Chinese armed drones now flying across Mideast battlefields......
04 October 2018
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates; High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up.
Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure.
The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. It was Chinese.
Across the Middle East, countries locked out of purchasing U.S.-made drones due to rules over excessive civilian casualties are being wooed by Chinese arms dealers, who are world’s main distributor of armed drones.
“The Chinese product now doesn’t lack technology, it only lacks market share,”said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military analyst and former lecturer at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force University of Engineering. “And the United States restricting its arms exports is precisely what gives China a great opportunity.”
The sales are helping expand Chinese influence across a region vital to American security interests.
“It’s a hedging strategy and the Chinese will look to benefit from that,” said Douglas Barrie, an airpower specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I think the Chinese are far less liable to be swayed by concerns over civilian casualties,” he said.
At the start of the year, a satellite passing over southern Saudi Arabia photographed U.S.-made surveillance drones at an airfield, alongside Chinese-manufactured armed ones.
According to the Centre for the Study of the Drone at New York’s Bard College, that was the first documented example of the two drone systems being used in the war in Yemen. The country has emerged as a “sort of a testing ground for these strike-capable drones,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone. “There’s a rapid turnaround from delivery to deployment.”
U.S. drones were first used in Yemen to kill suspected al-Qaida militants in 2002.
One of the biggest Chinese exports is the Cai-Hong, or Rainbow, series made by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC, the largest contractor for the Chinese space program.
CASC’s CH-4 and CH-5 models are on a par with San Diego-based General Atomics’Predator and Reaper drones, and much cheaper. Independent analysts say the Chinese models lag behind their American counterparts but the technology is good enough to justify the price tag, which might be half or less.
A CASC executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists, said cutting-edge U.S. models like Boeing Co.’s Stingray, introduced this year for the U.S. Navy, still hold a technological advantage.
“And the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of demons, working miracles, who go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty”. [Revelation 16;12-14]
Syria’s S-300s are being integrated in Russia’s national nuclear C3 command and control system.............
October 4, 2018
When Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on October 2 that the “unified” S-300 air defence systems in Syria will be installed in Syria by October 20, he really meant its integration in the Russian homeland system.
This element of his report to President Vladimir Putin is the key to the real import of Moscow’s response to the downing of its Il-20 spy plane on September 17, for which Shoigu blamed Israel.
Reliable military and intelligence sources report that Putin seized on the disaster to establish in Syria an advanced air defence weapons system linked not only to the Russian Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, but integrated in Russia’s own C3 command, control and communications system against nuclear attack.
This move is a strategic game-changer for American and Israeli operations in Syria.
They are no longer taxed with staying clear of Russian and Syrian missile batteries in Damascus, but are facing their first direct contest with the air defence system which defends Russian cities.
Shoigu seemed to offer details on the S-300s delivered to Syria.
He mentioned 49 units of “radars, basic target acquisition systems, command posts and four launchers.”
But he carefully omitted to reveal how the Syrian and Russian air defence networks were to be linked to the command and control centre in Russia and exactly how they would function together.
A critical question remains open: Is the Syrian S-300 system fully integrated in the Russian homeland C-3 or only partially?
The C-3 is pretty much an unknown quantity for Western intelligence since Russian military engineers have been working tirelessly on upgrades for some months.
Israel military officers have wisely stopped boasting that their air force can easily handle the S-300s, having realized that the version of this anti-air system tested in Israeli war games in Greece and other places is more or less obsolete.
It has been has been replaced by a far more sophisticated S-300 which is the version shipped to Syria in the last two weeks.
Moscow has therefore substantially raised the stakes of the military contest between Russia and the United States in Syria to a much higher level.
Putin has chosen this arena to directly test Russia’s air defence capabilities against the US Air Force’s F-22 stealth plane and Israel’s US-made F-35 “Adir” super plane, to find out which comes out best.
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