Posted on 09/25/2016 1:52:38 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
While Russian Su-24M/M2/SVP-24s are usually armed with only four bombs, Assadist Su-24MK2s carry much heftier loads of eight to 10 FAB-250M-62s or FAB-250–270s or five FAB-500M-62s. Photo via Y. A.
In 1988, Syria placed an order for 48 Sukhoi Su-24MK fighter-bombers and expressed interest in obtaining additional examples. While 24 of these were delivered in 1990 and 1991, Moscow suspended further arms deliveries because Damascus began refusing to pay some old debts.
The Su-24 thus entered service with № 819 Squadron of the Syrian Arab Air Force based at Tiyas Air Base, or T-4, while the planned second unit was never established.
For the next 20 years — a period that can only be described as a sort of a cold war between Damascus and Moscow — the Syrian Su-24 fleet languished in disrepair.
Then, in late 2015 and early 2016, the Su-24s not only came roaring back in Syrian service — they also became one of the Syrian regime’s cruelest weapons, repeatedly and deliberately striking hospitals and other medical facilities in rebel-held areas.
The Syrian government more or less stopped financing its air force, resulting not only in a lack of spares, but even in a lack of fuel. Most of the SyAAF’s Su-24 crews — once considered the best of all Arab Su-24 pilots by Soviet instructors — barely managed to fly 30 hours annually.
The situation slightly improved through cooperation with Libya, which operated a small fleet of Su-24s, too, but also suffered from strict international sanctions. The solution was simple — the Libyans would pay for spares that the Syrians obtained from Belarus and Ukraine, and the Syrians would help maintain and fly the Libyan Sukhois.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, in the mid-1990s Tripoli donated its sole Su-24MR — a specialized and rare reconnaissance and electronic-warfare variant of the swing-wing bomber— to Damascus as an expression of gratitude.
High-flying Russian Su-24s usually feature a wing-sweep of 16 degrees, while Syrian Su-24s typically sweep their wings 45°. Photo via Y.A.
Times improved for officers and other ranks of № 819 Squadron in 2009, when the regime of Pres. Bashar Al Assad contracted with Moscow for the overhaul and upgrade of 21 surviving aircraft to the Su-24MK2 standard.
Related work occurred on at least 15 aircraft at the 514th Aircraft Repair Depot in Rzhev in Russia starting in 2010, and most of the upgraded aircraft were back in Syria by 2013.
Availability of these like-new Sukhois was what enabled № 819 to become one of most active SyAAF units in the Syrian civil war. Indeed, this squadron managed to maintain much higher sortie rates than other units with the roughly dozen aircraft it normally had on charge.
More importantly, the unit’s Su-24MK2s could carry much heavier bomb-loads than any other available types and over much longer ranges — and deliver the munitions with much higher precision.
Syrian Su-24s also suffered minimal losses early on. In first two years of their combat operations, only one Sukhoi was shot down — near Darat Ezzah, in the Aleppo governorate, on Nov. 28, 2012. The example with the serial number 3503 was hit by ground fire while underway over Idlib on March 7, 2013, and has been in storage ever since.
But the longer the war went on, the worse things got for the Syrian Su-24 crews. The Ba’ath Party headquarters ordered air strikes on civilian populations within insurgent-held areas. Any officer opposing such orders was arrested, tortured and sometimes even executed.
Those crews who continued serving became reckless. On June 1, 2014, one of № 819 Squadron’s Su-24MKs was shot down by ground fire over Idlib governorate after its crew flew much too low.
On Sept. 23, 2014, another crew not only made a navigational mistake but also failed to activate its electronic countermeasures. The aircraft thus flew into the air space over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and was promptly blown out of the sky by a PAC-2 surface-to-air missile.
Two further Sukhois were destroyed in an accident caused by the mishandling of ammunition on May 28, 2015, and one was shot down by Jaysh Al Islam’s surface-to-air missiles over Nahta, a village in Dera’a governorate, on June 11, 2015.
Seeking to bolster the fleet, Damascus requested from Moscow a batch of replacements — and also asked for help training its Su-24 crews in night operations.
Flying at night was rare in the SyAAF. Only the highest-qualified officers were granted permission to do so. A MiG-23ML pilot who shot down an Israeli drone over Syria on a night in October 2007 was granted, as a reward, several weeks of leave and also significant a sum of cash and a brand-new Mercedes car.
With Russian military personnel present in the country, training by night — conducted with help of Aero L-39 Albatross jet trainers — proceeded quite quickly, with most of the crews qualifying in November and December 2015.
Additional Su-24s — all taken out of Russian reserve stocks — arrived in Syria in several batches in May and June 2016.
Thanks to new training, new aircraft and new armament — primarily in the form of several shipments of FAB-250M-62, FAB-500M-62, and FAB-250–270 dumb bombs — the SyAAF gained the ability to strike selected targets by night and in all weather.
Ever since, the Su-24s of № 819 Squadron have at least heavily damaged, if not destroyed, more than 70 different medical facilities in Aleppo and Idlib governorates.
Damascus and Moscow refuse to take responsibility for the attacks on medical facilities, but Syrian Su-24 crews are extremely proud of their … “achievements.”
And on the evening of Sept. 19, 2016, Syrian Su-24s destroyed what the regime claimed was a convoy of militants in Urum Al Kubra, but was in fact a humanitarian convoy.
And on the evening of Sept. 19, 2016, Syrian Su-24s destroyed what the regime claimed was a convoy of militants in Urum Al Kubra, but was in fact a humanitarian convoy.
LOL!
I think I see I’m not the only one who thinks bombing “hospitals” is likely to result in hits on militarily significant targets like ammo dumps, vehicles, command posts, etc.
Wonderful Obama butt-licker propaganda!
That Assad is so evil - we MUST depose him and install the muslim brotherhood!!!
Destroying hospitals, huh?
Did somebody get their license plate numbers?
Ask “Doctors Without Borders “ about who,is targeting hospitals in Yemen and Afghanistan and droning civilians
There is a guy near Baker, Florida who has one of these parked in his front yard.
30.754891, -86.696782
SU-24 = Ivan knockoff of F-111.
Dangerous place these hospitals - what with all the secondary explosions. Must be the ether bottles.
Oh come on! They are also good for blowing up baby milk factories. Credit where credit is due.
I think that you may be on to something.
I’m amazed at the thinking. Did everyone think war was a game to be played on the xbox and then reset up the next time you plugged in the cartridge so all the destroyed people could get it again?
Bombing innocents is what makes war go away. We and the allies hit a number of factory areas in Germany in WW II that included people that lived near them like the employees. We had to destroy two cities in Japan to get them finally to the Missouri. And a lot of villages in Nam were blow to get to the Vietcong hiding in them. When the war started in Iraq, we missiles a city, not an enemy encampment.
War is detestable because of the pain, suffering, death and the ugliness of hoping it won’t be you. But tht’s the reality of it. The need to punish them until they don’t think it’s worth it or want it anymore are the rules for success in that business.
If we had decided to put boots on the ground in Japan, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that an invasion of Japan’s home islands would result in approximately 1.2 million American casualties, with 267,000 deaths. The bombs in Japan , Nagasaki and Hiroshima, totaled less than 200,000 deaths and casualties.
You say that’s a lot of people anyway, the lesser of evils prevails here. And it stopped the war immediately. No more deaths.
Do I agree with calling the innocents, no. Do I agree with killing people, no. But we didn’t start that one and Japan had not previously been a nuclear threat to anyone like Iraq.
So history shows us that the more people they want to stop the fighting, the less fighting we have to do. And the more people that want to stop fighting have to be led to that point. We in this country are just now beginning the feel the effects of war to the populous as we get people stabbed, night clubs bombed, and fear of attack in this country through anything that disrupts our lifestyle.
So maybe it will end. But as you can’t reason with them as they have proven that the only way they see success is to kill westerners that will not conform to their religion. And they are willing to die to do it, even desire to, makes making them quit like we did to Japan, or Germany, or even our civil war, almost impossible. But hurt them enough, or kill them enough, for them to realize the reality of war and why it is so detestable it isn’t worth fighting and they can’t win, through pain like Japan, Germany, or Saddam, is going to be the only way to stop it. .
red
I prefer to call them UN Re-Supply Convoys, given their history in Israel’s conflicts.
Zero Hedge has a report indicating that the convoy was probably hit by a Hellfire style missile. And apparently the Russians claim a Predator drone was in the area.
The photographs of the convoy damage don't look like the results of bombing with dumb, high explosive bombs from high altitude. They look more like the results of precision missile strikes.
Of course what was actually in the trucks is another question.
They have already answered it.
“Médecins Sans Frontières believes giving GPS coordinates of its facilities to Assad and Russian forces increases chance of direct targeting”
“Fourteen attacks against hospitals have already taken place since the beginning of this year [the article is from February], contradicting claims by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, that Russian forces are not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure as part of its campaign to support the Assad government. “
“MSF said on Thursday that a total of 94 airstrikes and shelling attacks hit facilities supported by the organisation in 2015 alone, in 12 cases leading to the total destruction of the facility. Some hospitals also suffered from “double tap” attacks, where a second airstrike targets paramedics and EMTs who arrive at the scene to rescue the wounded, between 20-60 minutes after the first bombing.”
I am surprised that his 40 year old cold war relic, bastardized copy of an F-111 is still flying.
The US military is particularly notorious for making the “double tap” war crime/atrocity into standard practice.
I said Afghanistan and Yemen
Check again
How many hospitals destroyed there
If MSF wasn’t being used or letting itself be used as HQ for terror ops maybe they wouldn’t be targeted
I remember US accidentally striking a MSF hospital in Afghanistan, saying it was a mistake and apologizing. For Yemen I remember Code Pinkos being upset of some US citizen Al-Qaeda officer and his near adult son assassinated with drones. What am I missing?
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