The Russian missile defense system went off during the launch of the Tomahawks. Russian missile defense system went off during the launch of Tomahawks. Americans can guess where 36 tomahawks went

What happened and why peacemaker Donald Trump who, quite recently, argued that the United States should no longer participate in external military conflicts, but should deal with its own economy, suddenly changed his mind? Who framed the president?

Remember what kind of persecution the American media, together with the intelligence services, recently staged against the American president, accusing him of almost colluding with Moscow and winning the elections only thanks to Russian hacker attacks. No direct evidence was provided, it was only reported that they were received from secret intelligence sources and to open them would mean exposing one’s station in Russia. Apparently, in this case, too, secret intelligence channels had a decisive influence on the actions of Donald Trump.

The confrontation between the great powers consists not only in the economic and military spheres, but also in carrying out various open actions to discredit the enemy, covert secret operations, and even spreading all kinds of disinformation.

It is clear that Russia is currently significantly inferior to the United States in the number of conventional non-contact weapons, among which cruise missiles are a particularly important component. It was the massive use of cruise missiles in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Libya at the initial stage of hostilities that allowed the United States to disable the bulk of the enemy’s air defense and command and control structures, which made it possible to gain a clear advantage and prevent the enemy from inflicting significant damage on NATO troops.

What happened in Syria on the night of April 6? Scattered information in the media and from various insiders on the network allows us to confirm the following facts:

1) In the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province, contamination of the area with chlorine was recorded, which caused the poisoning of more than 100 local residents. According to the opposition and the West, the Syrian Air Force attacked the city using bombs or missiles filled with chemicals. According to the Syrian government, the Air Force bombed a plant where chemical weapons were produced.

2) The Syrian Air Force took off from Shayrat airfield.

3) 59 cruise missiles were launched from American destroyers, only 23 reached the target without destroying the runway. Within a day, the Syrian Air Force resumed flights and launched strikes from this airfield against the opposition and terrorists.

4) The American command warned Russia about an attack on the airfield.

5) Russian S-300 and S-400 air defense systems did not interfere with the American strike.

However, why did the American president suddenly change his point of view and strike at Syria without even coordinating it with Congress and his allies? Who framed the president? Why was the accuracy of cruise missile strikes so low? (Remember Iraq, Yugoslavia and Libya, where hundreds of launches of such missiles were carried out against enemy targets and in 90-95% of cases they reached their targets, but here only some 38%). What happened? Have American missiles gone rotten in warehouses for several years, or did someone interfere with them?

Let me imagine a scenario that, in my opinion, is quite realistic:

1) After an air strike on a plant in Khan Sheikhoun and the spread of chemicals in its vicinity, the opposition launched a “canard” about a chemical attack by the Syrian Air Force on the city. Western media picked up this news, as it completely coincides with their opinion about Assad. Although, based on ordinary logic, why would Assad incur the wrath of the world community if things have been going well for him at the front in recent months.

2) The United States verified the information through its intelligence channels. Russia also checked the information, and at the same time figured out American channels for obtaining information (after all, one of their own leaked data to the CIA and NSA about Russia’s indirect participation in the American elections). Therefore, it is very likely that there was disinformation about the presence of chemical weapons in Shayrat. In this case, it becomes clear why the Americans were in such a hurry to strike. If there really were weapons there, then there would have been a significant contamination of the area with chemicals after the missile strike, and then Assad and her allies supporting her would have been unable to escape the crime against humanity. However, as we know, nothing of the kind happened and no chemical weapons were found in Shayrat.

3) Where did the 36 tomahawks fly off to and why weren’t they shot down by the S-300 and S-400 systems? Firstly, shooting down cruise missiles in this way is very expensive and would not guarantee 100% success, since such low-flying objects in rough terrain are very difficult to shoot down. Secondly, the Americans could obtain information about the effectiveness of Russian complexes and use it for further campaign against Russia. If suddenly all the missiles could be shot down, then the United States could declare that Russia is trying to hide the crime in Shayrat and is thus itself an accomplice to the crime, the site reports. If some of the missiles had reached the airfield, the US military would have received data on the effectiveness of our missile defense and would have launched a campaign that the vaunted Russian S-400s could not hold back the attack of American cruise missiles.

4) However, according to some insiders, it was Russia that started this counter-provocation. In their opinion, several goals were pursued. Firstly, to show Donald Trump the worthlessness of those secret US intelligence channels that were used against him to prove his connection with Moscow. Secondly, the leak made it possible to identify part of the American station in Russia, where important data was leaked. Third, The United States will now need to find real evidence of a chemical attack by Assad, and not talk in vain. If evidence is not found, the United States will look in a rather negative light, once again coming out with false information. Fourth, another step has been recorded on the part of the United States, when the leading world power does not take into account either the UN or global rules. Without presenting serious evidence, but only referring to secret information, he behaves like an aggressor and a world gendarme. Fifthly, it is very likely that Russia decided to test some new and inexpensive weapon, with which it was able to either destroy or throw off course the majority of American cruise missiles. At the same time, the weapon remained undisclosed, otherwise the Americans would have staged a serious showdown. But it is very, very difficult to believe that high-precision American weapons suddenly suffered a serious malfunction. The most formidable weapon of the USA is its "rocket sword" turned out to be not very effective in confrontation with a more serious opponent.

A serious and controversial struggle has unfolded today between the Pentagon and the Min. Defense of the Russian Federation on the topic of how many American missiles reached the Syrian military base - Shayrat airfield and what real damage they caused.

According to the briefing of the Min. Russian Defense and Igor Konashenkov’s statements, the Russian side observed only 23 hits by American cruise missiles on the Shayrat military airfield. Moreover, Konashenkov emphasized that this information came to the Russians through the means of OBJECTIVE CONTROL. And, here, “the place where the remaining 36 missiles fell is unknown” - this is also a quote from Konashenkov. Don’t you think it’s strange that the means of Russian objective control clearly indicated the number of missiles, but lost as many as 36 somewhere along the way. Moreover, they lost so much that Konashenkov did not even name approximately the area of ​​their fall.

In this light, the American fleet, together with Petagon, looked “slightly” stupid. Moreover, for the whole world. After all, such a massive strike, which was very expensive for American taxpayers, caused relatively little damage to the infrastructure of the Syrian military air base, from which Syrian planes defiantly took off again a day later.

This stupidity, naturally, was noted by the US military allies. After all, such a huge number of expensive Tomahawk cruise missiles that did not reach their target can only be explained by their low effectiveness in real combat conditions. And this stupidity will come back to haunt the Americans at future arms exhibitions with lost contracts.

In this regard, many people are asking a legitimate question: what were the Russian and Syrian S300 and S400 doing? How did they miss this barrage of missiles? After all, this is precisely why they were brought there - as air defense systems. Moreover, the Americans warned the Russian coordination headquarters of the military operation in Syria about their attack in advance and the Russians should have, at a minimum, warned their allies. There are quite a few official answers to this question and all of them are unconvincing. The first version says that the American missiles themselves fell in the mountains of Lebanon, and the rest flew unhindered to Shayrat. The second says that Russian air defenses only protect the locations of Russian forces in Syria and therefore saw everything, but did not react at all, so that this interception would not become a direct armed clash between Russia and the United States in Syria. Agree, this is also a very unconvincing version. After all, who needs such military allies who only defend themselves? Today Russia cannot afford such a “loss of face” at all, since this would greatly reduce its value as a military ally for the same China and Iran.

The Pentagon has already announced that all of its missiles reached their target in Syria, except for one, which was defective and actually fell on the way. But with such a statement, the stupidity of the American military leadership increases even more. After all, the craters can be read, and the means of Russian control over flights in this zone are OBJECTIVE.

In this regard, the version of the respected comrade Sergei Zinchenko is interesting, which seems to reveal the secret of the failed American tomahawks. In details, something may not coincide there (in terms of the number of “fallen” without direct impact). But according to this version, the overall picture looks much more convincing than the “total marriage of American cruise missiles.” The Russian headquarters, of course, should not admit the downing, so as not to escalate the situation and allow the Americans to save face. Otherwise, they would have to accuse Russia of military aggression with all that it entails. And now the pendos can only prove with resentment that all their missiles (would have) reached the target, but...

Automatic translation

4:25 pm

The US military says that 58 of the 59 missiles and the targets they hit struck at the Syrian airbase.

The US official says the initial assessment suggests a missile failure. The official claims that the missiles hit several aircraft and hardened hangars and destroyed fuel.

The official says information continues to flow from the impact site.

The official was not authorized to discuss the initial reports and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Lolita at Baldor in Washington DC

Saved

The controversy over the very low effectiveness of the American missile strike on Syria continues in the Western media.

According to official Pentagon data, two Orly Burke-class destroyers of the US Navy fired 59 Tactical Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) at targets in Syria (36 by the destroyer Ross, 23 by the destroyer Porter), of which 58 reached the target. According to official data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, only 23 SLCMs reached their target - the Syrian Air Force Shayrat air base.

6 MiG-23 aircraft under repair and several airfield structures were destroyed; just a day later the base resumed operations. The US costs for this strike are approximately 30 times greater than the damage they inflicted on the Syrian Armed Forces.

The latter, however, should not be surprising - Western armies have been fighting like this for a long time, hammering nails with microscopes. But the story with the number of Tomahawks launched and flown is very surprising. Moreover, 59 Tomahawks for one, and by no means the largest air base, is an abnormally large number.

One might not believe the data of the Russian Ministry of Defense, but they are fully confirmed by filming (including satellite) of Shayrat. Indeed, from 7 to 9 aircraft were destroyed (3 MiG-23 and 4-6 Su-22, all of them were hopelessly outdated 20 years ago), the destruction at the base does not even amount to 23 missiles, it seems more likely that there were about 15 of them.

Our specialists arrived at the airbase just a few hours after the missile strike, and accurately counted the number of missiles that flew.

But we will still start from the number 23. Where did the other 36 go? The option that in the US Navy 60% of SLCMs (the main strike weapon of the fleet) are faulty can be immediately rejected as completely unrealistic.

One of the versions is that they were not launched at all, the White House and the Pentagon deliberately deceived humanity for the sake of demonstrating that very “coolness”, only “Porter” was actually shot. The weakness of this version is that in our time lies do not work well, since they are very quickly exposed thanks to total informatization. Almost all the world's media have already cited Russian data that only 23 SLCMs reached the target, asking the same question: where did the rest go? And here we cannot do without one more version - they were shot down.

When various “armchair experts” write that the strike on Shayrat demonstrated the incapacity of Russian air defense, this is either complete incompetence or propaganda. The S-400 and S-300B air defense systems stationed in Syria cover Khmeimim and Tartus. The SLCMs flying towards Shayrat passed too far from their positions, with a huge heading parameter and, most importantly, under the radio horizon and behind terrain folds. There was no way our air defense systems could hit them; such a task could not be assigned to them.

The modern American fleet has nearly 3,500 Tomahawks in its arsenal. These are mainly RGM/UGM-109E missiles of the Block 4 Tactical Tomahawk version. Today, fourth-generation Tomahawks are the main modification of the missile in service with the US Navy.

The missiles were launched from two URO destroyers located in the area south of Crete. These ships under the EuroPRO program are based on the Spanish naval base Rota and operate in the area of ​​​​responsibility of the 6th Fleet of the US Navy in the Mediterranean Sea. The distance to the Shayrat airbase from the missile launch zone was about 1,200 kilometers, and almost the entire flight of the Tomahawks took place over the sea and only 75–80 kilometers over land.

Obviously, the most optimal flight route to the Shayrat airbase in Homs province, after all the Tomahawk missiles reached the coastline, could initially lie in the southern part of the Primorsky Lowland, which stretches in a narrow strip along the Syrian coast. Between the Maritime Lowland and the valley of the El-Asi River is the Ansaria (En-Nusairiya) mountain range, which runs parallel to the sea coast from the border with Turkey in the north and almost to the border with Lebanon in the south and has a width of about 65 kilometers and an average height of about 1200 meters.

Since the Tripoli-Khom intermountain passage is located between the southern end of the Ansaria ridge and the northern end of the Lebanon ridge, it is possible that it is through it that all American missiles, having previously flown in the area of ​​the 720th logistics point of the Russian Navy in Tartus, covered by the S-air defense system 300B4, could enter the airspace of Homs province, heading for the Shayrat airbase.

According to video released by the US Navy, the Tomahawk missiles were launched by the destroyer Porter on a program from both the bow and stern modules, which contained Mk 41 universal vertical launchers. The missiles were launched at intervals of 13-14 seconds and after separation starting solid propellant boosters at an altitude of 250–300 meters moved to the cruising section of the trajectory above a water surface about 100 meters high.

Due to the lack of data on the synchronization of Tomahawk launches by two destroyers, it is difficult to talk about the formation of strike groups of cruise missiles in the air. But if both destroyers launched synchronously, then almost 30 pairs of Tomahawks simultaneously entered the flight path towards the Shayrat airbase, and the time interval from the lead to the final pair of attacking missiles was about seven minutes. If the destroyers launched sequentially, the time interval could be within 14 minutes. This is consistent with data from the Russian Ministry of Defense. On the day of the strike, the head of the Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Russian Military Department, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that the missiles were launched between 3.42 and 3.56 Moscow time.

It is quite obvious that the Russian air defense systems deployed on the Syrian coast could not detect Tomahawk launches off the island of Crete at a distance of 1,100 kilometers. Moreover, the effective scattering surface of this missile is about 0.1 square meters. But when the Tomahawks approached the Syrian coast in the area of ​​the Tripoli-Khom intermountain pass, from which Tartus is about 20 kilometers away, the radar equipment of the S-300V4 air defense system should have detected them and taken them under escort.

Never before, at any exercises or training grounds, have Russian crews of modern air defense systems had the opportunity to observe a real massive attack of American Tomahawk cruise missiles, capture them for escort, determine flight parameters, and receive radar signatures of these air attack weapons.

Previously, such a target environment was the ultimate dream for the command of the Russian Aerospace Forces and could only be created in a virtual environment when simulating various combat scenarios. Moreover, the Tomahawk attack probably took place under the cover of EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, patrolling at a distance from the Syrian coast, as well as other electronic warfare and electronic warfare equipment used by the US armed forces.

The US Navy actually conducted a kind of short training course for Russian air defense, “Training to repel a massive attack of American cruise missiles by Russian air defense systems in a complex jamming environment.” The cost of this course to the US Navy was $89 million. The American media estimate 59 launched cruise missiles at this amount. At the same time, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation did not spend a single cent on the invaluable training course.

Taking into account the fact that all Russian components of the anti-access/area denial zone (A2/AD, anti-access/area denial zone) strategy support system are currently deployed in Syria, the experience gained in tracking SLCM groups operating in a combat situation in real purposes, may prove invaluable in further combat training of crews of air defense formations, as well as in the modernization of radar detection, electronic warfare and anti-aircraft guided missiles.

Su-35S and/or Su-30SM fighters could well have shot down the tomahawks. The EPR (effective dispersion area) of the Tomahawk is very small in the front hemisphere, but not in the upper hemisphere. Fighter radars can clearly see the missile against the background of land or water. In addition, at night, an engine flame becomes an additional unmasking feature of SLCMs in the infrared and visible ranges. The Americans themselves warned us about the missile launches; it was quite easy to determine their approximate trajectories. It is even easier to shoot down a detected Tomahawk, since it cannot provide any counteraction to the fighter. SLCMs can be destroyed by an air-to-air missile, from a cannon, and also “jammed” by electronic warfare.

It is likely that the Americans initially intended to limit themselves to 36 SLCMs from the Ross (obviously, they constituted the full Tomahawk ammunition load of this destroyer). It was them who were shot down by Russian fighters. The destroyers observed this “live” on the screens of their own radars, but did not dare to counteract it in any way. After the Russian fighters, with a sense of accomplishment and with spent ammunition and fuel, went to the airfield, the Porter released its Tomahawk ammunition. Due to the lack of fighters, ours were no longer able to do anything about this, since they did not have time to refuel and attach new missiles, and there simply was no additional force.

If this version is correct, we can say that both sides demonstrated their capabilities to each other, and both sides have the right to consider that they did it successfully, “cooling down” the opponent. At the same time, Moscow, of course, will not report its success, even if we really shot down the Tomahawks.

Indeed, in this case, the United States will begin to demand that Trump strike Russian forces, which will lead to an uncontrollable escalation “right up to.” Therefore, only diplomatic hysteria was staged in the public space. Well, for the Americans, for their part, it is better to remain silent.

P.S. All the talk about the US disposing of old missiles should be forgotten. The surviving wreckage clearly shows the dates of issue.

In the screenshot - Cartridge Starter (starting cartridge) with a release date of 2015.

Considering that the flight reliability of the RGM-109 tomahawks of the latest D/E modifications is quite high and approaches 1, exactly like the “Caliber”, the reason for their loss in the amount of 64% can only lie in the physical impact on their guidance system, or in direct destruction by air defense means.