The Russian MOD has evaluated the effectiveness of the strikes on Syria by the US, the UK, and France. They also talked about the performance of Syrian air defense units.
Yulia Shustraya will tell us more.
The Russian MOD thinks that a statement by the US, the UK, and France was somewhat dubious. Their report that all the missiles hit their targets is very questionable. The three countries' missile strikes and airstrikes on Syrian sites happened on April 14th between 3:42 AM and 5:10 AM MSK. Air defense radar systems had detected 103 targets, that's what Syrian specialists had detected in the sky. After that, it was established that the missiles were launched from the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and from Al-Tanf, the latter of which is controlled by US forces.
Igor Konashenkov, Ministry of Defense spokesman: "According to the statement made by US, UK, and French defense officials, the strikes on April 14th were intended solely for 3 Syrian sites. That's over 30 cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles per target. Such statements make us very skeptical. The thing is that none of the supposed sites are well-defended or reinforced via a system of bunkers. As you can clearly see on the satellite pictures that are being spread by the Western media, these are just regular buildings on the ground. I remind you that the Tomahawk's warhead, depending on its type, can contain up to 1.5 tons of TNT."
Basically, to translate it from military lingo into layman's terms: if the tomahawk missiles had hit the said targets that you can see in the pictures published by the US and UK media, large shell craters would've been left behind, which they weren't, as we can see from the pictures. As far as the other, smaller missiles, they did make it to 3 targets.
What's more, the allies of the US-led coalition claimed that all the missiles had hit their targets. Here's where it gets really interesting. If we do the math, 103 missiles for 3 targets equates to over 30 missiles per target. Frankly, no more than 10 missiles per target would be required to turn each one of these objects into dust. So, why did they need so many of them? It turns out that they had their reasons.
Igor Konashenkov, Ministry of Defense spokesman: "Syrian air defense units have neutralized a total of 73 cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles. That's 73 out of the 103 that were detected in the Republic's airspace. Specifically, 4 missiles were launched at the Duvali airfield, and 4 were destroyed. The Dumayr airfield was attacked with 12 missiles, and all 12 were destroyed. The Bley airfield — 18 out of 18 targets were destroyed. The Shayrat airfield — 12 out of 12 targets were destroyed. The Tifor airfield — 2 out of the 2 incoming missiles were destroyed. The Meze airfield — 5 out of 9 targets were destroyed by the Syrian Armed Forces' air defense systems. The Holmes airfield had 16 incoming targets, 13 of which were destroyed.
A total of 103 cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles participated in the strike. 71 of them were destroyed. This being said, the scientific research facilities in Barza and Jaramana were attacked with approximately 30 missiles and guided bombs, according to our estimates. 5 of them were destroyed by the Syrian air defense systems".
So, what was more effective: the missiles strike or the Syrian air defense that intercepted it? The following air defense systems were used: the S-200, the S-125, the Buk, the Kvadrat, the Osa, and the Strela. These are all Soviet-era systems, which are a lot older than the systems they defended against.
As far as the cover goes, the sites that were hit weren’t covered by the so-called "air defense umbrella". This "air defense umbrella" covered military sites such as airfields. As we can see from the list of the intercepted missiles, it worked well there. It's impossible to cover all of Syria with this "air defense umbrella." The missiles hit the targets that didn't have any cover. Basically, the older equipment of the Syrian Armed Forces successfully intercepted state-of-the-art US, UK, and French missiles.
For the Syrian air defense systems, 71 out of 103 missiles is a great result, especially since there were no casualties.
Yulia Shustraya, Andrey Ganykin, Kirill Kryuchkan, Vesti.