US weapons systems (and foreign policy) on parade.
I don’t believe the “we didn’t target the chemical weapons”, as they blew up a munitions depot. If not there then where. Let’s see where the US thinks they are. It has to be somewhere on the airfield.
And why wouldn’t they? What was the point of this significant missile strike?
to show how shitty those cruise missiles are lol
What Americans needs is another Donald Rumsfeld. He’ll tell them where to find these nasty Weapons of Mass Destruction.
If the US only wanted to destroy 6 aircraft and two hangars with Tomahawks that were 97 percent reliable, it need to send only 8 Tomahawks.Each Tomahawk had independent target. The top of Syrian hangar was not targeted with two Tomahawks. The Tomahawk guidance system was adversely affected by EW so the Tomahawks hit nearby village and killed women and children. The intact Tomahawks are sought for parts and for sale on black market. The Tomahawks could have been a test of Krasukha system. The US monitored electromagnetic EW system which is used to defend the Latakia base. If Krasukha was used the US knows which frequency it uses and will make improvements in guidance system to resist Krasukha . Russia has not claimed a EW victory likely because it wants no competitors in the field of EW. US DOD has massive research budget and likely has similar systems. Probably Pyongyang Beijing Moscow Washington London and nuclear powers all have EMP EW systems but since it is last defense they do not make details public. The Krasukha defends Moscow so if it failed in Latakia it would fail in Moscow against cruise missiles. It was a test of Russian EW system which is their last line of defense.
The US/EU/NATO gang has tested the Russian defenses several times in Crimea and Kaliningrad. That is why they fly with their transponders off and approach Russian air space. Then there is the story of Donald Cook being cooled by EMW.
The exceptionally violent and expansionist nation, the US, will find that there are many nations that do not like to be invaded.
I believe that attack against DPRK would be disastrous. The DPRK only choice in war is to go full nuclear against an enemy with massive conventional superiority. The DPRK should be expected to use EMP as offensive and defensive weapon. The US ABM systems like the Tomahawk have never been tested in EW or EMP environment. Many US systems that rely on electronics will not be reliable. The devastation created by war with DPRK depends on DPRK stockpile. The DPRK claims “as many as they want ” nukes of unique korean design. I assume this is layer cake using Lithium deuteride or similar designs with fast reaction rate and capable of producing fast neutrons for U 238 fission. Even low kiloton reactions produce enough gamma rays for initiation of lithium deuteride. Historically DPRK had almost 4 low yield tests called “duds” or failures by USA . But these were tests of low kiloton igniters/primer for Lithium deuteride or equivalent. So DPRK may have hundreds of layer cake weapons that ignite with low kiloton primer .
is it really that simple, to modify the tomahawks to evade the krasukha? how long would that take? or would they have to design a completely new missile? and wouldnt the russians know this and change their systems to adapt as well?
The tomahawks receive guidance from GPS satellites, Krasukha jams the signal from the satellite rendering the tomahawk blind. I think the jamming is not single faceted, it could rather be complex. I do not think the Russians wanted to show their hand much.
If US tweaks the satellite emission to counteract the Krasukha jamming, the Krasukha can resort to a different mode of jamming.
Russia is significantly ahead in this technology, US is trying to catch up by getting embarrassed and deluding themselves in the process.
yes it certainly seems that way, and thank God for that! i wonder how they jam them like that? very interesting!
There’s jamming (where you are trying to interrupt the GPS signal coming down from all the orbiting satellites) and spoofing (where you override the GPS signal with something stronger.)
Spoofing was noted last summer around Moscow, especially as you neared the Kremlin. See:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/02/technology/kremlin-gps-signals/
Not sure how much of either was done in the latest Syrian Tomahawk attack.
Russia has both. I’m no expert but because GPS is so easily impacted, most guidance systems today have some form of inertial guidance. Submarines have been using inertial systems for a long time as they have no way to receive a GPS signal deep underwater. It used to require expensive gyros but now can be done with inexpensive accelerometers similar to the ones in cellphones. With the two systems all one needs is to know where they started from and the inertial system tracks changes to ones position, directing you to your destination.
In the first Iraq war the US used almost 300 Tomahawks. The stated accuracy of Tomahawks at the time was 85%, but analysis of the actual missiles showed no more than around 50%. I loved the US military’s quote of “…even it the missile did not hit its target does not mean it wasn’t effective.” when asked about the poor performance of its highly vaunted missiles.
Since no one is talking it’s tough to say what happened. Keep in mind if spoofing a GPS signal was used and GPS was the primary means of navigation, then all the missiles should have been equally affected by an equal amount (the target pattern would have simply been offset by say 2 km), which was not the case.
Be assured everyone is looking into this, but most likely no one will report out.
Very interesting thanks!
In reality it is a huge failure for Tomahawk guidance system. If Tomahawks can not defeat Krasukha-4 how reliable can they be in nuclear war. Accuracy made small warheads effective. The old soviet designs for first ICBM used mechanical gyros . Not the most accurate. But made up for lack of accuracy with megaton yields.
A new cruise missile guidance system using combination of laser ring gyro and mechanical guidance is likely being developed.
The complex fifth generation fighters have never been tested in real nuclear war. Clearly in nuclear war an adversary wants lots of nukes in hundreds or thousands with multiple types delivery.
Clearly DPRK wants this and is moving toward the goal. Nuclear war with DPRK would be very difficult to predict if they have enough warheads enough yield enough EMP . This is why Trump called North Korea a “mess”. It would be very messy to attack DPRK.
US got comfortable with the success in Iraq, and felt confident their equipment would maintain their technological edge, however, many technological developments have taken place since then. The Russians learned from those capabilities and developed effective countermeasures that improved over the last two decades.
US spent that time fighting insurgency wars, neglecting the need to develop new capabilities, a lot of new weapon systems proposed got canceled, and nothing new has changed from two decades ago. The Tomahawk is GPS driven, with a self terminal guidance when close to the target.
The Tomahawk comprises the offensive arm of the US Navy, besides aircraft launched from carriers. Also Tomahawks deployed for strategic strikes are succeptible to the same technological drawbacks.
Trident SLBM MIRVs rely for terminal guidance on GPS, making it succeptible to jamming. Therefore guiding strategic weapons using old technology makes it succeptible to cheap countermeasures, using passive defense.
US going against N Korea is like walking in a minefield, I read that 150,000 Chinese troops moved close to the N. Korean border, I see US doing saber rattling and not much more, since S. Korea lack the strategic depth and Seoul being within the range of N.Korean artilery.
No corporate or globalist media has explained the failure of 36 of 59 Tomahawks to arrive on target. The US DOD uses the threat of force to control behavior and globalist media may want to ignore failure of US Tomahawk.Likely the 59 would have been highly accurate on Taliban that lacked EW defenses. I expect an attack on DPRK China or Russia would lead to unintended consequences.
The the media here in the US is in denial, and delusional.
I hope Russia has shared this technology with NK.
DPRK has sought such tech for decades. It likely that DPRK nukes have EMP boosters for added EMP effect. DPRK seeks very many nukes so that many could be used for EMP effect. US reportedly used EMP EW device on attack in Bagdad airport in 2003.
I noticed that CNN didn’t cover any of the Tomahawks landing harmlessly in the Mediterranean.
The saker covers a technical and political analysis of Tomahawk failure very well in about 10 pages. Read todays article in Saker. Outstanding in breadth and detail.
U.S. Comedy Central
The S300 were there ! Fuck USA !
haha they’re desperately trying to explain away the embarrassment.
Starting a war with both nations at the same time is THE LAST thing the new administration would want. But they might get a response that will cost them dearly. Somebody has to point out that the king is in fact naked and the sharade is over. Game over, as a matter of fact.
It was just a symbolic attack, that’s why they warned beforehand. Trump just wanted to appear aggressive so that Xi would be impressed in the much more important (for the USA) North Korea matter.
That’s why they just made sure some missiles hit and probably disabled the rest that were in flight. That would explain why not all are accounted for. They must have been dropped in the desert, inactive.
Anyone that doubts that USA can drop 60 tomahawks and eradicate an airbase if they wanted to is just lying to themselves.
However disabling and discarding the US missiles in mid flight so they crashed somewhere in the Syrian landscape is not exactly a great option either. The remains would eventually be found and easily condemned as flight or targeting failures – and then quite likely the crashed parts would be scooped up and bundled off to Iran for further study and reverse engineering. Whether the US military is fine with that option seems questionable – but it remains anyone’s guess what happened at this point.
i hope iran gets them, to study and engineer how to counteract them against any future attack on iran, god forbid
I was thinking the same thing. If I am syria or Lebanon I am on treasure hunt for Tomahawk parts.
1) nobody knows, what happens. no founds of 30 fallen tomahawls. in ege of phones with camera. ridiculous.
2) tomahawk is old technology, well known. there is nothing to steal.
3) if would be advanced technology, it is hard to copy. remember stealth bomper shot down in serbia. how long time? the parts were sold for russia and china. and still there is no real 5th generation combat plane in these countries, and amies developed 2 newer generations.
There are measures to prevent the reverse engineering of the important parts of the missile. Maybe they detonated on the ground in the middle of the desert, noone would find them.
That is very optimistic conclusion. Even burnt out parts are highly informative to qualified engineers. Parts from the shot down US stealth bomber in Serbia, in 1999, were studied extensively by China for metallurgical and electronics information. Even wildly heated and burnt out parts will leave a lot of information to the qualified.
The Nighthawk was very old at that point. A few years later they retired it. Good luck trying to chase the americans by reverse engineering that while they pump trillions into the war industry and share tech with Europe and Israel.
And the cruise missiles are destined to strike and blow up. They are expendable weapons, you think the americans have not protected the crucial electronics from reverse engineering somehow?
It’s not always about literally reverse engineering – its getting hands on components that are informative.
That might have been the case in Iraq, not in Syria where the Russians are actively involved.
i highly doubt xi was impressed by the strike, in fact i read online today that as soon as he left the US to go back to china after his meeting with trump, he called trump “a weakened politician attempting to flex his muscles”
Even if they had, they couldn’t.
Some little war racketeer’s Raytheon portfolio just increased in value.
Stock speculator rule #1. Don’t even think of selling short against Murder Inc on military issues.
Not really a waste…
The missiles were already bought and paid for several years ago =P
So it would only be a waste if they were replaced?
Read the saker discussion on this topic.
Cant find a line about the 100 gassed ones. Did americans kill them? Zionists ? Were they forced to kill themselves by the american? merkel did it ? Hindus from Kashmir were supervisers to support the rupee. Did kurds do it as revenge for Halasja and Aleppo.
No muslim did that all muslims from Casablanca to Djarkarta would ever do that to all the other peacefull united arabs.
And its also a rumor´Assads sends out candy and umbrellas for the children before the barral bombs come. Assad has never used barral bombs, but ISIS and others has Megamortars.