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Home » Sabra Tech » What Actually Happened in the Syrian Desert?

What Actually Happened in the Syrian Desert?

One of the sto­ries thats been intrigu­ing the heck out of me over the past cou­ple of weeks is that Israeli air strike into Syria.

Just today, the most solid facts of the strike have leaked out, but Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are still pub­licly mum on the aer­ial attack that report­edly took out a nascent nuke capa­bil­ity deep in north­ern Syria.
f-15I.jpg

The reports show that a North Korean ship docked at a Syrian port just a few days before the strike loaded with a ship­ment of cement (ya, right…). Heres what the reports are saying:

Unlike its destruc­tion of an Iraqi nuclear reac­tor in 1981, Israel made no announce­ment of the recent raid and imposed strict cen­sor­ship on report­ing by the Israeli media. Syria made only muted protests, and Arab lead­ers have remained silent. As a result, a dar­ing and appar­ently suc­cess­ful attack to elim­i­nate a poten­tial nuclear threat has been shrouded in mystery.

“There is no ques­tion it was a major raid. It was an extremely impor­tant tar­get,” said Bruce Riedel, a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cer at Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “It came at a time the Israelis were very con­cerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The deci­sion was taken despite their con­cerns it could pro­duce a war. That deci­sion reflects how impor­tant this tar­get was to Israeli mil­i­tary planners.”

Israel has long known about Syria’s inter­est in chem­i­cal and even bio­log­i­cal weapons, but “if Syria decided to go beyond that, Israel would think that was a real red line,” Riedel said. 

And some­thing else…

Some cur­rent and for­mer American offi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because infor­ma­tion about the raid remained clas­si­fied, said they believed that the site was involved in Syrias mis­sile pro­gram. They said that Israeli intel­li­gence offi­cials believed that they had evi­dence that the activ­ity at the site involved North Korean engi­neers believed to work in the nuclear program.

So far, sev­eral cur­rent and for­mer American offi­cials who have been involved in eval­u­at­ing the Israeli claims say they are not yet con­vinced of a nuclear con­nec­tion. Yet the enor­mous secrecy around the find­ings, both here and in Israel, sug­gests that the activ­ity that prompted the Israeli attack involved more than a run-​​of-​​the-​​mill mis­sile trans­ac­tion, one offi­cial said, not­ing that the Israelis took con­sid­er­able risks in car­ry­ing out the attack. 

Actually, I also won­der whether the Syrians would take such a huge risk, though pres­sure from their Iranian task mas­ters could have out­weighed the sui­ci­dal nature of this poten­tial program.

But whats most intrigu­ing about the strike is what it says about Syrias air defense sys­tem. Some claim that the Syrians have one of the most advanced SAM and radar-​​tracking archi­tec­tures man­u­fac­tured in Russia the same one used to pro­tect Tehran called the Pantsyr. Apparently the unstealthy F-​​15I Israeli air­craft were able to make it into Syria with­out being shot out of the sky, and some reports indi­cate that they snuck their way out through Turkey either with per­mis­sion or without.

Ive heard that the jam­ming of the Syrian air defenses was so severe that it shut down civil­ian comms inside Lebanon for the bet­ter part of a day. Pretty impres­sive; and that could be why Iran has been largely silent on the mat­ter it would tip their hand that they are as vul­ner­a­ble as the Syrians.

From our part­ners over at Stratfor:

Likely spooked by the IAF’s inten­tions behind the over­flight and with only a fee­ble diplo­matic defense against Israel, the Syrians are being extremely cau­tious not to pro­voke a mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion with the Jewish state. Syria has even refrained thus far from mass­ing troops along the bor­der in response to Israel’s mil­i­tary buildup in the Golan Heights, reveal­ing that Damascus lacks the con­fi­dence and capa­bil­ity to risk a fight at this stage. 

Debka has a good analy­sis of the air defense angle.

Western intel­li­gence cir­cles stress that infor­ma­tion on Russian mis­sile con­sign­ments to Syria or Iran is vital to any US cal­cu­la­tion of whether to attack Iran over its nuclear pro­gram. They assume that the absolute jam­ming immu­nity which the Russian man­u­fac­tures promised for the improved Pantsyr mis­siles was immo­bi­lized by supe­rior elec­tronic capa­bil­i­ties exer­cised by the jets before they were forced to leave.

Syria took deliv­ery in mid-​​August of 10 bat­ter­ies of sophis­ti­cated Russian Pantsyr-​​S1E Air Defense Missile fire con­trol sys­tems with advanced radar, those sources report. They have just been installed in Syria.

Understanding that the Pantsyr-​​S1E had failed in its mis­sion to bring down tres­pass­ing air­craft, Moscow has­tened Thursday, Sept 6, to offi­cially deny sell­ing these sys­tems to Syria or Iran and called on Israel to respect inter­na­tional law. This was diplomatic-​​speak for a warn­ing against attack­ing the Russian-​​made mis­siles bat­ter­ies sta­tions where Russian instruc­tors are work­ing along­side Syrian teams.

Western intel­li­gence cir­cles main­tain that it is vital for the US and Israel to estab­lish the loca­tion and gauge the effec­tive­ness of Pantsyr-​​S1E air defenses in Syrian and Iranian hands, as well as dis­cov­er­ing how many each received…

…The courage, dar­ing and oper­a­tional skills of the air crews must have been excep­tional. They would have needed to spend enough time in hos­tile Syrian air space to exe­cute sev­eral passes at vary­ing alti­tudes under fire in order to test the Pantsyr-​​S1E responses. Their suc­cess demon­strated to Damascus and Tehran that their expen­sive new Russian anti-​​air sys­tem leaves them vulnerable. 

Weve clearly not heard the last of this story. As more details trickle out and as Iran pos­si­bly ramps up its con­dem­na­tion of the attack when its pres­i­dent arrives at the U.N. next week, Defense Tech will con­tinue to report the more intrigu­ing angles of what could be the begin­ning of a much wider confrontation.

– Christian

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September 21st, 2007 | Sabra Tech | 375429 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/09/21/what-actually-happened-in-the-syrian-desert/What+Actually+Happened+in+the+Syrian+Desert%3F2007-09-21+18%3A23%3A31Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Sentinel says:
    September 21, 2007 at 3:18 pm

    Arms Control Wonk has a good his­tory of pro­lif­er­a­tion cov­er­age and some dif­fer­ent angles on this topic (call­ing BS on it being a nuke issue basi­cally):
    http://​www​.arm​scon​trol​wonk​.com/​1​6​4​6​/​a​h​-​t​h​e​y​-​w​e​r​e​-​s​c​uds

    Reply
  2. Jeff says:
    September 21, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    Does any­one else want to see a Battle Royale of world lead­ers???? Just imag­ine Bush and Cheney (with shot­gun) against Azhebajan (or how­ever you spell his freak­ing name)and com­pany. My money is on Cheney with the 12 guage, obvi­ously Russian weapons aren’t that great!

    Reply
  3. Rip says:
    September 21, 2007 at 3:50 pm

    Camels have shat.

    Reply
  4. murc says:
    September 21, 2007 at 7:11 pm

    con­grats to Israel, I like how they han­dle the nuke situations.

    Reply
  5. Doz says:
    September 21, 2007 at 10:13 pm

    Pantsyr-​​S1 is a truck-​​mounted defence sys­tem with a her­itage derived from the Tunguska-​​M1 — it’s int­eded for engag­ing low-​​flying air­craft, cruise mis­siles, PGMs, etc. It’s got noth­ing to do with some sort of over-​​arching air defence archi­tec­ture, and indeed, AFAIK, hasn’t even been deliv­ered to them yet.

    Reply
  6. Roy Smith says:
    September 22, 2007 at 12:50 am

    This only proves that con­trary to Hollywood & WWE wrestling,countries who make pre-​​emptive strikes(otherwise known as sneak attacks) wins​.It also proves how well brand spank­ing new F-​​16 Sufas(are you lis­ten­ing U.S. Air Force?) work.Of course some­one will com­ment how much bet­ter they would have done if they had F-​​22s & UAVs doing this attack.

    Reply
  7. 22lr says:
    September 22, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Israel showed the world that she is still very lethal, and will do any­thing to make sure she isn’t nuked. The US could learn a few from this.

    Reply
  8. Mason says:
    September 22, 2007 at 1:47 pm

    Syria should have attacked the Israeli nuke pro­gram a long time ago. Good thing the Israeli attack was a fail­ure. Syria IS NOT try­ing to build a nuke. I am hop­ing Syria will attack Israel for payback.

    Reply
  9. frankie says:
    September 22, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    “I am hop­ing Syria will attack Israel for pay­back.“
    I hope so too, because that will be then end of Syria.

    Reply
  10. frankie says:
    September 22, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    “I am hop­ing Syria will attack Israel for pay­back.“
    I hope so too, because that will be the end of Syria.

    Reply
  11. Mason says:
    September 23, 2007 at 4:16 am

    Hey frankie,
    Why would you want to see “the end of Syria”? Is it a race thing? You just hate those Arabs? Syria has a right to defend itself against Israeli aggression.

    Reply
  12. David says:
    September 23, 2007 at 7:17 am

    Personally i think that Israel did what they should.
    Since every Arab nation hates them, it’s bet­ter to make sure that they get scared, and blown.
    Since per­son­ally i would rather have a pissed off Syria with­out nukes, than a very peace­ful one with them (the peace­ful thing would have to be a total lie, since if they ever got them, they would surely hit Israel with them).
    And i hope that Iran learns some­thing from this, since if they don’t stop their nuclear pro­gram, the next tar­get will be them, and i’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be just Israel, nor would they get such lit­tle stuff blown off.
    Israel FTW.

    Reply
  13. C-Low says:
    September 23, 2007 at 9:46 am

    Roy
    Am pretty sure from all I have seen it was F-​​15I a mod­i­fied F-​​15E.
    http://​www​.israeli​-weapons​.com/​w​e​a​p​o​n​s​/​a​i​r​c​r​a​f​t​/​f​-​1​5​i​/​F​-​1​5​I​.​h​tml
    And for the com­par­i­son to F-​​22 doesn’t work in this case. You could prob­a­bly out race most peo­ple with a Ford Taurus even those many of the Corvette guys who don’t know how to race. Sure Big deal. But when you get into it with a another racer or run up on some capa­ble dri­vers with Jacked up cars then you lose. And in the the real world of War that bet is paid in American Blood, Roy.
    We don’t ever ever want par­ity with our ene­mies, WW2 we learned that les­son hard. Since then we have only accepted OVERMATCH and that is why we rule the skys. I think it a good thing we have not lost a sin­gle air/​air engage­ment since what mid 60’s?

    Reply
  14. Mburumba says:
    September 23, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I hope the mul­lahs in Teheran are tak­ing seri­ous notice of the goings on in Syrian Desert. Like it or not, this “event” (or “non-​​event”) should be be con­sid­ered as a dress-​​reheral for big­ger things to come (Natanz, et al)

    Reply
  15. Wembley says:
    September 23, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    Whoa there, spec­u­la­tion over­drive…
    This whole thing is turn­ing into a Tom Clany fan­tasy.
    “Yes, they really did have nukes! And we destroyed them in a sin­gle strike! Yay!“
    – all in the com­plete absence of any evi­dence, while the rest of the world fails to find any cred­i­bil­ity in the alleged North Korean/​Syrian nukes.
    Put this this way: if some­thing like this hap­pened in Iraq, wouldn’t you want just a lit­tle more than a claim from an anony­mous source? or are your stan­dards of evi­dence for claims of WMD really that low?
    Iran, here we come…

    Reply
  16. Mason says:
    September 23, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    Evidence doesn’t mat­ter to any­body here, just Anti-​​Arab bigotry.

    Reply
  17. txzen says:
    September 23, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    So if the Israelis or the US show the evi­dence that Spec Ops took nuclear mate­r­ial with North KOrean Markers in it from syria then that is what you want? Maybe they will, hope­fully if they have it they will share it so they take some pres­sure off themes­lves but that means they have to admit to run­ning troops and jets through syria and spy­ing and all that, syria and israel are a state of war but per­cep­tion matters

    Reply
  18. pjk says:
    September 23, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    super inter­est­ing. just spec­u­lat­ing here, but the fact that Syria isn’t say­ing much after they just got BOMBED BY A FOREIGN COUNTRY prob­a­bly means some­thing… like, for exam­ple, they had some­thing more exotic than cement in that nork ship.
    oh, and for god’s sake don’t go around quot­ing the UK Times. that paper lit­er­ally makes stuff up, prob­a­bly just to start inter­net buzz.

    Reply
  19. blake says:
    September 24, 2007 at 9:54 am

    At best: the story that was leaked is prob­a­bly true. Worst: it was a good old fash­ioned capa­bil­ity check that pro­vided very use­ful infor­ma­tion that one could con­sider bad PR for future sales to other middle-​​east cus­tomers who may or may not have the TOR M1/​Pantsir/​S300 or what­ever sys­tem in place to counter per­ceived advis­ary air dom­i­nance. You would only want to put good air defense sys­tems around things that have some tar­get value. ;)

    Reply
  20. j house says:
    September 24, 2007 at 2:37 pm

    Obviously, Syria would have launched a for­mal diplo­matic protest or would have allowed press access if the Israeli action caused dam­age to facil­i­ties or mate­r­ial the Syrians wouldn’t have cared to expose.Intelligence isn’t court­room evi­dence, nor will it ever be.
    If these were mate­ri­als that would aug­ment a nuclear capa­bil­ity, Israel had deter­mined Syria crossed a line and destroyed it.Certainly, the US was noti­fied before the strike, or, pro­vided addi­tional intel in sup­port of the raid.
    Not sure how that fig­ures into anti-​​Arab big­otry, men­tioned by the pre­vi­ous poster.
    Nations have a legit­i­mate right to their self-​​defense and if Syria is devel­op­ing a nuclear capa­bil­ity, Israel will act. Why is that supris­ing? If Syria or the rest of the Arab world had the capa­bil­ity at any time in Israel’s his­tory, they them­selves would have stopped Israel from obtain­ing the ther­monu­clear advan­tage.
    Does any­one believe the IAEA will inves­ti­gate what the Syrians and N Koreans were up to?

    Reply
  21. Group W says:
    September 25, 2007 at 7:13 pm

    Some have won­dered why the Syrian Air Defense System did not detect the Israeli F15 & F16 air­craft. Occam’s razor says the strike was by American B2 bombers. You heard it here first!

    Reply
  22. Tony Yates says:
    September 27, 2007 at 7:02 am

    BRAVO! This shows Syria’s and Tehran’s vuner­a­bil­ity and the U.S. /​ Israeli ECM capa­bil­ity.
    Molon Labe

    Reply
  23. jeffers_mz says:
    September 27, 2007 at 8:57 am

    Netanyahu’s assis­tant claims that when the full story leaks out, it will “stun the world”.
    1. What would it take to stun you?
    2. Define (esti­mate) the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties Israel might describe as “stun­ning”.
    The cen­ter of my esti­mated bell­curve sits close to “assem­bled, untested, high energy device”.

    Reply
  24. Doz says:
    October 2, 2007 at 6:14 am

    Debka’s full of crap. The UAE was the first cus­tomer of the Pantsyr-​​S1E, and deliv­ery for them hasn’t even taken place, yet we’re expected to believe that Syria and Iran both already have these sys­tems in place? These are basic facts, for god’s sake. *The sys­tem hasn’t even fin­ished trials*.

    Reply
  25. Jeff Benton says:
    April 4, 2009 at 9:58 am

    Could the Israeli Air Force sim­i­larly avoid detec­tion by the Saudi Arabian air defenses?

    Reply

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