Posted on 10/16/2016 6:15:47 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears ready and willing to precipiate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot down Russian military jets when flying missions over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now "one step closer" to being at war, according to the Sunday Times.
While the RAF's Tornado pilots have been instructed to avoid contact with Russian aircraft while engaged in missions for Operation Shader, the codename for the RAF's anti-Isis work in Iraq and Syria, their aircraft have been armed with air-to-air missiles and the pilots have been given the green light to defend themselves if they are threatened by Russian pilots.
"The first thing a British pilot will do is to try to avoid a situation where an air-to-air attack is likely to occur — you avoid an area if there is Russian activity," an unidentified source from the UK's Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) told the Sunday Times. "But if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself. We now have a situation where a single pilot, irrespective of nationality, can have a strategic impact on future events."
Where things get tricky is the qualifier "if he believes he is about to be fired on" - since this makes open engagement a function of threat evaluation in real time during stressed conditions, the likelihood of an escalation that could result in two warplanes shooting at each other, just jumped significantly.
The RAF Tornados aircraft will be armed with heat-seeking Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missiles (Asraams, also called AIM-132 missiles), the IBT adds. These weapons, which cost £200,000 each, have a longer range than other air-to-air missiles, allowing RAF pilots to shoot down enemy aircraft without being targeted themselves.
Providing cover to the largely underreported, if substantial escalation, according to the Sunday Times report an appraisal carried out by UK defence officials said: "It took six days for Russia to strike any Isis targets at all. Their air strikes have included moderate opposition groups who have been fighting to defend their areas from Isis. Among the targets hit were three field hospitals." In the past 24 hours Russia's Defence Ministry said that it has continued its air strikes on IS positions in Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Raqqa. It reported that the attacks resulted in the "complete destruction" of "53 fortified areas and strong points with armament and military hardware", seven ammunition depots, four field camps of "terrorists", one command centre, and artillery and mortar batteries.
Russia has countered that US airstrikes have failed to make much of an impact on ISIS targets, and as reported last month, a "mistaken" strike by the US coalition forces killed over 60 Syrian soldiers in a move Russia accused of being a provocation to war.
The Sunday Times' report quoted a defence source as saying: "Up till now RAF Tornados have been equipped with 500lb satellite-guided bombs — there has been no or little air-to-air threat. But in the last week the situation has changed. We need to respond accordingly."
But another source of the original story summarized the severity of the situation best when he said that "we need to protect our pilots but at the same time we're taking a step closer to war. It will only take one plane to be shot down in an air-to-air battle and the whole landscape will change."
Was the UK invited to be in Syria by the Assad regime?
Not likely.
Yep, one step closer to closing down the elections due to war.
What a wonderful playground Hillary has created. And her commercials try to peg DJT as the warmonger!
What is ‘not likely’?
why are we there??
[rhetorical]
Why do I keep getting the feeling that we are repeating the summer of 1914?
Closer to UK homewaters also, and potentially involving their navies. Hard to imagine Putin getting stupid with his only aircraft carrier, but he’s running out of money and the average Russian is reeling from currency devaluations.
The UK does not have aircraft advanced enough to shoot down Russia’s top of the line fighter aircraft. The worst mistake Britain could make is to fire on a Russian aircraft with the inetent to destroy it.
The Tornado is simply no match for the Sukoi T-50:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-unveils-most-advanced-fighter-6354081
“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” Isaiah 17
I’m sure the Syrians are really happy that the Royal AirForce is there trying to start WW3
To start WW3! Why else?
the UK is part of the Iraq war coalition now engaged with ISIS in Syria
To start WW3 in order to destroy Israel! Why else?
We thought through the Ukraine we could swindle Russia out of Sevastopol, a Russian possession since the time of the American revolution. Well, Ukraine is destabilized, Sevastopol is unquestionably Russian, and now the Russians have secured an outlet on the Mediterranean coast and on the flank of Turkey, which we abandoned to ISIS when we tried to pull out of Iraq.
Obama thought he was playing chutes and ladders and the Russians were playing chess. They had to. With the fall of the Soviet Union, as Pat Buchanan pointed out, our neo-cons, instead of cooperating with Russia, moved our tanks up to their front porch (they were still a nuclear peer state, the neo-cons forgot).
Then we thought we would eliminate nuclear weapons to make the world safe for neo-con agression using our then vast superiority of conventional weapons, while simultaneously pulling out of the ABM treat (George Bush and his neocon friends). Well, Russia is not interested in a world dominated by American conventional superiority so they doubled down on the nuclear side.
Putin announced he has nuclear naval forces in the Mediterranean.
So Russia is about to secure a position in the eastern Med, flank NATO in Turkey, and have made the Black Sea exclusively theirs again.
Good job folks. Its deplorable, but spheres of influence are real, some of it was likely inevitable, but the rest is just shear and utter strategic tomfoolery - on our part.
We were outmaneuvered, trying to be too clever by half. Not worth going to nuclear war over. Russia knows that but is afraid Obama is too stupid to know that.
This was posted from ZH a day or two ago, and the identical story made the rounds a year ago.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3268663/Britain-dismisses-reports-air-force-orders-Iraq.html
Silly Brits. The Rooskies won’t have to use too many nukes on the UK...it’s just a dot in the ocean relatively speaking to everywhere else.
“The fundamental problem is the inept grasp on geopolitical strategy by our national so-called leadership.”
Got that right. US gets sucked into the Middle East, China consolidates in the Far East, where there’s actually some money at stake.
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