I have been asked to comment on the recent missile attack in Syria. Since I know a thing or two about attacking airfields I guess I’m uniquely qualified to comment on this matter. Not that lack of qualification has ever stopped me from opening my mouth, mind you.
This is what we know:
The US Navy fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Shayrat Air Base.
We claim 58 of them hit their targets. The Russians claim only 23 hit. I’d say our estimate is closer to the truth but “fog of war” and all that.
We reportedly targeted: aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, defense systems, and radars.
I would say that all of those are good targets for a Tomahawk except for the hardened shelters and storage bunkers. The Navy has experimented with giving the Tomahawk “bunker busting” capability but the JMEWS (Joint Multi-Effects Warhead System) is not operational to my knowledge.
We claim 20 aircraft destroyed. The Russians claim only 9 were destroyed and these were out of commission at the time. That is entirely possible if the Russians had prior warning of the attack. They could have evacuated all the aircraft except for the “hangar queens” that were unflyable.
There are multiple flavors of Tomahawk missiles, but the “vanilla” ones carry a 1,000 pound high explosive warhead. These would do a lot of damage to aircraft in the open, vehicles, maintenance equipment, fuel storage and other “soft targets” like…...people.
These are not runway cratering weapons, which explains why the airfield was back in use shortly after the attack. Especially if the aircraft had been evacuated, as the Russians claim.
To crater a runway you need something that will penetrate the ground before it explodes.
I took part in an airfield-denial attack on the first night of the Gulf War. I wrote about it back in 2012, has it really been that long?
In 1991 we used a British 1,000 lb bomb with a hardened nose (like an artillery shell) and a delayed fuse. These guys would dig a hole in the ground and sit there ticking for as long as 24 hours, going off at random times. On top of that we used cluster munitions to scatter mines all over the place. The hardened shelters were then targeted by F-15E Strike Eagles using 2,000 lb laser-guided bombs.
The British Tornado fighters had a weapon that would shoot multiple bomblets into the runway. This was one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” weapons. In practice they were very vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire because they had to fly (predictably) down the length of the runway.
All of that, I was told, would put that airfield out of commission for maybe 3 days if they were determined to repair it (they didn’t). The lesson here being that it’s really hard to completely destroy an airfield. They’re big targets and most of it is empty space. You would have to make multiple follow-on attacks to keep it out of commission.
If we had wanted to “destroy” the airfield we’d have probably used a combination of Tomahawks and B-2s with precision guided bombs. That would have been much more expensive, with the B-2s requiring tanker support as well as other assets like Search and Rescue.
I was curious as to whether the Russian S-400 defense systems attempted to engage the Tomahawks. I found a pretty good article explaining why they didn’t. The S-400s would have been out of range to engage the low-flying cruise missiles. Presumably we’re smart enough to not send our missiles where they’re likely to get shot down.
The S-400 does have some capability against cruise missiles, but that’s not its primary target. The Russians have other systems that are tailored to low-flying tactical targets.
One reason we launched so many missiles would have been to “saturate” any defenses. If I throw a baseball at you, you could probably catch it (especially the way I throw). If I threw two, you might even catch both. If I threw eight, you’re not going to catch them all.
So what did we accomplish here? Well, we spent roughly $80 million to “send a message”. Think of it as very expensive political theater.
At best, the Syrian military will probably go back to slaughtering people the old fashioned way rather than risk another attack. Otherwise I doubt we did much other than thump our chest and go “me tough!” And you know how much we love to do that.
Oh, and my Raytheon stock went up. Cynic that I am, I went heavy into defense stocks after the election. I wish I could be wrong on this sort of thing.