Monday, October 16, 2017

Syria: IDF takes out Syrian Air defence missile site after they launch at Israeli jets flying over Lebanon.

(Damascus) On the 17th of March this year Israeli jets delved deep into Syria and struck targets around the city of Palmyra. on their way back a Syrian Anti-Aircraft missile site fired SA5 missiles at the retreating aircraft, which in turn saw the IDF launch an Arrow anti-missile-missile at the SA5 after it lost track of its target and continued on a ballistic path into Israel.


This morning at around 0851hrs local time (0551 GMT)  The same Syrian missile battery which launched the above missile in Mach decided to lob one in the direction of an IDF reconnaissance plane flying over Lebanon, but not in Syrian air space.
In reply the IDF waited 3 hours (presumably)  to allow the missile crew to return to their places and struck said site with 4 bombs which is situated around 50 km east of Damascus just south of Al-Dumayr airbase:


Naturally the Syrians weren't happy at losing one of their toys and as usual issued yet another threat at their Jewish neighbour:
The Command warned of the “dangerous repercussions” of Israel’s repeated aggression attempts, stressing Syria’s determination to continue its war against the terrorist groups, Israel’s arm in the region.
The missile used in both attempts to swat an IDF plane out of the sky was the Russian made SA5 of which Syria received a number of in 1983. The SA5 is a very long range, medium-to-high altitude surface-to-air missile (SAM) system designed in the 1960s to defend large areas from bomber attack or other strategic aircraft and after years of neglect the Syrian missiles were refurbished and upgraded to the  S-200VE version of the system that has a range of 240 km.  Whilst old, the missile is still effective , however against the IDF the missile was outclassed. So the question to be asked is exactly why did the Syrians launch a missile at an IDF aircraft not inside Syria. The Israeli media is claiming that Israel believes Syrian forces fired on the assumption that the Israeli planes intended to attack. However that said Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu,arrived in Israel this afternoon for a visit.