GarryB Mon Oct 01, 2018 11:39 pm
At least in this instance, it's more objective & not any more than those "anti-American" media who criticize US policies in the ME!
I agree with that retired PVO officer: if they had more & better coordination, that Il-20 & its 15 men crew would still be flying.
If you think of the situation as being a house invasion where the criminals timed their attack with the same time the milkman was coming and told him they would be attacking the rear of the house,, when in fact the plan was to attack the front and they stood behind him as he tried to leave while the home owners were shooting at them and he got hit and killed then of course you can blame the home owner and indeed the milkman, but it is pretty obvious that the lie about where the attack was taking place, the lack of warning time which meant the milkman couldn't change his plan and remain safe, and the fact that they actively hid behind the milkman makes the Israelis fully to blame here.
The difference between my example and what actually happened is that the bullet fired was guided and was aimed at the home invaders, but a basic part of its design means it went for the nice white easy to see uniform of the milkman instead... which the home invaders were banking on.
Also, because it was guided and the Syrians likely didn't recognise the milkman, they probably didn't even know he was there and who he was... all they knew was there were a group attacking them and they fired back... I doubt they suspected there were friendlies out there otherwise they would not have fired... the problem of not having an IADS is that the only information you have is from local radar, and you rely on the radar operator to give a clear picture to the commander... that radar operator had no way of identifying which plane was which, but that fire was coming from them which made them enemy planes... they would know their own aircraft were not there.
That article is amusing... they have already said the Syrian Air defence system does not have IFF... that is why Russia is giving them S-300s and a modern IADS so they are better able to defend themselves from Israeli attacks.
In that sense you could say that the solution they are applying is fixing the Syrian force and not the Israelis, so in a sense you could argue that it was Syrias fault... but at the end of the day it changes nothing... Syria gets to defend itself properly and Israel had better pull its head in or it might get a black eye.
But then we have been told the Israelis can defeat S-500s so S-300s shouldn't be a problem...