Syrian Air Research Articles

Syria used chlorine gas in Douma, chemical weapons agency says

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has again concluded that the Syrian Air Force used chemical weapons, breaking international law. The OPCW published the findings Jan. 27 in the third report of its Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). The IIT investigates the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic and establishes responsibility. In its latest report, the team used multiple pieces of evidence, including chemical analyses, to conclude that at least one air force helicopter dropped yellow cylinders containing chlorine gas on two apartment buildings, killing 43. “The world now knows the facts—it is up to the international community to take action, at the OPCW and beyond,” OPCW director general Fernando Arias says in a statement .

Syrian Air Force used chlorine gas in 2018 Douma attack, chemical weapons agency says

Syrian Air Force used chlorine gas in 2018 Douma attack, chemical weapons agency says

Izraelska preemptivna upotreba vojne sile u šestodnevnom ratu 1967. godine

The Six-Day War of 1967 was a war conflict almost unanimously defined in the scientific literature as a school example of preemptive war. The conflict was initiated with Israel's attack on Egypt and Syria, after prolonged concentration of strong military forces on their common borders by the two countries. In order to prevent joint and coordinated attack on two fronts, Israel destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian Air Force with a carefully planned airstrike in the matter of hours. Since the founding of the State, the Israeli political and military elite have been guided by a collective narrative in addressing serious security threats. This narrative is based on drawing historical parallels with the experience of collective political violence against Jews as a political community in the past. It dictates proactivity in the protection of national interests and national security, and over time it has manifested itself in various ways. The Israeli army, as well as other security branches, have acted preemptively and preventively many times whenever the need to protect the lives and property of Israeli citizens arose. In the eyes of the Israeli political and military elite each of the mentioned above security threats was placed in the context of the German attempt to exterminate the Jews in WW2. Regardless of our attitudes towards the Middle East conflict, the fact remains that Israel's survival was most threatened in 1948 and 1973, that is, the only two times when Israel was not the first to attack its enemies who grouped against it.

Syrian air force used chlorine gas in a February 2018 attack on Saraqib, OPCW investigators find

Syrian air force used chlorine gas in a February 2018 attack on Saraqib, OPCW investigators find

The spark that might have ignited the fire: The association of cognitive and psychological factors with state anxiety in light of the Syrian-Israeli incident

The current study aimed to explore Israelis' state anxiety due to a Syrian-Israeli incident that occurred on February 10, 2018, when an Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down by Syrian air defense forces. In line with the "looming vulnerability" model which emphasizes the importance of the dynamic nature of psychologically threatening situations, the following psychological factors were suggested: associative memory of prior events, worries of future war, sense of safety, and death anxiety. We employed two cross-sectional points of time in our assessment: 36 hours and three months after the incident. Using an online survey, 162 adult participants were recruited in Study 1 and 172 in Study 2. The participants completed set of questionnaires measuring state anxiety along with other psychological measures. The results of the two studies suggested that higher levels of worry of future war and lower levels of sense of safety associated with higher state anxiety. The looming vulnerability model and variables associated with state anxiety were found to have a salient role in explaining state anxiety as a response to a negative unexpected event.

Carnage and Connectivity: Landmarks in the Decline of Conventional Military Power by David Betz

Reviewed by: Carnage and Connectivity: Landmarks in the Decline of Conventional Military Power by David Betz Greg Simons (bio) Carnage and Connectivity: Landmarks in the Decline of Conventional Military Power. By David Betz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 264. $55. David Betz, a reader in warfare in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, has crafted a thorough and captivating book on the implications of connectivity on the practice of warfare. It is of relevance and interest to a broad academic and practitioner audience, including those engaged in the fields of war and armed conflict, international relations, communication studies, and technology studies. A commendably impressive number of sources and perspectives are used, giving the reader access to the full complexity of the various issues that he broaches. Betz manages to present the material in a clear and logical manner, whilst not oversimplifying the complex questions that are influencing the practice of warfare in the twenty-first century. The book is arranged into nine subject chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion. Each subject is introduced, in turn, in a logical succession. This work is well-researched, written, and argued. There is also an element of healthy critique of some of the assumptions that exist in both academic and military circles. One of these is the perpetual hope of finding a “magic bullet” that renders obsolete other forms of warfare, giving a decisive advantage to one party over others. Betz’s critique of such thinking is especially evident in his approach to the practice and promise of cyber warfare. Instead of seeing it as a stand-alone, winning weapon, he presents cyber warfare as something that must be combined with existing means of waging war. He gives the example of Israel’s raid on the Syrian nuclear plant without the loss of a single aircraft owing to the complementary use of a cyber attack on the formidable Syrian air defenses. Betz maintains one concrete point that he continually revisits. “Connectivity has important implications for the practice of war but it does not substantially alter its nature as much as is commonly supposed” (p. 179). In this regard, the author contradicts those who argue, or assume, that new technologies can radically alter the way that “new” wars are fought. Such authors are brought to the reader’s attention and quoted to provide a [End Page 290] wealth of different views and interpretations. For example, air power once was thought by some to be a new magic bullet for waging quick, relatively cheap and victorious wars. B. H. Liddell Hart was one of the more enthusiastic proponents of the use of airpower and the idea that it could win wars alone (p. 140). The reality proved quite different. Similar arguments continue to be made over time, repeating these “silver bullet–like” assumptions that a new technology will enable a rapid and victorious outcome in war—and that such technologies also will blur the distinction between war and something less than war. In shaping the argumentation of this book in this particular manner, Betz creates a clear connection between the past and the present, providing the background and support for his primary thesis that new technology does not change the way that wars are practiced as radically as is so often presumed. I enjoyed and learned a lot from the book. In addition, I tend to agree with the fundamental underlying principles of the arguments presented, though there were some minor points of contention. In particular, on pages 32–33 under the section concerning “consolidation and fragmentation,” some disputable statements were made. For example, whatever one thinks of earlier struggles, in the twenty-first century in the Middle East, the West certainly was not acting to replace “illegitimate regimes” and “liberate” people in need. This is a simplistic and superficial narrative that has been proven false in real life. Libya was “liberated” with catastrophic results for the Libyan people, and the security of Europe has been compromised as a result. There seems to be very little concern for the welfare of Libyans in the wake of regime change in 2011. Similarly, one also must question the statement that Iraq...

President Trump's Declaration of War Against Syria

President Donald J. Trump's first war seemed a short one. To many, it commenced on April 7, 2017 (local time) and, after fifty-nine cruise missiles struck, seemingly ended the same day. The president received good marks for the stunning strike against the Syrian air base, with many members of the foreign policy establishment applauding his attack as a means of punishing Bashar al-Assad's regime for its use of chemical weapons. Even some Obama administration veterans were full of praise for the president, apparently drawing a contrast between President Donald J. Trump's strike and President Barack Obama's unwillingness to enforce his chemical weapons “red line.”

Russia Launches Syrian Air Strikes From Iran

Russia Launches Syrian Air Strikes From Iran

OTHER-THAN-INTERNET (OTI) CYBERWARFARE: CHALLENGES FOR ETHICS, LAW, AND POLICY

Almost all discussions of cyberwarfare, other cyber-attacks, and cyber-espionage have focused entirely on the Internet as the chief means of damage – the Internet as a ‘vector,’ using a term from the theory of infectious diseases. However there are a variety of means, some of which have already been used, that involve cyber-exploitation using vectors other than the Internet. Malware can be installed in the integrated circuits of computers and servers, but also in any devices attached to them – thumb drives, CDs, printers, scanners, and so on. One can also use various forms of electromagnetic radiation at a distance of meters or more to exfiltrate data or to infiltrate corrupt data. I call this large and diverse family of unwanted interference with the functioning of information processing systems other-than-Internet (OTI) attacks on information systems. Stuxnet, and probably the 2007 Israeli corruption of Syrian air defenses, were OTI attacks. Such OTI techniques are more difficult to develop than creating malware, requiring electronic manufacturing facilities or novel technologies, and are thus accessible only to larger corporations and technologically sophisticated countries. Particularly vulnerable would be countries (like the United States and Europe) whose information processing devices are mainly produced outside of the country. Once exploitations via the Internet become harder to perpetrate, OTI exploitations are certain to grow dramatically, eventually requiring equipment for critical uses to be expensively fabricated in (and transported using) secure facilities; expensive detection measures will have to be instituted. This will create challenges for policy, law, and ethics, as well as greatly increasing the cost of many electronic devices.

Noteworthy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Meenal Vamburkar, ‘Chris Christie: If Obama Can't Change Washington, “What The Hell Is He Doing” Asking For Re-Election?’, Mediaite, 22 October 2012, http://bit.ly/Sej3TD. ‘Gov. Christie: Obama Deserves “Great Credit” for Storm Response’, CBS News, 30 October 2012, http://cbsn.ws/X2o3zC. ‘Barack Obama's “Four More Years” Tweet Most Popular Ever’, Telegraph, 7 November 2012, bit.ly/TK2PCV. Robert Mackey, ‘Iranian News Agency Claims Onion Report it Ran by Mistake is Essentially True’, New York Times, 30 September 2012, http://nyti.ms/PFKe76. Harriet Sherwood, ‘Binyamin Netanyahu's UN Bomb Triggers Derision and Admiration’, Guardian, 24 September 2012, http://bit.ly/Pwxa3I. Fidel Castro, ‘Fidel Castro is Dying’, Granma, 22 October 2012, http://bit.ly/TDk4Bw. Ibid. ‘Key Points from Hu Jintao's Address’, Financial Times, 8 November 2012, http://on.ft.com/SYzVhx. ‘Syrian Air Force Chief Killed as Turkey Rules out Further Talks’, Deutsche Welle, 30 October 2012, http://bit.ly/TTgB1X. Ruth Sherlock, ‘US Moves to Demand Major Syria Opposition Shake-up,’ Telegraph, 1 November 2012, http://bit.ly/TxiZzl. Stuart Laycock, All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To (Stroud: The History Press, 2012). Michael R. Bloomberg, ‘A Vote for a President to Lead on Climate Change’, Bloomberg, 1 November 2012, http://bloom.bg/W53Cft. ‘After Editors Blog, President Obama Releases Transcript of Register Interview’, Des Moines Register, 24 October 2012, http://dmreg.co/ZkVdJf. Peter Spiegel and Richard Milne, ‘EU Awarded Nobel Peace Prize’, Financial Times, 12 October 2012, http://on.ft.com/W0gYht.

National defense applications of autonomous underwater vehicles

During the 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force faced the problem of neutralizing the massive Syrian air defense network in the Valley as a step in gaining air control in the area. They accomplished this, in a matter of days, without the loss of a single aircraft, while inflicting a loss of over 80 aircraft on the Syrian Air Force. The key to this smashing tactical success was the tactic used to suppress the extensive air defense network. The Israelis used remotely piloted vehicles (RPV's) for the high-risk elements of their tactical plan. RPV's conducted in-depth reconnaissance to spot and fingerprint the search and fire control radars in the valley and on adjacent mountainsides and to locate surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. When the attack started, the first waves were RPV's configured to appear as attack aircraft and draw first fire. As the engagement started, manned attack fighter-bombers used antiradiation missiles (ARM's) and other smart ordnance to destroy enemy radars and launch sites as they were engaging the RPV's. While there was some loss of the low-cost RPV's, there were no losses to the Israeli aircraft. A hornet's nest of weapons and radars had been effectively neutralized without loss and in a period of a few hours. Recent statements of current U.S. Naval doctrine [1] emphasize a forward area strategy of naval action in or near enemy waters. The Soviet Navy in turn has been attributed as having a bastion strategy [2] to operate their SLBM force in Arctic waters and heavily defend the sea approaches to these waters. In other words, we postulate that they will create a hornet's nest and the U.S. Navy would intend to attack it, a Naval Bekka Valley. This article examines the potential need for unmanned systems in the execution of the forward-area strategy. Emphasis is upon medium- and long-range submersibles capable of autonomous operation.

Soviet arms‐transfer policy and the decision to upgrade Syrian air defences

Soviet arms‐transfer policy and the decision to upgrade Syrian air defences