High-Precision American Weapons Didn’t Really Work

On Friday morning, our military correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny sent the very first shots from the Syrian airbase Shayrat immediately after the missile strike. Today we can show more. Here is a new report from Yevgeny. This video was made just a few hours after the American Tomahawks exploded on the territory of the Syrian military base of Shayrat. The fire in some hangars hadn’t been eliminated yet, and ammunition is detonating. 59 sea-based cruise missiles, precision weapons. This was really a massive strike. Members of our group expected to see a completely destroyed airbase, but it turned out that the airfield was damaged, but not critically. Our group drove down the runway. You can see that there are no hits, that is, the runway is intact. Covered parking for aviation equipment became the target of the American military. Some hangars were completely destroyed, somewhere everything that was inside was burned down. Here are the results of the Tomahawk missile strike. It can be seen that the ammunition hit exactly in the center of the covered hangar. As a result of the explosion, the plane was completely destroyed. Right after the first cruise missile strikes, the eyewitnesses, officers of the Syrian Air Force, came here. The south-eastern part of the airport, in particular several warehouses with ammunition, suffered the most. Several MiG-23 aircraft were destroyed. The first missile fell into the warehouse with petrol, oil and lubricants. The fire covered an area of more than 70 meters. That's what's left of the fuel storage. Here, according to the Syrian military, there was the biggest fire. Here are the planes that weren’t damaged during the American cruise missiles strike. Here is the shell hole, which appeared after the hit of the American cruise missile. One of the taxiways near the runway was destroyed. The strike, which cost the US budget more than a hundred million dollars, and the American president — his reputation, didn’t destroy, but only damaged the airfield at Homs. Later, after that became known, an active information confrontation began. 12 hours after the strike, the Western propagandists began to state that Trump ordered to hit the base because that would have protected the opponents of Bashar Assad from chemical attacks. As an evidence, fragments of the video were used, which was published by the VGTRK film crew. Many users of social networks said that these containers were used for chemical weapons storage. They claim that the Syrian military kept them at the Shayrat airbase. This is why the US military struck at this airfield with cruise missiles. In fact, these are the front blocks for standard containers. Here is the marking, BKF. They are transported in blocks of 8 pieces and attached to the pylons of aircraft and helicopters. They are used to drop bombs and mines. These tanks have the same relation to chemical weapons as did the test tube in Mr. Powell's hands to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which were never found. But the country was destroyed. To say that chemical weapons can be stored in these blocks is like saying that combat chemical agents can be transported in a plain canister. But here's what's important. Shayrat airbase is the key airfield in the Homs Governorate. From here pilots took off every day to strike the positions of ISIS militants, that is, they fought against the terrorists near Palmyra. The American attack helped the radical Islamists from ISIS to buy some time to regroup, and the militants quickly took advantage of the opportunity that the US Navy gave them. They attacked the positions of the Syrian army soldiers at the highway connecting Homs and Palmyra to cut off the road, which is the main path of supplying a group of government forces in Tadmor. The attack was unsuccessful. The terrorists didn’t reach the road, but the Syrian military suffered losses. The first take-off of the plane from the Shayrat airbase after the missile strike by the US military. As a result of the shelling, we didn’t suffer significant losses. In a matter of hours, the base restored its combat capability. The old planes, which were subject to pension-off and disposal, and the equipment that was under repair suffered the most damage. The pilots fly Sukhoi Su-22 bomber-fighters. These are the planes that were on the airfield at the time of the US attack. And this wasn’t done to prove anything to the Americans and those who supported Mr. Trump's decision. Every day the Syrian army repels the attacks by the radical groups. Damascus need the airfield in the center of the country to support ground forces.