The Turkish military has deployed more than ten M60T battle tanks and several armored vehicles in the southern province of Kilis along the border with Syria, the Syrian Enab Baladi news outlet reported on December 27 citing Turkish sources.
The Israel Military Industries (IMI) upgraded hundreds of Turkey’s old M60A3 battle tanks into the M60T Sabra Mk II standard in the period between 2001 and 2008. The upgrade features a new 120 mm smoothbore gun, electric stabilization system, new fire control system and new armor package.
Despite of this deep modernization, the M60T failed during Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria in 2016. After this, the battle tanks went through another upgrade, this time by the Turkish ASELSAN company. The second upgrade added a laser warning system and a remotely controlled weapon station armed with a heavy machine gun or a grenade launcher.
The deployment of battle tanks in Kilis is a part of the ongoing Turkish military buildup around northeastern Syria. Turkey and its Syrian proxies are planning to launch a military operation against Kurdish forces there very soon, according to several reports.
Photos:
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I’m surprised Erdogan didn’t armor up Killis much earlier. That’s always been the Turkish smuggling capitol on their side of the Killis-Azaz super-highway of smuggling and, of course, the CIA/headchopper arms supply route to Syria. Ergogan’s family must get plenty of skim for whatever goes across the border at Killis. He’s got to protect his money-maker. I mean, aside from the oil smuggling business.
[Edit: not that the M60s are going to stand up too well against an ATGM. I guess we’ll find out about that one soon enough.]
Haha! So right! I hope his tanks burn like aluminum foil in a campside fire.
Turks are disgusting and started this war for their buddies the Yankees and boyfriends ,the Saudigulfs.
Bend down and shut up.
What does it say on the trucks in photos?
it says we Turks are chickenshiets like Turkeys…thats why our country is called Turkey
they r not chicken shits buddy they r good fighters along with the kurds i feel the tribes need them both!!turkey even the kurds r also near megiddo the good guys on the worlds stage need all the good holy warriors we can get not fckn fighting each other!!
an invader is never a good fighter…he is a rapist and a headchopper
long and wide vehicle – common national signage requirement when hauling oversize loads on main roads
tx
Most others know Kilis for many years has been armed up.
Great Pictures
This will be a full scale, massive invasion going all the way down to Raqqa and Abu Kamal east of Euphrates. Either YPG/SDF hand over all areas to SAA, fight side by side with SAA, or face a cataclysmic defeat by turkish regime and turkish backed jihadi monkeys.
I honestly think turks have most chances of winning this offensive, motivated, numbers play with them, trained troopers and airforce.
They used thousands less soldiers (only 2000-3000) and FSA militants in their Afrin offensive and steamrolled it in 2 months. This time turkey will have 10,000+ TSA, 30,000+ FSA jihadis and hundreds of tanks. this e euphrates op will makes olive branch op look tiny compared to it.
You certainly has inflation in Your country. Samme thing for Damaskus, where pound hardly are grammes.
I kind of hope You warmad people all kill each other, so the peacefull normal ones can take over.
wtf did I just read? am I pathetic at english grammar or are you are placing random words on your speech?
Who is Wtf – some foundation for stupidists.
You only are able ro establish connection to soldiers. That seemes to be the level for many here. So what about the rest. In Your world and vocabulary its close to one or minus.
There is not a single word for any kind of peace – More like You have no ID if You dont pretend being an Ottoman defending against all enemies.
Here You also reduce it to You create none enemies. You do. So far the Turks as Ottoman leftovers has been figthing kurds in 100 years. Toiy are resonsible for that – not them. Ypu as Turks are 90% of the voteres, whoich can made the needed changes.
But in the most priimitive nationalistic way, You reduce it to win wars but never peace.
I still think they got over 95% chance of victory if they start the campaign. What I meant is that a defeat here would halt them in Syria for minimum 1 year at Syria
10 tanks? That’s what? 2,5, maybe 3 tank platoons? Wow, that’s not exactly Barbarossa 2.0.
Tanks are deployed i groups. Those are not even for fohthing there but for reinforcements to front groups. They might no even be needed.
Let me remind You Barabarossa was 3 advance zones and several million soldiers. All tanks wasnt at the same place. Tanks mainly cant work alone apart from some times being long distance support.
True, without combined arms support tanks are quickly turned into toast. As witnessed by the Turkish battles to wrest Al Bab from ISIS which turned into a plethora of destroyed Turkish Leo 2’s.
We already have a precedence for how the fighting will go between the Turks and the Kurds, we can look at how well Hezbollah did against Israel during their brief war, that should give us some idea at least. That didn’t end well for either party, but if I had to give a final assessment, I’d say that Hezbollah came out at least 1 point ahead of the Israelis, though most commentators said it was a stalemate.
1 Turkish tank/armoured vehicle costs tens of millions of dollars or more, it has 3 or 4 well trained crewmembers, very high maintenance costs, fuel servicing, repairs, and are hard/ expensive to replace.
The Kurds have a 4 or 5 man tank killing squad, some light weapons for defence, 1 Anti Tank Gun or ATGM system [missile], light fast transport, stuff all training or expensive maintenance costs, highly mobile, and are easy to replace.
If they fight 2 different wars the way Israel was forced to fight Hezbollah, I think the Kurds will have the advantage in the long run. In initial Turkish attacks the Kurds will just about always lose, but the Turks will find it very hard to keep territory they take, and it will cost them heavily in men and equipment if they try to hold the territory. we only have to look west to see what the Kurds can already do to the Turks and how easily they can do it.
But the Kurds need a no fly zone, without it they’ll be in a very dire situation, not an impossible situation, just very close to it, they do need a no fly zone for protection to be completely effective.
If Russia doesn’t enforce one in the east as well as the west, I’m sure the French/US will put one in place in the east for the purposes of “French protection”.
If the Russians and SAA can quickly eliminate the Turkish proxies that try to invade in front of the Turkish forces, the Kurds will be able to concentrate on the Turks themselves. The Kurds have some sort of magic potion, that somehow protects them from US or NATO retaliation, whenever they attack and kill one of the Turkish NATO members soldiers, the Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, don’t have the same magic potion, just the Kurds, so only they can really kill the Turks and get away with it. Just exactly what Assad and Putin need right now, a fighting force that’s immune to NATO and US retaliation whenever they kill Turkish invaders. That seems to have worked out very well for Assad and Putin just by coincidence, or was it just a coincidence.
When a tank fails, its often because its not used as its meant for. I kind of wonder why they did not use the Leopards there – and next:
Did Turks advanced clever also protcting those tanks well be enough infanteristas in a circle around them agains fx RPGs.
Was the failure at the same time some generals were replaced. But off course and upgrade often make improvements and for other parts of the forces too.
I remember FSA wasnt good enough for before Al Bab but at least some parts of those morons are now.
Even upgraded, the M60 tanks are much inferior to the upgraded Leopards, but I suppose they are capable enough against Kurdish anti-tank defences. But they may be facing much stiffer opposition from the Assad forces. And how will they operate if Syrian (Russian) anti-aircraft batteries are deployed to deny them air support?