Syrian Crisis...2013

Re: Persian Gulf & Middle East News & Views

White House makes case for imminent Syria strike
Aug. 30, 2013 - 03:22PM
By Andrew Tilghman
Staff writer Military times
A military strike on Syria appeared imminent Friday as President Obama and his administration publicly rolled out in great detail its case for why the regime of Bashar al-Assad should be punished for using chemical weapons against Syrian civilians last week.

As the White House released an unclassified intelligence report on the Syrian military’s Aug. 21 use of chemical weapons, President Obama said he was seriously considering “limited” military action to reinforce the ban on chemical weapons under international law.

“We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale,” Obama said.

“We are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria but others around the world understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm,” the president said.

“We are not considering any opened-ended commitment. We are not considering any boots on the ground,” Obama said.

Obama said he has not made any final decision about a strike.

The well-orchestrated release of an unusually detailed intelligence report signals that the White House may initiate missile strikes soon — potentially today or this weekend — rather than waiting for the United Nations to complete its assessment, which is not likely to come until next week.

Also on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke publicly and called the the Syria incident a “crime against conscience, a crime against humanity, a crime against the most fundamental principles of the international community.”

The strikes are likely to involve Tomahawk missile strikes launched from Navy ships. At least four Navy destroyers are off the coast of Syria awaiting a possible order from the commander-in-chief, military officials say. That’s an increase from the typical two deployed to that area. Combined they are probably loaded with about 200 Tomahawk missiles.

The White House released a four-page document outlining the intelligence underpinning the “high-confidence assessment” that the Syrian regime deliberately fired rockets containing chemical weapons into neighborhoods outside the Syrian capital of Damascus that are controlled by rebel forces, with a death toll estimated to be more than 1,400.

“It’s completely vetted by the U.S. intelligence community,” a senior administration official said.

Obama has not made any final decisions about strikes, the administration official said.

Nevertheless, the intelligence shows that the chemical weapons attack “was executed under the command and control of the Assad regime,” the official said.

“What is clear to us is there needs to be consequences,” the White House official said.

The White House appeared ready to press ahead with strikes despite a diplomatic setback on Thursday when the British government said it would not participate in any military operations absent some authority from the U.N.

Kerry acknowledged that most Americans are weary of war. A recent poll suggested that only 9 percent of Americans support a military action in Syria.

“But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about,” Kerry said.

Obama echoed that sentiment.

“I recognize that all of us — here in the United States, in Great Britain and many parts of the world — there is a certain weariness given Afghanistan. There is a certain suspicion of any military action post-Iraq, and I very much appreciate that,” Obama said.

“On the other hand, it’s important for us to recognize that when over 1,000 people are killed, including hundreds of children ... it is not in the national security interests of the United States to ignore a clear violation of these kinds of norms.”

Kerry said the strikes would help reinforce American credibility and discourage others — namely Iran — from violating international law and using weapons of mass destruction. Many experts say the administration wants to back up President Obama’s remark in August 2012 that using chemical weapons was a “red line” that would “change my equation” about military involvement.

“This matter is beyond the borders of Syria,” Kerry said. “It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attack, will now feel emboldened in the absence of any action, to obtain nuclear weapons. Its about Hezbollah; it’s about North Korea or any other dictator” who might seek weapons of mass destruction, Kerry said.

The administration does not want to tip the balance in the 2-year-old civil war, where Asssad’s military is battling rebels that include many Islamic extremists. “Our response would be tied to the issue of chemical weapons use ... not regime change,” a senior administration official said.

The proposed strikes on Syria created a rare bipartisan moment on Capitol Hill, where arch rivals like Nancy Pelosi, the House’s top Democrat, and John Boehner, its top Republican, issued statements saying Obama needed to do more to convince Congress and the American people that military action was necessary.

Yet Congress, which is not in session, made no plans to reconvene over the holiday weekend and call for a vote on the matter.

There are about 2,200 Marines aboard the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group, currently in the U.S. Central Command region but not operating along the Syrian coast.

There are about 1,000 troops in Jordan, including a detachment of F-16 fighter jets and troops who specialize in chemical weapons.

Air Force fighter jets based in Europe and the Middle East could reach Syrian targets, but top Pentagon officials routinely warn about Syria’s relatively robust air defense capabilities, which experts say make manned sorties into Syrian air space unlikely due to the risk of U.S. casualties.

Click to expand...

and the story keeps going.

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

SampanViking said:

The danger in all this remains the total lack of trust that the Russians have for US intentions.

The US is now talking about proceeding with an action on the basis of R2P and are presenting R2P as a trump over any other form of International Law or obligation.

Syria is dispersing its Strategic Arsenal, while attacks on the Chemical Weapons would be far too risky. This leaves only two likely other objectives; Command and Control and/or Air Defence.

IMHO Russia can only but assume that any missiles strike will simply be the softening up salvo and that if they are allowed to transit unchallenged and hit their targets, that it would be game over and that protection of Russia to its allies is meaningless. They will therefore have no option but to work with the Syrians and together seek to interdict the missiles directly.

You must not forget the Garrison in Afghanistan either. If missiles fly at Syria, you can safely assume that all routes of Afghanistan will be closed to NATO traffic and this would cause considerable political problems and a crisis greater than the blockade of Berlin.

I think you would also see the Asian Powers start to apply pressure across the globe on sensitive spots to both draw US forces as thin as possible, and to also "confuse" the media story and make reportage incoherent..

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The Obama adminstration is simply grasping at straws as a way to convince the American people that it needs to do this, and to show the intrnational community that he is somehow not the paper tiger that he actually is.

Obama painted himself into a corner. He was embarassed a year ago with the 1st reports of chemical weapons and he could not...or would not do anything. It does not matter what the facts are to people like this...they create the facts to suite themselves, and Obama simply has to try and look "strong," to the American citizenry and the international community.

He does not have the stomach for, and the US itself is not prepared or willing, to conduct the kind of long, dangerous campaign that would be necessary to actually "defeat" Syria, particularly when there are absolutely no US intetrests in doing so.

No, this is gamemanship and show.

If it stays that way, there will be no escalation by Russia, China, or any other rational nation. NOr will Afghjanistan be bloackaded or any of the Tomahawks shot down.

If howerver (which I do not believe will happen at all) Obama attempts to actually defeat and destroy Syria as a nation in overtly seeking, through force of US arms, regime change...then all of that will change. but we can oion fact wait to see if that is the case. it is not too late, even a week into such a campaign, to intervene and do the types of things you are saying.

I just do not believe at all it will happen all at once. Too much risk all around for that.

That still leaves, even in this "show" campaign, the chance for two very serious miscalcuclations.

1) An accident or mistake that pulls Russia or others in.

2) Iran, who easily, despite the futility and dagers associated wth it, could pull the plug.

I pray neither of those happens. I wish that Obama would not do this at all. There are NO overriding US interests in this and R2P is nothing but an excuse to do as he pleases...it is not a US National interest.

But at this point he seems hell bent to do so...and I am sure that whatever Russias "tipping point," is has already been explained to him and his administration in no uncertain terms.

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

Will China or should China send engineers to gather intelligence and monitor the performance of its radar?

Perfect waste of opportunity not to.

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TAIPEI — If the US strikes Syria, China would get to see just how well some of its radars and electronic warfare (EW) emitters perform in combat.

Among the Chinese systems deployed by the Syrian military are the JYL-1 3-D long-range surveillance radar, Type 120 (LLQ120) 2D low-altitude acquisition radar, and JY-27 VHF long-range surveillance radar, according to Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the US-based International Assessment and Strategy Center

China would no doubt digest any performance data for use in a potential conflict with the US, which could be sparked by disputes over Taiwan, Senkaku Island or the South China Sea.

But the lessons would flow both ways. The Pentagon would scoop up wartime electronic emissions from the Chinese systems, and moreover, could test its own methods of countering the kind of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies and technologies that China is developing.

Fisher said the multiple types of Chinese radar strongly suggest that Beijing has been “providing much of the secure electronic infrastructure critical to the regime’s survival.”

He said Beijing has in the past used Chinese telecommunications firms to “militarily support its dictator clients” against the US. In the late 1990s, such firms linked Saddam Hussein’s radars via fiberoptic cables to better target US aircraft enforcing the U.S. no-fly zone.

“American fighter-bombers were actually bombing these cable nodes, that the Chinese would then rebuild,” he said.

A more urgent question is just how much of a threat the Chinese-augmented air-defense system would pose to attacking US planes.

Syria has 120 surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites armed with a mix of Russian and old Soviet systems: SA-2, SA-3, SA-5, and SA-6. It has 50 EW facilities with a mix of Chinese and Russian systems, said Sean O’Connor, editor of IMINT & Analysis, a US-based newsletter.

Modern Chinese EW radars can detect US low-observable aircraft and perhaps even very-low-observable ones, O’Connor said. Particularly effective are the two 500-km JY-27 radars delivered in 2006, now deployed north and south of the city of Palmyra in central Syria.

“The range of the JY-27 permits either site to monitor the bulk of Syrian airspace, along with a significant amount of the surrounding region,” he said.

Little is known directly about the less-capable Type 120 radar, but it is a derivative of the JY-29/LSS-1 2D radar, which can track 72 targets out to 200 km.

“The more refined Type 120 may improve on these specifications, but they are a logical baseline,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said the Type 120 likely acquires only range and azimuth data, making it best suited to supporting other radars. He said that China itself deploys the 120 with the HQ-9 and HQ-12 SAM systems, but that Syria might use it as a dedicated EW asset.

Syria has four Type 120 radar sites: Dar Ta`izzah, Baniyas, Tartus, and Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The JY-29s were initially misidentified in Syria as the F-band radar JY-11B Hunter-1 radars.

The 320-km JYL-1 3D radar is deployed at Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The radar has been misidentified in the past as the Chinese-built YLC-2V High Guard 3D long-range surveillance radar.

There is some question as to whether the Chinese sensors can pass data directly to the Soviet-era weapons, O’Connor said.

“A lack of interoperability would require voice transmission of target track data between nodes, a potential source for error and a signal likely to be targeted for interference if transmitted openly,” he said.

The US has reasonable information about Chinese radars, but what the US most likely lacks is an understanding on “Chinese EW game play,” said John Wise, UK-based radar analyst and creator of the radars.org.uk website.

Wise said the US and NATO have a distinct advantage in their ability to exercise hostile EW through the remit of the NATO Joint Electronic Warfare Core Staff.

“Tactical EW exercising is held as a very high priority in Western maritime operations, game play which has been extended to tactical exercises on land and NATO forces have the advantage of the experience from these exercises,” he said. “We do not know how the Syrian land army might respond in the face of hardhitting EW, assuming it recognizes it soon enough to actually respond.”

But there are no guarantees, he said.

“It would be wholly wrong of me to suggest that US jamming against any particular Chinese radar would be successful because of the variable factors,” which include range between jammer and target, element of surprise, and available jamming power per Mhz.

“As to false target generation, that can fox the best of radar operators if sensibly applied when least expected.” he said. “Timing of EW applications can be a critical factor.”

A key question is “whether Syria has come to grips with the operation of its Chinese equipment sufficiently to understand the difference between the results of black and noise jamming on radar displays,” Wise said.

Another question is whether Assad might have learned from Libya’s unsuccessful EW and air-defense efforts against NATO forces in 2011.

Ultimately, O’Connor believes Syria’s integrated air defense system cannot defeat a large-scale attack by the US and NATO. Despite the new Chinese systems, Syria still relies heavily on aging Russian and Soviet technology that has been encountered before by US and NATO forces.

“The bulk of the network does not represent a significant threat to modern combat aircraft, although any threat system should be regarded as potentially dangerous,” O’Connor said.

For example, the 250-km SA-5 SAM system can threaten intelligence-surveillance-radar aircraft and aerial tankers, he said.

O’Connor also said no one should expect Syrian rebels to degrade the government’s integrated air defense. The civil war has so far had little impact on the overall network, and the Syrian military retains control of the bulk of EW and SAM assets.

Will the US lose aircraft over Syria? In December 1983, two US Navy aircraft, one A-7E Corsair and an A-6E Intruder, were shot down while attacking Syrian air defense sites.

Click to expand...

Re: Persian Gulf & Middle East News & Views

Syrian Strikes Would Battle-Test Chinese Radars

TAIPEI — If the US strikes Syria, China would get to see just how well some of its radars and electronic warfare (EW) emitters perform in combat.

Among the Chinese systems deployed by the Syrian military are the JYL-1 3-D long-range surveillance radar, Type 120 (LLQ120) 2D low-altitude acquisition radar, and JY-27 VHF long-range surveillance radar, according to Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the US-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

China would no doubt digest any performance data for use in a potential conflict with the US, which could be sparked by disputes over Taiwan, Senkaku Island or the South China Sea.

But the lessons would flow both ways. The Pentagon would scoop up wartime electronic emissions from the Chinese systems, and moreover, could test its own methods of countering the kind of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies and technologies that China is developing.

Fisher said the multiple types of Chinese radar strongly suggest that Beijing has been “providing much of the secure electronic infrastructure critical to the regime’s survival.”

He said Beijing has in the past used Chinese telecommunications firms to “militarily support its dictator clients” against the US. In the late 1990s, such firms linked Saddam Hussein’s radars via fiberoptic cables to better target US aircraft enforcing the U.S. no-fly zone.

“American fighter-bombers were actually bombing these cable nodes, that the Chinese would then rebuild,” he said.

A more urgent question is just how much of a threat the Chinese-augmented air-defense system would pose to attacking US planes.

Syria has 120 surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites armed with a mix of Russian and old Soviet systems: SA-2, SA-3, SA-5, and SA-6. It has 50 EW facilities with a mix of Chinese and Russian systems, said Sean O’Connor, editor of IMINT & Analysis, a US-based newsletter.

Modern Chinese EW radars can detect US low-observable aircraft and perhaps even very-low-observable ones, O’Connor said. Particularly effective are the two 500-km JY-27 radars delivered in 2006, now deployed north and south of the city of Palmyra in central Syria.

“The range of the JY-27 permits either site to monitor the bulk of Syrian airspace, along with a significant amount of the surrounding region,” he said.

Little is known directly about the less-capable Type 120 radar, but it is a derivative of the JY-29/LSS-1 2D radar, which can track 72 targets out to 200 km.

“The more refined Type 120 may improve on these specifications, but they are a logical baseline,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said the Type 120 likely acquires only range and azimuth data, making it best suited to supporting other radars. He said that China itself deploys the 120 with the HQ-9 and HQ-12 SAM systems, but that Syria might use it as a dedicated EW asset.

Syria has four Type 120 radar sites: Dar Ta`izzah, Baniyas, Tartus, and Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The JY-29s were initially misidentified in Syria as the F-band radar JY-11B Hunter-1 radars.

The 320-km JYL-1 3D radar is deployed at Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The radar has been misidentified in the past as the Chinese-built YLC-2V High Guard 3D long-range surveillance radar.

There is some question as to whether the Chinese sensors can pass data directly to the Soviet-era weapons, O’Connor said.

“A lack of interoperability would require voice transmission of target track data between nodes, a potential source for error and a signal likely to be targeted for interference if transmitted openly,” he said.

The US has reasonable information about Chinese radars, but what the US most likely lacks is an understanding on “Chinese EW game play,” said John Wise, UK-based radar analyst and creator of the radars.org.uk website.

Wise said the US and NATO have a distinct advantage in their ability to exercise hostile EW through the remit of the NATO Joint Electronic Warfare Core Staff.

“Tactical EW exercising is held as a very high priority in Western maritime operations, game play which has been extended to tactical exercises on land and NATO forces have the advantage of the experience from these exercises,” he said. “We do not know how the Syrian land army might respond in the face of hardhitting EW, assuming it recognizes it soon enough to actually respond.”

But there are no guarantees, he said.

“It would be wholly wrong of me to suggest that US jamming against any particular Chinese radar would be successful because of the variable factors,” which include range between jammer and target, element of surprise, and available jamming power per Mhz.

“As to false target generation, that can fox the best of radar operators if sensibly applied when least expected.” he said. “Timing of EW applications can be a critical factor.”

A key question is “whether Syria has come to grips with the operation of its Chinese equipment sufficiently to understand the difference between the results of black and noise jamming on radar displays,” Wise said.

Another question is whether Assad might have learned from Libya’s unsuccessful EW and air-defense efforts against NATO forces in 2011.

Ultimately, O’Connor believes Syria’s integrated air defense system cannot defeat a large-scale attack by the US and NATO. Despite the new Chinese systems, Syria still relies heavily on aging Russian and Soviet technology that has been encountered before by US and NATO forces.

“The bulk of the network does not represent a significant threat to modern combat aircraft, although any threat system should be regarded as potentially dangerous,” O’Connor said.

For example, the 250-km SA-5 SAM system can threaten intelligence-surveillance-radar aircraft and aerial tankers, he said.

O’Connor also said no one should expect Syrian rebels to degrade the government’s integrated air defense. The civil war has so far had little impact on the overall network, and the Syrian military retains control of the bulk of EW and SAM assets.

Will the US lose aircraft over Syria? In December 1983, two US Navy aircraft, one A-7E Corsair and an A-6E Intruder, were shot down while attacking Syrian air defense sites.

Click to expand...

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

Uh, bad idea, because those radars would be some of the first targets of tomahawks, I think...

Unfortunately we can bet most of these radar sets will be destroyed fairly early on once hostilities start, and we won't have any idea how the chinese sets performed. Maybe if Syria had a few batteries of HQ-9 and HQ-16.

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

Bltizo said:

Uh, bad idea, because those radars would be some of the first targets of tomahawks, I think...

Unfortunately we can bet most of these radar sets will be destroyed fairly early on once hostilities start, and we won't have any idea how the chinese sets performed. Maybe if Syria had a few batteries of HQ-9 and HQ-16.

Click to expand...

China will get to see, to some extent, how their equipment performs. But it will be tell-tale because it is probably not going to last very long, and there may be very little data if the cruise missiles are able to penetrate at low level and hit them with little warning.

However, if the US jams things to try and help that happen, they will get data from that.

The real winner in the intel/signals game is going to be the US though. They are not likely to loose and have destroyed the major platforms that moinitor this thing, and the Tomahawks will be sending data right up to when they hit. The US is going to see in detail how these things work if the Syrians actively use them for defense.

And, if they want to have any chance to mitigate the attacks, they will have to use them. It's why they bought them.

The US has all of the positions for these major and intermediate radars marked, both with GPS coordinates, and through inertia targeting. These sites are not going to escape destruction, it is just a matter of 1) Will they be able to help make any dent in the onslaught? and 2) How much intel will the US gather as they are used to try and do that?

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

BBC News
US & CANADA
29 August 2013 Last updated at 21:59 ET
What happens in Syria after the Tomahawks hit?
By Tara McKelvey
BBC News Magazine
US officials hope that any military assault on Syria will be surgical and limited. But what does the US do after the missiles or bombs have fallen?
It could go either way. The US may attack - or may not. "I've not made a decision," US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday.
Mr Obama has maintained that if the Syrian government uses chemical weapons, the US will act militarily.
And last week, according to US officials, President Bashar al-Assad's forces deployed poison gas against rebels in a Damascus suburb. More than 1,000 people, including women and children, were reported killed.
Syrian government officials say they did not use chemical weapons, but the US is ready to act.
'We are prepared'
UN inspectors are looking for evidence of a gas attack in the Damascus suburb, and plan to finish their work on Friday.
Meanwhile officials in Washington DC are laying the groundwork for military operations.
"We are prepared," Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel told the BBC.
If US officials proceed with military operations, they will likely be supported by Turkey and France, at least in some fashion. They will not have the backing of the UK, where Parliament on Thursday night rejected a government motion supporting intervention in Syria.
Nor is the UN Security Council expected to support an attack, because the Russians are opposed.
The US military would most likely use Tomahawk cruise missiles for an attack on the Syrian government forces. These missiles are now stored on destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean.
The missiles would not be fired at places where chemical weapons might be stored, since poisonous gas could spread or chemical agents could fall into the wrong hands.
Instead, military facilities would be targeted - radio centres, command posts and missile launchers, says Douglas Ollivant, who served as an operations officer with the Army's Fifth Cavalry Regiment in Iraq.
The initial military operation would be fast.
Public opinion
"It would be a fairly short, sharp action - much like Operation Desert Fox," a 1998 military operation in Iraq, says Peter Mansoor, an Ohio State University professor of military history who served as executive officer for David Petraeus, a retired US Army general, in Iraq.
Mr Obama has been looking for a clean way to retaliate against the Assad regime for the chemical weapons. Missiles seem to offer that. If he proceeds, he will follow a long line of US presidents who have tried to avoid bloody ground battles.
The missiles would likely be deployed from the sea, without putting Americans in danger.
This option is more palatable to the US public than the deployment of ground troops. Most Americans do not want the US to get involved in the Syria conflict, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Yet roughly half of the Americans polled said they were open to military action - if the operations were done from a distance.
Indeed, remotely controlled attacks such as air strikes have been called "the American way of war" by the authors of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Unfortunately, the notion of effective and pain-free distance warfare is illusory.
In March 2003, the US "shock and awe" bombing campaign in Iraq did not on its own bring down Saddam Hussein.
"It still required a ground force invasion," said Kalev Sepp, a former special forces officer who is now a senior lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School.
Besides that, bombs and missiles are only as effective as the intelligence targeting them.
In 1998, US cruise missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, because intelligence analysts had believed it to be a chemical weapons factory.
An earlier military strategy based on remotely controlled strikes, the Nato air war in Kosovo, has reportedly been discussed during high-level Obama administration meetings about Syria.
Not everything went smoothly during that bombing campaign, either - the US blew up the Chinese embassy.
"There's these mistakes - shortfalls - and they have counterproductive value," says Mr Sepp.
'You failed'
Mr Obama says that the objective of any military strike would simply be to warn the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons again.
"The Assad regime, which is involved in a civil war trying to protect itself, will have received a pretty strong signal," Mr Obama said.
What happens afterwards, though, is anybody's guess.
"They don't want to do something that could look like an empty gesture," says Suzanne Nossel, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of state during Obama's first term.
"They'll wait for a reaction. Does Assad step it up with the rhetoric - 'you failed in Iraq, you failed in Vietnam'? Or does he take the beating?"
If the Assad regime decides to ratchet things up, Mr Obama has an array of options - none of them good.
"The range is, you do nothing - all the way up to large-scale air and ground campaigns to remove the Assad regime," says Mr Sepp.
"You can send in special forces to train and organise the rebels. But it's impossible to do that clandestine. So then you have to have Americans on the ground - and they're being killed. Is that worth overthrowing the Assad regime for?"

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BBC News
MIDDLE EAST
30 August 2013 Last updated at 18:12 ET
Syria chemical weapons attack killed 1,429, says John Kerry
US Secretary of State John Kerry has accused Syrian government forces of killing 1,429 people in a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last week.
Mr Kerry said the dead included 426 children, and described the attack as an "inconceivable horror".
President Barack Obama later said the US was considering a "limited narrow act" in response.
Syria has dismissed Mr Kerry's statement as "full of lies", insisting the rebels carried out the attack.
State-run news agency Sana said Mr Kerry, who cited a US intelligence assessment, was using "material based on old stories which were published by terrorists over a week ago".
The US says its assessment is backed by accounts from medical personnel, witnesses, journalists, videos and thousands of social media reports.
UN chemical weapons inspectors are investigating the alleged poison-gas attacks and will present preliminary findings to the UN after they leave Damascus on Saturday.
But Mr Kerry said the US already had the facts, and nothing that the UN weapons inspectors found could tell the world anything new.
He highlighted evidence in the assessment that regime forces had spent three days in eastern Damascus preparing for the attack.
"We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and landed only in opposition-held areas," he said.
"All of these things we know, the American intelligence community has high confidence."
Mr Kerry called Mr Assad "a thug and a murderer" but said any response by the US would be carefully measured and would not involve a protracted campaign like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Previous
The S-300 missile How would Syria respond? French warplane Lessons from past conflicts The BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale What options does US have? A still from amateur footage 'Chemical' attack footage analysed A letter from the Speaker of the Syrian Parliament, to John Bercow, Speaker of the British Parliament What's in Damascus letter to UK?
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However, the UN Security Council is unlikely to approve any military intervention because permanent member Russia is a close ally of the Syrian government.
Russia, along with China, has vetoed two previous draft resolutions on Syria.
The US was also dealt a blow on Thursday when the UK parliament rejected a motion supporting the principle of military intervention.
The vote rules the UK out of any potential military alliance.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and Mr Obama spoke over the telephone on Friday, agreeing to continue to co-operate on international issues.
The president told Mr Cameron he "fully respected" the approach taken by the UK government, according to the prime minister's office.
US officials said they would continue to push for a coalition, and France said it was ready to take action in Syria alongside the US.
Neither France nor the US need parliamentary approval for action.
French President Francois Hollande, who also spoke to Mr Obama late on Friday, said the two men had agreed that the international community must "send a strong message" denouncing chemical attacks.
Another US ally, Turkey, called for action similar to the Nato bombing raids in the former Yugoslavia in 1999.
Nato carried out 70 days of air strikes to protect civilians from attack in Kosovo, despite not having a UN resolution.
Sarin stockpile
The use of chemical weapons is banned under several treaties, and considered illegal under customary international humanitarian law.
The Syrian army is known to have stockpiles of chemical agents including sarin gas.
Earlier accounts of the attack in Damascus quoted officials from medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres as saying 355 people had been killed.
The UN inspectors have collected various samples that will now be examined in laboratories across the world.
The UN team is not mandated to apportion blame for the attacks.
More than 100,000 people are estimated to have died since the conflict erupted in Syria in March 2011, and the conflict has produced at least 1.7 million refugees.
Forces which could be used against Syria:
• Four US destroyers - USS Gravely, USS Ramage, USS Barry and USS Mahan - are in the eastern Mediterranean, equipped with cruise missiles. The missiles can also be fired from submarines, but the US Navy does not reveal their locations
• Airbases at Incirlik and Izmir in Turkey, and in Jordan, could be used to carry out strikes
• Two aircraft carriers - USS Nimitz and USS Harry S Truman are in the wider region
• French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is currently in Toulon in the western Mediterranean
• French Raffale and Mirage aircraft can also operate from Al-Dhahra airbase in the UAE

Click to expand...

BBC News
MIDDLE EAST
30 August 2013 Last updated at 12:57 ET
France's Hollande backs US on Syria action
COMMENTS (665)
France is still ready to take action in Syria alongside the US, despite UK MPs blocking British involvement, President Francois Hollande has said.
He told Le Monde newspaper a strike within days could not be ruled out.
The US says it will continue to seek a coalition, and President Barack Obama is meeting his national security team.
The UN is investigating claims that the Syrian forces of President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons. Mr Assad denies the claims, blaming rebels.
UN chemical weapons inspectors visited a hospital in a government-controlled area of Damascus on Friday.
The UN says the whole team will leave Syria on Saturday. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the inspectors will then brief him on their preliminary findings.
Syrian officials say they will reject any "incomplete report" from the UN before the results of laboratory tests are known.
A UN spokesman later said the experts would try to "expedite" the report, but said no conclusions would be drawn until the full tests had been completed.
'France is ready'
Mr Ban met the five permanent members of the Security Council in New York earlier.
They have held talks twice already this week, but after the last meeting on Thursday, diplomats said they were "far apart".
Mr Ban was expected to give the US, UK, France, Russia and China more information about the timetable for the findings of the weapons inspectors.
Mr Hollande said the UK vote, in which parliament rejected a government motion supporting the principle of military action, made no difference to France's position.
"Each country is sovereign to participate or not in an operation. That is valid for Britain as it is for France," he said.
He said that if the UN Security Council was unable to act, a coalition would form including the Arab League and European countries.
"But there are few countries which can have the capacity of enforcing any sanction through the appropriate measures," he said.
"France will be part of it. France is ready."
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The S-300 missile How would Syria respond? French warplane Lessons from past conflicts The BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale What options does US have? A still from amateur footage 'Chemical' attack footage analysed A letter from the Speaker of the Syrian Parliament, to John Bercow, Speaker of the British Parliament What's in Damascus letter to UK?
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He ruled out strikes while the UN inspectors were in Syria. However he did not rule out the possibility that military action could be taken before next Wednesday, when the French parliament is due to debate the issue.
Neither France nor the US need parliamentary approval for action, and Secretary of State John Kerry said the US could not be held to the foreign policy of others.
The UK vote was welcomed in Russia, Syria's main international ally.
Moscow said it reflected a growing public understanding of the dangers of an attack.
And the BBC's Jeremy Bowen in Damascus says Syrian MPs are delighted with the UK vote.
He says they believe a letter they sent to the UK parliament inviting their British counterparts to inspect the evidence of chemical attacks had helped sway the vote against military action.
China, which has vetoed previous UN Security Council resolutions against Syria, reiterated on Friday that no action should be taken until the UN inspectors have reported on their findings.
And Germany said of military action that "such participation has not been sought nor is it being considered".
'Beyond doubt'
Officials in the US and UK had been insistent throughout the week that the Assad regime had carried out a poison-gas attack in eastern Damascus on 21 August in which hundreds were killed.
However British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament on Thursday he could not be 100% sure.
In the US, government officials briefed a Congressional committee on the case for launching action against Mr Assad's forces.
Eliot Engel, the top Democratic member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after the briefing that officials had said it was "beyond a doubt that chemical weapons were used, and used intentionally by the Assad regime".
Mr Engel said officials had cited evidence including "intercepted communications from high-level Syrian officials".
Reports in the US media this week described Syrian officials suggesting in phone conversations that the chemical weapons attack had been more devastating than was intended.
A Syrian general who defected and fled to Turkey last year told the BBC in Istanbul that the current head of the regime's chemical weapons programme had been killed.
Gen Adnan Sillu, who said he had once been head of the programme, claimed that his successor, Gen Mohamed Aslan, was responsible for last week's attack in Damascus.
Gen Sillu said Gen Aslan had been killed as part of the regime's attempt to destroy evidence of the attack.
His claim could not be independently verified.
More than 100,000 people are estimated to have died since the conflict erupted in Syria in March 2011, and the conflict has produced at least 1.7 million refugees.
Forces which could be used against Syria:
• Four US destroyers - USS Gravely, USS Ramage, USS Barry and USS Mahan - are in the eastern Mediterranean, equipped with cruise missiles. The missiles can also be fired from submarines, but the US Navy does not reveal their locations
• Airbases at Incirlik and Izmir in Turkey, and in Jordan, could be used to carry out strikes
• Two aircraft carriers - USS Nimitz and USS Harry S Truman are in the wider region
• French aircraft carrierCharles de Gaulle is currently in Toulon in the western Mediterranean
• French Raffale and Mirage aircraft can also operate from Al-Dhahra airbase in the UAE

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BBC News
EUROPE
28 August 2013 Last updated at 07:10 ET
Syria crisis: Gauging Russia's reactions to strike scenario
By Steven Rosenberg
BBC News, Moscow
There are two subjects Russians talk about a lot: history and geography. In recent days, there's been much public discussion of both.
Russian officials and the media have been constantly recalling "Yugoslavia - 1999", "Iraq - 2003" and "Libya - 2011" as examples of Western military intervention which resulted in regime change.
The suspicion in Moscow is that the West is plotting to add "Syria - 2013" to the list.
One of the headlines this week in the Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta was: "Will Obama risk repeating the Libyan-Iraqi scenario in Syria?"
Moscow appears now to be expecting a US strike on Syria. According to the head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Parliament, Alexei Pushkov: "It's only a question of time."
But the Russians have not stopped arguing their case that military intervention would be wrong.
'Monkey with a grenade'
First, Moscow maintains there is no proof that President Bashar al-Assad was behind the suspected chemical weapons attack in eastern Damascus.
If anything, argue the Russians, evidence points to the rebels carrying it out in order to scupper peace talks and to put pressure on the Syrian government.
Russia insists that UN weapons inspectors in Syria should be given time to complete their job, write up their report and present it to the UN Security Council.
Next, Russia continues to warn that military intervention will have "catastrophic consequences" for the wider region, including a rise in radical Islam. This week Russia's deputy prime minister tweeted that "the West is playing with the Islamic world like a monkey with a grenade".
Finally, Russia believes that any military action without a mandate from the UN Security Council would be a "grave violation of international law".
So if there is a military strike, how is Moscow likely to react?
On Wednesday, one of Russia's most popular tabloids, Komsomolskaya Pravda, warned that Western intervention could spark an East/West standoff akin to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
"If optimists in the Pentagon believe that Russia will limit itself to warnings and expressions of anger, like it did over Iraq and Yugoslavia, they may well be mistaken," the paper declared on its website.
"Times have changed. There's too much at stake and Moscow won't retreat... Who'll crack first: Putin or Obama?"
Such sabre-rattling may be exaggerated. Although Moscow has been a firm ally of President Assad, Russia is unlikely to be drawn into direct military confrontation with the West.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already made it clear that his country has "no plans to go to war with anyone".
But there are other ways in which Russia could display its disapproval of Western intervention and its anger with the United States.
Some commentators predict that Moscow may increase weapons supplies to Damascus, forge closer ties with Iran and reduce co-operation with Washington in different areas.
Relations between Russia and the West have been growing increasingly rocky.
There's little doubt that Western military intervention in Syria will make an already difficult relationship even more strained.

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And things keep rolling

Re: Mediterranean Naval Forces

Jeff Head said:

China will get to see, to some extent, how their equipment performs. But it will be tell-tale because it is probably not going to last very long, and there may be very little data if the cruise missiles are able to penetrate at low level and hit them with little warning.

However, if the US jams things to try and help that happen, they will get data from that.

The real winner in the intel/signals game is going to be the US though. They are not likely to loose and have destroyed the major platforms that moinitor this thing, and the Tomahawks will be sending data right up to when they hit. The US is going to see in detail how these things work if the Syrians actively use them for defense.

And, if they want to have any chance to mitigate the attacks, they will have to use them. It's why they bought them.

The US has all of the positions for these major and intermediate radars marked, both with GPS coordinates, and through inertia targeting. These sites are not going to escape destruction, it is just a matter of 1) Will they be able to help make any dent in the onslaught? and 2) How much intel will the US gather as they are used to try and do that?

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This is precisely why I think China should have naval assets in the region.

Any data the Syrians have would be fragmented and likely incomplete as a result of the strikes. That is assuming the Syrians give China everything they have.

An 054A sitting a few score miles off the coast can get a front role seat and soak up all the emissions and signals from all sides and also get a play by play of how the US conducts SEAD/DEAD missions. If the Russians decide to mess with the Americans by either actively emitting and illuminating US cruise missiles and aircraft for Syrian systems or directly engage US tomahawks themselves, then China will get to see how effective that is and how the US might respond.

That is a far better and safer intelligence gathering operation than some operatives on the ground with man portable sets who might be subject to another 'map error' strike by the US.

Re: Persian Gulf & Middle East News & Views

The YJ-27 radar was installed in 2006 and in 2007 the Israeli's flew right pass it when they bombed Syria's "nuclear reactor". And how is China going to collect data from those radar sites in Syria that will most likely be bombed ?

Re: Persian Gulf & Middle East News & Views



TAIPEI - If the US strikes Syria, China would get to see just how well some of its radars and electronic warfare (EW) emitters perform in combat.

Among the Chinese systems deployed by the Syrian military are the JYL-1 3-D long-range surveillance radar, Type 120 (LLQ120) 2D low-altitude acquisition radar, and JY-27 VHF long-range surveillance radar, according to Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the US-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

China would no doubt digest any performance data for use in a potential conflict with the US, which could be sparked by disputes over Taiwan, Senkaku Island or the South China Sea.

But the lessons would flow both ways. The Pentagon would scoop up wartime electronic emissions from the Chinese systems, and moreover, could test its own methods of countering the kind of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies and technologies that China is developing.

Fisher said the multiple types of Chinese radar strongly suggest that Beijing has been “providing much of the secure electronic infrastructure critical to the regime’s survival.”

He said Beijing has in the past used Chinese telecommunications firms to “militarily support its dictator clients” against the US. In the late 1990s, such firms linked Saddam Hussein’s radars via fiberoptic cables to better target US aircraft enforcing the U.S. no-fly zone.

“American fighter-bombers were actually bombing these cable nodes, that the Chinese would then rebuild,” he said.

A more urgent question is just how much of a threat the Chinese-augmented air-defense system would pose to attacking US planes.

Syria has 120 surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites armed with a mix of Russian and old Soviet systems: SA-2, SA-3, SA-5, and SA-6. It has 50 EW facilities with a mix of Chinese and Russian systems, said Sean O’Connor, editor of IMINT & Analysis, a US-based newsletter.

Modern Chinese EW radars can detect US low-observable aircraft and perhaps even very-low-observable ones, O’Connor said. Particularly effective are the two 500-km JY-27 radars delivered in 2006, now deployed north and south of the city of Palmyra in central Syria.

“The range of the JY-27 permits either site to monitor the bulk of Syrian airspace, along with a significant amount of the surrounding region,” he said.

Little is known directly about the less-capable Type 120 radar, but it is a derivative of the JY-29/LSS-1 2D radar, which can track 72 targets out to 200 km.

“The more refined Type 120 may improve on these specifications, but they are a logical baseline,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said the Type 120 likely acquires only range and azimuth data, making it best suited to supporting other radars. He said that China itself deploys the 120 with the HQ-9 and HQ-12 SAM systems, but that Syria might use it as a dedicated EW asset.

Syria has four Type 120 radar sites: Dar Ta`izzah, Baniyas, Tartus, and Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The JY-29s were initially misidentified in Syria as the F-band radar JY-11B Hunter-1 radars.

The 320-km JYL-1 3D radar is deployed at Kafr Buhum, O’Connor said. The radar has been misidentified in the past as the Chinese-built YLC-2V High Guard 3D long-range surveillance radar.

There is some question as to whether the Chinese sensors can pass data directly to the Soviet-era weapons, O’Connor said.

“A lack of interoperability would require voice transmission of target track data between nodes, a potential source for error and a signal likely to be targeted for interference if transmitted openly,” he said.

The US has reasonable information about Chinese radars, but what the US most likely lacks is an understanding on “Chinese EW game play,” said John Wise, UK-based radar analyst and creator of the radars.org.uk website.

Wise said the US and NATO have a distinct advantage in their ability to exercise hostile EW through the remit of the NATO Joint Electronic Warfare Core Staff.

“Tactical EW exercising is held as a very high priority in Western maritime operations, game play which has been extended to tactical exercises on land and NATO forces have the advantage of the experience from these exercises,” he said. “We do not know how the Syrian land army might respond in the face of hardhitting EW, assuming it recognizes it soon enough to actually respond.”

But there are no guarantees, he said.

“It would be wholly wrong of me to suggest that US jamming against any particular Chinese radar would be successful because of the variable factors,” which include range between jammer and target, element of surprise, and available jamming power per Mhz.

“As to false target generation, that can fox the best of radar operators if sensibly applied when least expected.” he said. “Timing of EW applications can be a critical factor.”

A key question is “whether Syria has come to grips with the operation of its Chinese equipment sufficiently to understand the difference between the results of black and noise jamming on radar displays,” Wise said.

Another question is whether Assad might have learned from Libya’s unsuccessful EW and air-defense efforts against NATO forces in 2011.

Ultimately, O’Connor believes Syria’s integrated air defense system cannot defeat a large-scale attack by the US and NATO. Despite the new Chinese systems, Syria still relies heavily on aging Russian and Soviet technology that has been encountered before by US and NATO forces.

“The bulk of the network does not represent a significant threat to modern combat aircraft, although any threat system should be regarded as potentially dangerous,” O’Connor said.

For example, the 250-km SA-5 SAM system can threaten intelligence-surveillance-radar aircraft and aerial tankers, he said.

O’Connor also said no one should expect Syrian rebels to degrade the government’s integrated air defense. The civil war has so far had little impact on the overall network, and the Syrian military retains control of the bulk of EW and SAM assets.

Will the US lose aircraft over Syria? In December 1983, two US Navy aircraft, one A-7E Corsair and an A-6E Intruder, were shot down while attacking Syrian air defense sites.