Syrian War Report – December 12, 2016: Mistakes That Led To Fall Of Palmyra

its all so russia fault seems to me that russians arent so much of help in syria

T4 airbase is fell and ISIS will advance up to Homs. SAA will not have time to deploy forces from Aleppo. Special thanks to USA coalition: they know where ISIS is fighting today but strangely is not flying a their airplane.

>unexpected redeployment of new ISIS units

You can’t be serious.

This is like Battle of the Bulge, Tet Offensive and Yom Kippur War where forces thought the battles and war was being won (or forces were too weak to attack, for Yom Kippur) and ignored obvious signs of trouble. Astounding.

This thing smells fishy. How can one “forget” about the rest of the war, neglect the fact that ISIS terrorists came out of Mosul in large groups and that also the US has deployed more soldiers in Syria.I am not even sure if they are to be called soldiers anymore, but terrorist them US dudes as well.

This is a serious blow to the Russian credibility as one would expect there to be:

1) Sophisticated satellite surveillance monitoring whatever moves

2) Sophisticated surveillance airplanes that monitors the overall battlefields

3) Sophisticated aircraft’s in the air and drones looking for the expected ISIS coming from Mosul

4) Sophisticated gear that is new and from Russia to counter such attach having the entire airspace alone.

Please bring back my day tomorrow

Dear friends, SouthFront suggests all our readers to provide their thoughts and analyses about the situation near Palmyra and the possible course of future events under this comment. In turn, SouthFront Team will use the best of them in posts and maybe even in videos with refers to their authors.
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SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence

Some people got definitely sloppy. Apparently the Syrian and Russian High Commands thought Palmyra was safe and let second rate troops defending it. Intelligence on ISIS moves was definitely inadequate. Let’s hope this disaster will serve to wake up the military command, and that the needed assets will be brought to Pamyra to contain the ISIS advance and then to push it back. In a desert region the terrorists have little place to hide, so it shouldn’t be too hard to detect where they are. A proper use of the air force – with cluster bombs – and of artillery and missiles should reduce the power of the attacking forces to a point when overrunning them should be possible. So, let’s finish quickly the take over of Aleppo and direct the necessary assets to Pamyra.

When ISIS attacked Mosul the received wisdom was that the Iraqi army fled
without offering much resistance. I don’t know if this is true but it
is surely plausible. I only have SouthFront’s reports from which to
make a judgment, but the indication is that something similar
happened here. A lot of equipment seems to have been abandoned and
will no doubt be put into service by ISIS. I don’t intend to be
critical as it is not my life that was threatened.

I think the situation will be reversed in time. May be even quite soon.
I do, however, hope lessons will be learned . I am not completely
hopeful as others may recall that something similar happened shortly after Palmyra was
first recaptured when the SAA tried to advance further and was forced
to make a hasty retreat.

I agree this assessment, the problem has been lack of strategic alertness which is not low level command chain problem, but the central government is the main responsible for this lack of strategic alertness, when SAA makes gains the is what call “killer relaxation” where the level of alertness and military preparedness is relaxed unnecessarily, also Russia is not as alert as you may expect. it was clear ISIS will seek to compensate its losses in Iraq and attack Syrian softbelly region of Der Zor and Palmyra region but there was enough preparation to forestall this predictable offensive.

Dial 1 800 the Aircraft Carrier is useless door stop!
Syria needed mobile forces And more Attack Helicopters.
Many months ago coment was made that Russian Airborne could go in against surge
Areas such as Der Ezzor as blocking action.
It’s the cost of the above vs the showy operations cost of the Carrier battlegroup doing circles
In the Med.
Empires got bases and Airbases now in Syria. ..
No excuse that Kalibr or cruise missile cannot smack that.

If Syria gets partition and pipeline Istan now….it’s because Vladimir blinked and the Russian
Hardliners went to Cuba for the winter.

Why should Russia sacrifice airborne troops? The Russian public doesn’t want this and might turn against Putin if he puts in ground forces and troops start coming home in body bags. They are spending billions on airstrikes. Time for Iran to deploy some troops.

One of the most basic rules of war, is that you fight the enemy until he is either defeated, dead or surrenders. To brake the momentum while you have the advantage, is often something that will bite you back in the azz, at some later point in the war.

The forces that attacked Palmyra are not necessarily ISIS – even though everyone automatically assumes so. The U.S. and GCC are sending mercs to command and fill in because ISIS is incompetent and falling apart. ISIS is useful for insane VBIED drivers, but that’s about it. The UAE training bases in Eritria can supply all the mercs needed in south Syria. There are probably plenty of ISIS involved in this operation, but it is anything but an organic, 100% ISIS op.

Regardless of the actual troops being used, this was a significant military operation requiring a lot of planning and intelligence. The U.S. and GCC had drones over Palmyra gathering intelligence and relayed that real-time to their head-choppers on the ground. There is no way ISIS – by itself – could have possibly organized a well-coordinated operation of this scale using their own intelligence and their own command and control. This was a U.S./GCC operation, period. The bullet-stoppers and suicide bombers were ISIS. The rest? Who knows, but probably not ISIS.

Personally, I doubt it was a surprise at all to the troops holding Palmyra. This was probably a threat made good when Russia didn’t cave to U.S. demands to let all their head-choppers trapped in Aleppo go. Rather than be diverted from the final crushing blow to Aleppo, the Russians and Syrians probably told the U.S. to piss off. So the Russians and Syrians concentrated on Aleppo (as they should have) and the U.S. and GCC cronies mounted the supposed ‘ISIS’ attack on Palmyra.

The goal of attacking Palmyra was not the city itself. The nearby gas fields still operating and gas pipeline infrastructure that converges at (near) Palmyra was the objective. This gas is the primary supply to the population centers of Syria’s east, especially Homs and Damascus. Electricity for the east is generated from natural gas-fired power plants, so disruption of gas supplies threatens the power grid. Gas demand is also rising because of the cold winter weather in Syria. All this makes the Palmyra gas hub a desirable strategic target (if your target is to punish Syrian civilians for supporting Assad).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Czd7xukVQAAkFcx.jpg

For the Syrians and Russians, the loss of Palmyra’s gas infrastructure was a risk they were willing to take. Note that this is a completely different problem than defending Palmyra city. Defending Palmyra’s gas infrastructure (several hundreds of square kilometers and many points of vulnerability) would have taken thousands of troops, and all that for an attack that may have never come. The U.S./GCC objectives would have been 1) negotiating leverage in Aleppo, and 2) thinning out Syrian forces in Homs and possibly Aleppo to prolong those battles.

My guess for what happens next isn’t the retaking of Palmyra and gas infrastructure/fields. That is a given. What I fear will happen is that the U.S./GCC are sabotaging/destroying as much of the pipelines, pumping stations and gas drying (‘refining’) equipment as possible right now to deny Syria’s population centers of as much gas as possible this winter. The equipment can be replaced or repaired, but at great cost and several months or more of time. I have no inside sources or special knowledge that they are doing this. I’m just projecting the continuous pattern of psychopathic behavior of my country (the U.S.) has when they are losing: they want as much Syrian infrastructure destroyed as possible to ensure more resource depletion and weakness in their ‘enemy’ (= the people of Syria and their government).

Syrian forces will retake Palmyra at some cost, but there will be no more natural gas flowing to the east when that happens. The fake ISIS will scatter back to Raqqa and Deir EzZor until the U.S./GCC cooks up more schemes to make their head-chopper Sunnistan a reality.

There is no Court Marshal and everything seems to be based on voluntary actions. NDF is an Achilles heel of the Syrian army. They trade arms with terrorists, exhort money from local population and so on and on. They are mainly made up of local Arab population too. Their only motive for taking part in the fight seems to be a small financial gain. Basically they are opportunists looking how to take the advantage of the conflict. On the other side ISIS has been well trained and strongly ideologically motivated to fight and also well disciplined. There is no absence of the court marshal either. Serious mistakes are payed for without any mercy shown to the culprits.

While I agree that “vlad” always and continuously does the mistake of “pillow” talk. Knowing fully, that it’s a waste of time, money, effort and it’s gonna get them killed in the end.

I can’t imagine “vlad” having forgotten about the group coming out of Mosul … there is no “gain” in Palmyra for ISIS… attacking is a mistake on their behalf. Nobody cares about a bunch of old rocks … least of all, the Russians. ISIS are “spreading” themselves … and as such … thin. very thin.

the answer is very simple , the complete lack of any kind of reconnaissance which Syrian military is used to repeat these mistakes again and again , the units in Palmyra were not considering the seriousness of the location despite the movement of ISIS for a months & months, u can describe this attack any thing you like but a “surprising ” .

La responsabilidad principal de la retomada de Palmira por los terroristas es del comando central de las fuerzas armadas sirias con su presidente a la cabeza. Se está en una situación de guerra contra enemigos muy poderosos pues es ee.uu. el que está interesado en tomar control de Siria a través de los terroristas y las ideas de control y vigilancia no han fluído en el cérebro de los responsables. Los acontecimientos también indican que los sistemas de monitoramiento por parte de las fuerzas aeroespaciales rusas es bastante reducido, esto debido a que grandes contingentes armados se han mobilizado y no han sido detectados y detenidos en el camino que era lo ideal. Ahora, el costo humano es y será mucho más grande.

Is there no one with the military genius of an Emperor Aurelian to be found?

Unfortunately, the liberation of Aleppo is late for a few days. I don’t want to accuse anyone, everyone makes mistakes (including me too, so I’m not in position to accuse anyone for anything, only myself, especially having in sight that I have never witnessed a war), but if there was some ceasefire less, maybe it would have been liberated on time. This way thousands of Syria’s most elite troops have been with tied hands, unable to help in driving back the offensive of ISIS on Palmyra. It is a high price for the many made mistakes, but with the liberation of Aleppo (which is almost finished already, as I can see on the map only one last district of Aleppo has presence of terrorist) I believe the things are going to start moving in the good direction. And I believe liberating Palmyra again, with God’s help, won’t be a very difficult task. But I would prefer liberating the oil fields north of Palmyra and linking with SAA positions in Ithriyah, instead of liberating of Palmyra itself. The troops in Palmyra would be too much exposed on attacks (as they also were before) and if the mountains (and oil fields) north (or at least north-west) of the city are liberated before, it would be much easier to defend it. And if you imagine a frontline from Ithriyah straight south to Palmyra, it would also be at least two times shorter, and again twice easier to defend, and plus, it would be a great relief for the Aleppo supply line, creating a large buffer zone south of it. Let’s try and hope not to repeat the mistakes again, and pray God for help, He is the only faultless and only He can make the things perfect.

I see the arabic(some others do the same) way here again. Its wrong that those forces are that depended by orders from Damaskus and are not allowed or has not learned to take care of themselves where they are.

Too less education in understanding whats going on and can happen. Its obvios troops there being attacked many times the last weeks as well, should pr reflex secure all m2 as hard as they can being learned to do it

And again we see people trust tanks more than Allah and sleep better than with the best pillows. But tanks are worth nothing without determinant infantery support exept as they sometimes are used as normal artillery behind the defence lines.

I really dont get SAA after years of experience still are that stupid in welknown formations of troops.

The “humanitarian ceasefires” and the trying to play to the sympathies of the Western “mainstream media” peanut gallery on the part of the Russian government have got to STOP.

It’s as simple as that.

Putin’s propaganda ops are useless to win the Syrian war. A battle fleet that only serves to show the flag, super 4.5 jets that can not throw a simple bomb and cruise missiles so expensive that you can only launch a pair every year. That is of no use. In Syria are needed HUNDREDS of fighter-bombers such as the Su-25, attack helicopters such as Mi-24 and Ka-52, artillery, tanks and especially soldiers. Thousands of them, not peasants brought from anywhere.

POTENTIALLY IMPORTANT:
These mistakes seem to indicate to a larger, fundamental problem sadly present in many arab armed forces (as described in one online article); too rigid, hierarchic, and non-responsive military culture in which all initiative comes from above (aside of a few crack units with prominent commanders such as Tiger forces). Asking for permission for every action and doing nothing on one’s own initiative seems still widespread in the current military culture, and was undoubtedly adopted to – in peacetime – prevent coups. But, this is the very probable reason that the local commanders let their guard down; simply because there was lack of any intel from Damascus on what to do they thought nothing was coming until it was too late. And Damascus high command was at the time preoccupied with Aleppo. And as orders probably stopped at the time of taking of Palmyra (and at the time ISIS was thought to have been on the run) there was no explicit order to dig in properly.
I think the biggest take away lesson would be to allow/retrain the local and middle level commanders to take initiative and watch their sector regardless what’s going on in other sectors. ISIS does this to great success.

Especially disappointing:
1. there is – still – the complete lack of dealing with suicide bombers! if it’s an ISIS assault, you can be sure of one thing: there ARE going to be suicide bombers
2. that there is no knowledge of the obvious fact that more often than not, the success of suicide bombers delivering their ordnance is what determines the success of the assault.

This obviously makes imperative to prevent VBIEDs by all costs!

In view of this, it’s beyond me how professional military personel is seemingly incapable to articulate the need for more presence of anti-VBIED teams, be it on platoon level, or in form of specialized, mobile anti-VBIED teams (multiple MANPADS or other means to dispatch VBIEDs) which would man outposts or places likely to come under attack…
This is beyond me.

Blame the Syrians. Blame the Russians. I blame the tides of war. ISIS is still alive and being well funded. They state 4,000 have regrouped to retake Palmyra. i say closer to 6 or 7,000. But don’t worry. Palmyra will be retaken by the Syrians. And ISIS will pay a heavy price.