Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Russian Warships Have Vacated The Syrian Naval Base Of Tartus


WND: Russia moves 11 navy ships out of Syrian port

Moscow heeds Trump warning to 'get ready' for strike

Russia has moved at least 11 navy ships deployed in Syria out to sea in the event of a U.S. military strike, which appears to be imminent in the wake of an exchange of threats between President Trump and Russian officials.

Trump replied early Wednesday to a Russian threat to shoot down any U.S. missiles in Syria with a tweet: “Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!'”

The threatened military strike is a response to an alleged chemical attack last week on civilians blamed on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: I know that the Russians are expecting this military strike to happen at any moment now .... but this rapid deployment out of the Syrian naval base at Tartus (and no announcement of it) is giving me this queasy feeling that they may retaliate after these U.S.-U.K.-French missiles have reached and impacted their targets.

13 comments:

Americanadian soldier said...

An excellent opportunity to test each others military capabilities against one another with a good chance of not spilling into all out war.

jimbrown said...

Not a good reason. Where is Turkey in all of tbis?

B.Poster said...

The rhetoric of our (American) leadership clearly got ahead of itself. This is not surprising. American leaders including POTUS even predating his time as POTUS have a record of being arrogant blowhards who speak before they think. In contrast, like the current Russian leadership or not they do not believe so recklessly. They tend to be very circumspect choosing their words carefully. As such, we could probably stop here. The rhetoric of POTUS and the US government as being able to successfully attack a Russian target can be dismissed similar to how we dismiss the rhetoric of a drunken person in a bar or a 7th grade boy who is simply to stupid to know he is stupid.

Given the track record of the current Russian leadership which is opposite that of America's, it is a safe conclusion that any missiles, planes, or anything else America were to launch at Russian targets, would be destroyed or neutralized long before they reached their target. The American talk is merely rhetoric and should be treated as such. Perhaps POTUS's twitter rant is part of the deal. Let the Americans save some face and reach an agreement behind the scenes. As a businessman, DJT would probably be smart enough to take the deal. As to some others in the US government, not so much.

Also, US (un)intelligence doesn't exactly have a good track record. Are they the ones who told POTUS Russia has something to fear from a US attack? This hardly inspires confidence. The conclusion: any American claim here should, at best, be treated with extreme skepticism. In contrast, the Russian claim that they will shoot down any missile should be treated as fully accurate.

This all assumes Russia wants to shoot down the missiles and/or planes. If there were an actual threat of a serious attack, the Russian vessels likely wouldn't be departing as they aren't threatened by US military assets that can't penetrate Russian defenses. Furthetmore the Russian retaliation to such an attack would not be confined to Syria or even the Middle East.

Conclusion: a deal to defuse the tensions has already been reached. As part of the face saving process, the Russians are going to allow our military to perform a little light show, any damage will be superficial, and the targets will be up and running better than they were before as this will be a great excuse for them to implement upgrades.

The conclusions while based upon a careful analysis could turn out to be wrong. Potential wild card: our airforce got schooled by the Russians over Syria. Did our people learn from this experience?

fazman said...

The Russian naval fleet know that they are not being targeted at Tartus Which is exactly what makes it concerning.
WNU is right to worry, the only reason would be to position themselves for a counter attack or to position themselves along likely tomahawk approaches .

B.Poster said...

Fazman,

You and the editor could well be right here. In any event, I think the Russians would be able to stop any missile attacks. As to the Ametican claims, I tend to treat it with tge same credibility as that of a drunken patron in a bar.

Lets hope we don't have to find out. I don't think we will. I think this is going to be defused. It appears that Netanyahu the Israeli leader is serving as a conduit for negotiations.

Fuckisis said...

Russia will not kill American citizens over Syria, I am calling it now

Turfy77 said...

Bring in the Stealth Bombers.

fazman said...

Didn't Americans recently kill Russian citizens over Syria.
I doubt Russia will fire upon u.s navy or planes but l have no doubt that will attempt to block or minimise any missile attack by shooting down as many as possible.
Putin will not sit in the corner with his thumb up his ass humming bye bye miss American pie.

fazman said...

I think Israel is being told to keep out of it. However l agree that Russian missile defense will be far more effective and robust in blocking an attack than many give them credit for.
There are not that many important targets in Syria, Pantir is in Syria, how many is the key to an effective point defence.

Jay Farquharson said...

Remember when Trump said, that if he was going to strike Syria, he wasn't going to telegraph it,


https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/news/amp21890/donald-trump-airstrike-syria-tweets/

LMFAO,

Syria's moved all their military assets to Russian Bases, and the Russian fleet is sortieing, Trump gave Assad and Putin almost a weeks notice so far,

"This makes anything more than a demonstration strike, which is what was done last year, much, much more dangerous and problematic. The reason for this is that in order to actually reduce Syria’s capability to make war, and specifically try to deter the future use of chemical weapons, means that the US and its partners would have to target Syrian personnel and equipment that are now within Russian lines, for lack of a better term. This is one of the major strategic complications as it would create a de facto reality that the US and its partners have just attacked Russian military sites in order to get at the Syrian assets we want to degrade, attrit, and reduce.

Another part of this strategic complication is that the Russian navy has both sortied its Mediterranean fleet to get it out of port where these ships would be easy targets and has conducted a live fire exercise."

Snip

And of course, Russia's now jamming US drones, GPS and Comms, not only in Syria and the Med, but also in the Baltic, where they have over the past 6 month's, redeployed 12 Army Groups and assets, under the guise of "Civil Defense" for ice jams and fighting forest fires,

"Either a military response against US forces in Syria and Iraq, our NATO allies and partners in Europe, and/or a cyberwarfare response within the US are all potential Russian responses to a US led coalition military response to the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta last week. These are the strategic complications that the US and its potential allies face in developing their plans and sequels to them. These are the strategic complications faced by the President’s senior military, national security, and foreign policy advisors.

The final strategic complication is the one we started with, the one the President created for himself this morning. By threatening Russian and its Syrian and Iranian proxies with the nice, new, and smart missiles he’s tweeted himself into a corner. He either has to actually do something in response to the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta or he will have destroyed any credibility on this type of matter in the future, as well as weakened America’s strategic communication capabilities. Regardless of the strategic complications on the ground in Syria, in Europe, or within the cyber domain, the President has boxed himself in. The President has finally tweeted himself into trouble that he can’t tweet himself out of. Either he orders a response and risks an escalation or he backs down and loses what little face he had."

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2018/04/11/no-plan-survives-contact-with-the-enemy-military-strikes-and-the-strategic-complications-at-the-heart-of-the-syrian-problem-set/

LMFAO




fazman said...

To be fair trump made it pretty clear he would act militarily from day 1,he hasn't really backed into a corner, it's more a question does he come out with a Jab, uppercut, or a head but

fred said...

Postman
Go back to Siberia and leave troll farm

Jay Farquharson said...

Treason Tribble spent all of 2013/14 telling twitter that his big strategey for Syria, if he had to act in Syria, would be massive "sneak attacks", and that Obama was dumb for announcing thresholds and reprisals.

Early last week Treason Tribble was telling the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he wanted all US Forces out of Syria in 48 hours.

After the Ghouta bombing, Treason Twitler to Putin, via Twitter what the US military response would be,

Then followed it up with a Twitter love note praising Putin,

LMFAO