Saddle up for Syria? Or Op Deny Christmas '13

[sqwatch]

 The second is that the Turks had the balls to stand up to Russia bombing the Turkman groups in Syria.  

The Turks aren't the only ones in that area.

[sqwatch]

No arguments from me. If, in fact, Turkish airspace was violated (as all credible accounts indicate), then they were well within their rights to take action. What isn't up for debate is that the incident has the potential to severely complicate an already muddled situation. What's the proper stance for the U.S. and NATO here? Who knows. My guess is the current admin will be somewhat less than decisive and we'll become further entwined in this shit show with no foreseeable end game. 

What's within their rights and what is the politically (strategically) smart thing to do may have been obscured by Erdogan's new found political security, longstanding hatred of Assad and support for any group willing to dislodge him.

After the turkey-shoot, king Abdullah II (a huge US fan) and Putin met where the king offered his support and touted his country's strong relationship with Russia.

Now what?

[tac airlifter]

Russia is NOT a de facto supporter of IS.  This situation is more complicated than a binary paradigm can explain.  I think this was a foolish move by Turkey.  Just because you have the right doesn't mean you necessarily should.  Besides we knowingly violate airspace too, if this is the new standard we'll eventually be on the receiving end.

[Steve Davies]

Surprised at some of the comments here.

Some facts to consider:

1. Turkey routinely enters sovereign Greek airspace, despite repeatedly being asked not to. The Greeks don't shoot them down, because that would not be a proportional response... just like shooting down a Russian aircraft that is clearly not heading north into Turkish airspace, but is instead briefly crossing a small tit of airspace, is not a proportional response

2. The timings and reported geometry of the intercept and shootdown are revealing. By the Turks' own admission, the Su-24 was in Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, but it had been back in Syrian airspace for 40 seconds when it was hit and downed. You don't have to be a genius to work out that in a rear-aspect AIM-9 engagement, the shot was taken when the Fencer's airspace incursion was already over, and meant that the F-16s were probably in Syrian airspace when they engaged. That makes the Turks' response a punishment for the incursion, not an attempt to prevent it, and that constitutes an aggression that we all could really do without. Further, if you look at the data that the Turks have released, it's clear that the Fencer was pointing at the border for less a minute, which makes their claims of 10 warnings in five minutes sound suspect

3. The idea that Russia is a de facto supporter of ISIS because it is targeting the Turkmenistans, FSA and other rebel groups in the north is as much of a nonsense as the idea that the groups the West is supporting are 'moderate'. These so-called moderates are the same ones who shoot pilots in parachutes and behead children for being the wrong type of Muslim. 

Edited November 25, 2015 by Steve Davies

[Steve Davies]

 

Instead they took the passive approach and Erdogan released a statement which made clear that they would not hesitate to defend their borders in the future.  Russia apologized and said it wouldn't happen again.  Now it has, and Turkey responded exactly as they said they would.  Not much to complain about from the Russians, regardless of whether it complicates things.

Additionally, when you're a country which has made a routine out of military aircraft flights near foreign airspace for the sole sake of seeing how much provocation you can get away with, you lose the benefit of the doubt when one of your aircraft accidentally strays over an international border.

 

Yeah, it doesn't work like that and the Turks know it. And, if I were Russian, I think it would be reasonable to feel aggrieved at being shot down 40 seconds *after* I'd left Turkish airspace.  

This is about nothing more than the Turks protecting their proxies south of the border from Russian airstrikes. They've given ISIS room to do what they want, they buy oil from ISIS and they'll do whatever they can to remove Bashir. 

[DirkDiggler]

I kinda enjoyed seeing a Sukhoi going down in flames.  Russia/Putin has been provoking NATO/the US for several years now; the Russians are not our friends and this is the 3rd NATO member they've messed with in recent history.  Putin understands and plays real/hard power politics.  The Turks followed through with their red line on not crossing the Turkish border and slapped them.  I'll be curious to see if the Russians cross it again.

[Jumpseat18]

I'll be curious to see if the Russians cross it again.

They, almost undoubtedly, will.

[Guest LumberjackAxe]

They, almost undoubtedly, will.

I'm also sure it's only a matter of time before one of our own airplanes does something similar. With many of the communities losing the top 24-33% of their experience to VSP/Palace Chase/etc... over the past year or two, and with us ramping up operations so much, many of the good dudes out there are pretty inexperienced in an altogether new kind of environment. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but "if" there were so many hypothetical border incursions in Afghanistan, which is a nice, non-contested airspace, then I'm kind of amazed we haven't heard of our crews doing similar shenanigans in the neighboring countries of Iraq.

[Azimuth]

Turkey released the guard calls to the Mig before the shoot down.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russian-jet-pilot-says-were-6898879

[MD]

I don't disagree.  The Russians have chosen to attempt to prop up the existing Syrian government by bombing the rebel Syrian forces (the guy in the jeans, by my guess).  That choice also probably means Russia is a de facto supporter of ISIS.  By doing that, they've put themselves at odds with the rebels for certain, as well as the rest of NATO and the civilized world battling ISIS.

While this situation may fall under the "enemy of my enemy, etc, etc." umbrella, to imply that the Syrian rebels attacking at target of opportunity from the forces that have been bombing them is somehow a coordinated effort with NATO, et al is a pretty big stretch in my opinion.

The rebels and ISIS are much the same, with ISIS being supported by Turkey (ironic). As The Turk president supports them through buying oil from them.

We're not doing dick to battle ISIS, with the window dressing airstrikes we're undertaking. And the Kurds we're supporting, are only being bombed by the Turks when we're not overhead.  Same story since that worthless Op Provide Comfort/Northern Watch in the '90s, where the Turks would refuel from our tankers, in order to bomb the same Kurds we were protecting from the Iraqis.

[MD]

I kinda enjoyed seeing a Sukhoi going down in flames.  Russia/Putin has been provoking NATO/the US for several years now; the Russians are not our friends and this is the 3rd NATO member they've messed with in recent history.  Putin understands and plays real/hard power politics.  The Turks followed through with their red line on not crossing the Turkish border and slapped them.  I'll be curious to see if the Russians cross it again.

I, for one, don't want to be stuck paying the bar tab for drinks I didn't order and never wanted, vis-à-vis Turkey and their idiotic actions in trying to drag NATO into defending their moronic acts. And with Turkey as an ISIS ally and Kurd enemy, how can they be considered our friend?

Edited November 26, 2015 by MD

[MD]

Yeah, it doesn't work like that and the Turks know it. And, if I were Russian, I think it would be reasonable to feel aggrieved at being shot down 40 seconds *after* I'd left Turkish airspace.  

This is about nothing more than the Turks protecting their proxies south of the border from Russian airstrikes. They've given ISIS room to do what they want, they buy oil from ISIS and they'll do whatever they can to remove Bashir. 

Spot on

If there's no hostile intent on the part of the intruders.......ie- they didn't hit that tiny sliver of airspace and turn north deep into Turkey immediately.......then its VERY difficult to be able to articulate a threat that warrants shoot down.

To shoot down these jets crossing that small sliver of land border that they were in for ~15 seconds:

1. The Turks would've had to take the shot at them inside Turkish airspace, to where they'd be hit outside Turkish airspace and crash outside Turkish airspace. Hardly the way to show hostile intent on the part of the Russians or to claim they were defending against a threat. And as can be seen, they crashed in Syria.

or

2. To have the Russian jet crash inside the Turkish border in that area, the Turks would've had to fire at the Russians when they were outside Turkish airspace.....before EVER even entering Turkish airspace, in order for them to be hit and crash inside Turkish airspace. ie- a preemptive engagement before an incursion ever yet occurred?

Either way, Turkey hasn't a leg to stand on in this way. .

Notice also that Turkey didn't go deal with Russia on this one on one, they immediately went "running to dad" (NATO) to go plead their case. That bastard Turk president, who supports ISIS and buys oil from them, didn't like it when Russia was hitting ISIS oil convoys of his oil.

Yet again, our idiot political leaders are betting on the wrong horse here. We didn't learn a damn thing from Egypt, Libya, or Iraq. And we're making the same errors in Syria.
 

[MD]

NATO survived Cold War, but downed Russian jet provides biggest threat

 

Washington (CNN)The cool, calm, clear thinking that kept the NATO alliance intact as it weathered the Cold War with the Soviet Union has been shattered.

 

Decades of careful diplomacy and nail-biting inaction during the potentially world-annihilating nuclear arms race of the 1950s, 60s and 70s appears to have been sacrificed in a few brief seconds by Turkey.

 

During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the deployment of nuclear weapons in western Europe in the 1980s and many other causes of strife, NATO did not take on the Soviet Union or Russia directly and Moscow did not attack any NATO country.

 

That all changed when Turkish air force jets shot down a Russian bomber -- the first time a NATO country has taken such action since 1952.

 

Any chance of a quick end to the war in Syria seems to have gone up in smoke.

 

Russian President Putin has been trying to undermine the unity of NATO for years. Whether it's been Russian planes flying in Baltic airspace, aging bombers buzzing the coast of Britain, the destabilization of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, he has needled NATO, testing its resolve and probing for division. The downing of Russia's fighter plane may help Putin reach his goal of destabilizing and dividing NATO.

 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that was still the case Tuesday after an emergency meeting arranged for Turkey to tell its allies what had happened.

 

"As we have repeatedly made clear, we stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO ally, Turkey," he said.

 

But already, German and Czech officials are expressing surprise at Turkey's action -- taken after the Russian plane was inside Turkish airspace for 30 seconds or less, according to U.S. calculations.

 

Perhaps that seemed more possible this week, with both France and Russia mourning losses from ISIS terror and when they were collectively trading their national tragedies for compromises to find a solution in Syria.

 

It was a rare moment in international diplomacy and some diplomats were beginning to think Russia's policy on Syria and its support for Bashar-Al-Assad could be changed. Not quickly, or easily, but the chance was there.

 

And Erdogan has squandered it.

 

The downing of the Russian jet smacks of what Erdogan's enemies accuse him of -- of aspirations to resurrect the Ottoman Empire -- and leaves him open to claims he is too soft on radical Islamists. Putin has gone further -- saying that Erdogan, the head of state of a NATO member, is siding with the terrorists.

 

And that's why -- at first analysis -- this looks like a disaster, beyond the loss of life of one pilot and a would-be rescuer.  It may also be a gain for Putin. For all those years he has was trying to undermine NATO unity, Erdogan's hasty move has handed it to him on a plate. We may learn what led up to the strike, but the deed is done.

 

Erdogan's NATO partners can now only look at him as a loose cannon, an unstable element in a very combustible situation. Not a steady partner capable of calm nerve that saw the alliance last the Cold War. Erdogan has thrown the whole card table in the air.  In Turkey, as internationally, Erdogan has a history of pushing his own agenda, whether it's against the tide or not.

 

And when Erdogan finally decided to act militarily in July, the targets were more often Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic extremists, rather than ISIS itself. Turkey did grant the United States permission to use one of its air bases for anti-ISIS missions after a suspected suicide bomber attacked the Turkish city of Suruc, but the two allies have different agendas. There's almost no freedom of the press there -- just ask the journalists locked up while covering the recent elections, in which Erdogan's party did surprisingly well after a summer poll flop.

 

Conflict with Kurdish people inside and outside Turkey continues. Turkey took no action against ISIS for a year and a half as the group advanced across the border in northern Syria.

 

Even as the United States sees Kurdish fighting groups as a hope to beat ISIS, Turkey continues to attack them. To many in Turkey, the prospect of an independent state for the Kurds is seen as a greater threat than the religious extremism of ISIS. To much domestic acclaim, Erdogan has moved Turkey away from its secular past and resurrected Islamism in Turkish politics

[busdriver]

I invoke Lord Helmet, we're surrounded by assholes.  

[Clark Griswold]

I, for one, don't want to be stuck paying the bar tab for drinks I didn't order and never wanted, vis-à-vis Turkey and their idiotic actions in trying to drag NATO into defending their moronic acts. And with Turkey as an ISIS ally and Kurd enemy, how can they be considered our friend?

2

Turkey needs a time out

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/24/nato-should-tell-turkey-this-thanksgiving-youre-dumped/

And while the shoot down is the big news, the Russians are doing some fairly complicated air power demonstrations / ops.  Turkey should mind its manners and be cool.

http://theaviationist.com/2015/11/21/infographic-russian-strategic-bombers-syria/

 

 

Edited November 26, 2015 by Clark Griswold
Minor add.

[Lawman]

2

Turkey needs a time out

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/24/nato-should-tell-turkey-this-thanksgiving-youre-dumped/

And while the shoot down is the big news, the Russians are doing some fairly complicated air power demonstrations / ops. Turkey should mind its manners and be cool.

http://theaviationist.com/2015/11/21/infographic-russian-strategic-bombers-syria/

Crazy stuff.

The only other country (besides Us) that has done something with anywhere near this level of complication or integrated was England launching the Black Buck Vulcan raids during the Falklands campaign.

That says a lot for a country a lot of people continue too try and sell as the broken confused pile of garbage it was after the wall came down.

[Clark Griswold]

The only other country (besides Us) that has done something with anywhere near this level of complication or integrated was England launching the Black Buck Vulcan raids during the Falklands campaign.

That says a lot for a country a lot of people continue too try and sell as the broken confused pile of garbage it was after the wall came down.

Yup - when oil was north of 75 a barrel Putin put money, time, effort and focus into making them far more creditable and capable a military force than we want to believe they are.

Even with oil low, all those good years of high oil prices (for Putin, Iranians, et al) have let them acquire more capability than we have considered recently.  If oil stays low for say 3-5 more years they may coast down to the speed we are use to them operating at but for now they're fairly high speed, low drag...

[waveshaper]

2

Turkey needs a time out

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/24/nato-should-tell-turkey-this-thanksgiving-youre-dumped/

And while the shoot down is the big news, the Russians are doing some fairly complicated air power demonstrations / ops.  Turkey should mind its manners and be cool.

http://theaviationist.com/2015/11/21/infographic-russian-strategic-bombers-syria/

 

 

Erdogan just needs to get on his knees and apologize to Putin before this fiasco spirals totally out of control. Here's an example of the type of apology that's acceptable to Putin, particularly if it involves a Turk.

[Clark Griswold]

Erdogan

There's the turd in this punchbowl, a wannabe Islamist Sultan whom the Euros keep flirting with and who we should keep at a distance until he's out of office or no longer a threat and he is a threat to the West.  Backsliding on human rights, not doing dick on foreign fighters and causing a Kurdish migration to Europe all while pleading for money, his usefulness and the project of integrating Turkey into NATO & the EU has come to be a head (sts).

I have been waiting for the STHF with Russia returning the serve to Turkey and Putin may not go kinetic (unless an obvious opportunity presents itself) but Russia arming the Kurds could be a good backhanded compliment to Turkey, I doubt the Iranians would like it but Putin can probably use arms sales as leverage to keep them quiet and use proxies to return the favor to Erdogan.  

[Prosuper]

At least we will know if this blows up into a shit storm we will all know both sides were both fill everybody up with B.S.. Math doesn't lie. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/belgian-physicists-calculate-that-everyone-is-lying-about-the-downed-russian-jet

[SurelySerious]

At least we will know if this blows up into a shit storm we will all know both sides were both fill everybody up with B.S.. Math doesn't lie. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/belgian-physicists-calculate-that-everyone-is-lying-about-the-downed-russian-jet

“Because the vertical movement is only dependent on gravity (g=9.81m/s², z=gt²/2), we can calculate that the plane was moving at a height of at least 4500 meters,” the phisicists write in their blog.

So that's false unless you're assuming an entirely ballistic profile, which is pretty bad for an aerodynamic body. Credibility killed.

[Clark Griswold]

This thread needs some humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4FIo89Ll4E

 

[Fuzz]

 

 

 

So that's false unless you're assuming an entirely ballistic profile, which is pretty bad for an aerodynamic body. Credibility killed.

 

"According to those facts, the warnings couldn’t possibly have been issued in the time the jets were in Turkish territory. Unless Turkish air controllers can speak impossibly fast, issuing ten warnings in seven seconds seems kinda improbable. Physics 2, Turkey 0. "

The warnings were going on for several minutes prior to them crossing the border. Credibility killed X 2

[sky_king]

 

 

 

So that's false unless you're assuming an entirely ballistic profile, which is pretty bad for an aerodynamic body. Credibility killed.

 

Beat me to it.  it doesn't even work if you assume a spherical Su-24.

 

[Lord Ratner]

"According to those facts, the warnings couldn’t possibly have been issued in the time the jets were in Turkish territory. Unless Turkish air controllers can speak impossibly fast, issuing ten warnings in seven seconds seems kinda improbable. Physics 2, Turkey 0. "

The warnings were going on for several minutes prior to them crossing the border. Credibility killed X 2

I was stumped on the gravity explanation, so I agree that's a cred killer, but not the radio calls. If you've done any flying around Turkey you know they aren't the most honest controllers with their airspace boundaries.

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