(Damascus) Its no secret that Russian air-power has made a huge difference to the state of affairs inside Syria. Whilst the West has resorted to using precision guided weapons (PGws) in which to selectively target the enemy (single tank, artillery piece, Mortar , machine gun team. Which whilst effective against those targets , simply ensured that the battle against these religious bigots was drawn out, but that they could be easily prevented by simply having civilians in the area.
The Russians however haven't gone down the route of 100% PGW and instead have stuck to the old stalwart of simply blowing the heck out of an area and sod the collateral damage:
Whilst the US coalition did make some progress against the likes of ISIS, it didn't make that much of a huge impact against them. On the other hand the use of brute strength by Russia, not only stopped the terrorists in Syria, it pushed them back. If anything these religious bigots feared the Russian military much more than they did the rest and as such they have made a number of attempts in which to take out those Russian air assets based inside Syria. However on New Years Eve, they struck Khmeimim Air Base the main Russian Air base inside Syria and inflicted a huge amount of damage to the Russian airforce with at least seven aircraft destroyed during an mortar attack.
According to the Russian media, four Su-24 bombers, two Su-35S multipurpose fighter aircraft and an An-72 military transport aircraft went up in smoke, also destroyed was an ammo dump and killed a number of Russian servicemen.
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| SU 35S |
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| AN 72 |
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| SU 24
At a stroke the terrorists have hurt the Russians, and whilst it won't prevent Moscow from deploying more jets to the region, it will reduce air activity in the region for a while.
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Unverified imagery circulating claiming to show damaged - not destroyed - #Russia Su-24 from Dec 31 mortar on Hmeimim Air Base #Syria pic.twitter.com/zWejaeNMJI— Joseph Dempsey (@JosephHDempsey) 4 January 2018
