Yemeni Conflict: News #3

Thanks for the pictures. How convenient of the USA to provide them so quickly and with such high resolution. Recall the harvesters in the Donbass being passed off as
Russian artillery pieces several years ago using grainy US "spy photographs". The chorus of Iran did it coming from the USA and its minions is grotesque.

To me it looks like most of the damage is to storage tanks. Some cracking towers got hit, but this is not a 5 month rebuild project as it currently stands.

The "hits" in the first picture don't seem to be hits. Too clean, too much identical abd there is sign of explosion behind.

The other destroyed things are made in many copies. It's something like 1 or 2 out 10 destroyed. It's hard to believed such attack destroyed 50% of their capacity to produce oil.

It seems saoudis or US emplified the attack to have a reason to attack Iran.

@magnumcromagnus

Why these pictures show no smoke? There was a lot of smoke on TV.  Are all these storage tanks empty? Also the pictures do reveal who did this. If pictures are real. The reason is position of impacts. Indicating position of travel of missile. Since highly unlikely attacker would do terminal manouver to hit from different direction to hide identity. So position indicates where fired from. Can you put compass on map? Looks like West, south west.

So the Yanks and Co, must admit that air war against Yemen failed. Saudi faces defeat. No question. To possibly subdue the Yemen, they need  ground troops. How many? At least as many as they needed in Iraq. And the extent of Saudi ground troop streangth, is a imited engagement, resulting in eight dead Saudi troop. Pathetic. So ground troop must be yank. And if they have no such intention, then accept failed policy and stop air war against Yemen.

To achieve that kind of accuracy the Houtis must have had some kind of external assistance. Maybe they just claimed it.

Could it be the Israelis, who seem to operate all over the ME, stirring up the Iran situation ahead of the Israeli elections..

Wow

It all looks rather like the intro to a Tom Clancy novel

What the Houthis really need to do is launch some missiles at the presidential palace. Of course, that would make a war in the Middle East pretty much inevitable.

ABC News: Iran fired cruise missiles in attack on Saudi oil facility: Senior U.S. official

nomadski wrote:@magnumcromagnus

Why these pictures show no smoke? There was a lot of smoke on TV.  Are all these storage tanks empty? Also the pictures do reveal who did this. If pictures are real. The reason is position of impacts. Indicating position of travel of missile. Since highly unlikely attacker would do terminal manouver to hit from different direction to hide identity. So position indicates where fired from. Can you put compass on map? Looks like West, south west.

So the Yanks and Co, must admit that air war against Yemen failed. Saudi faces defeat. No question. To possibly subdue the Yemen, they need  ground troops. How many? At least as many as they needed in Iraq. And the extent of Saudi ground troop streangth, is a imited engagement, resulting in eight dead Saudi troop. Pathetic. So ground troop must be yank. And if they have no such intention, then accept failed policy and stop air war against Yemen.

Houties use cruise missiles. They could program their path and write coordinates of targets in them. Flypath from northwest could only show, they use longer path to avoid detection. Why there was no smoke? Most probably fire was under high pressure and smoke was forming far away from objects.

Isos wrote:The "hits" in the first picture don't seem to be hits. Too clean, too much identical abd there is sign of explosion behind.

The other destroyed things are made in many copies. It's something like 1 or 2 out 10 destroyed. It's hard to believed such attack destroyed 50% of their capacity to produce oil.

It seems saoudis or US emplified the attack to have a reason to attack Iran.

Storages are not that problematic. Missiles also hit towers and usualy in those towers are reactors, where the process is going on. Problem is, that such reactors they could only replace with new ones and that take time and when reactor is out, whole chain is out. For sure iranian help Houties to program those missiles as they are iranian design. And Iranians know, how such plants work.

medo wrote:

nomadski wrote:@magnumcromagnus

Why these pictures show no smoke? There was a lot of smoke on TV.  Are all these storage tanks empty? Also the pictures do reveal who did this. If pictures are real. The reason is position of impacts. Indicating position of travel of missile. Since highly unlikely attacker would do terminal manouver to hit from different direction to hide identity. So position indicates where fired from. Can you put compass on map? Looks like West, south west.

So the Yanks and Co, must admit that air war against Yemen failed. Saudi faces defeat. No question. To possibly subdue the Yemen, they need  ground troops. How many? At least as many as they needed in Iraq. And the extent of Saudi ground troop streangth, is a imited engagement, resulting in eight dead Saudi troop. Pathetic. So ground troop must be yank. And if they have no such intention, then accept failed policy and stop air war against Yemen.

Houties use cruise missiles. They could program their path and write coordinates of targets in them. Flypath from northwest could only show, they use longer path to avoid detection. Why there was no smoke? Most probably fire was under high pressure and smoke was forming far away from objects.

Hold your horses, dude. The photos are from a remote location that would have intersected any smoke plume. Also, we are not dealing with a hydrogen flame, but a hydrocarbon flame. Given
the function of this facility, the spectrum from heavy to light HC molecules is very large. So there would be both smoke and fire at the storage tank rupture. And it would be thick black smoke due to
incomplete combustion routine for such fires. This is not a petroleum gas facility like the one that blew up in Mexico during the 1970s. That facility had a light, highly flammable oil fractions that
did not burn and produce black smoke, but was basically a fuel-air bomb that leveled the entire facility. There is no evidence of catastrophic explosion in this Saudi incident.

These photos raise more questions than the answer. Looks like a doctored set aimed at non-experts and aimed at false-flagging a war on Iran.

yavar wrote:

ABC News: Iran fired cruise missiles in attack on Saudi oil facility: Senior U.S. official

Those US idiots realy don't know, what they are talking. If Iran launches cruise missiles, they would come over Persian gulf and claiming that no US or Saudi satelitte, warship, AWACS plane, fighter plane, EW radar, air defense battery could not detect they as well as all the restm of NATO warships in Gulf, than this is epic failure. Abd they want to attack Iran...

kvs wrote:

medo wrote:

nomadski wrote:@magnumcromagnus

Why these pictures show no smoke? There was a lot of smoke on TV.  Are all these storage tanks empty? Also the pictures do reveal who did this. If pictures are real. The reason is position of impacts. Indicating position of travel of missile. Since highly unlikely attacker would do terminal manouver to hit from different direction to hide identity. So position indicates where fired from. Can you put compass on map? Looks like West, south west.

So the Yanks and Co, must admit that air war against Yemen failed. Saudi faces defeat. No question. To possibly subdue the Yemen, they need  ground troops. How many? At least as many as they needed in Iraq. And the extent of Saudi ground troop streangth, is a imited engagement, resulting in eight dead Saudi troop. Pathetic. So ground troop must be yank. And if they have no such intention, then accept failed policy and stop air war against Yemen.

Houties use cruise missiles. They could program their path and write coordinates of targets in them. Flypath from northwest could only show, they use longer path to avoid detection. Why there was no smoke? Most probably fire was under high pressure and smoke was forming far away from objects.

Hold your horses, dude.   The photos are from a remote location that would have intersected any smoke plume.      Also, we are not dealing with a hydrogen flame, but a hydrocarbon flame.   Given
the function of this facility, the spectrum from heavy to light HC molecules is very large.    So there would be both smoke and fire at the storage tank rupture.  And it would be thick black smoke due to
incomplete combustion routine for such fires.    This is not a petroleum gas facility like the one that blew up in Mexico during the 1970s.   That facility had a light, highly flammable oil fractions that
did not burn and produce black smoke, but was basically a fuel-air bomb that leveled the entire facility.    There is no evidence of catastrophic explosion in this Saudi incident.

These photos raise more questions than the answer.    Looks like a doctored set aimed at non-experts and aimed at false-flagging a war on Iran.

There are also just holes in objects and no traces of explosions. Could be, that Houties take warhead out and replace it with additional fuel for longer flypath. To burn rafinery they don't need exploding warhead.

medo wrote:

There are also just holes in objects and no traces of explosions. Could be, that Houties take warhead out and replace it with additional fuel for longer flypath. To burn rafinery they don't need exploding warhead.

Amazingly placed holes at that. Stunning accuracy. Could almost be hand placed

Remains of drones and cruise missiles.


Back part with small wings from cruise missiles are from Quds-1 cruise missile, which were made in Yemen.

Abqaiq oil processing facility is defended by 3 batteries of Skyguard, 1 battery of Shahine (Crotale) and 1 unit of Patriot. Considering, that drones and cruise missiles were flying from Yemen and Saudi army have strong presence at Yemeni border together with air defense and they keep naval blocade with warships, which are armed with Aster missiles, than it is a realy good question, how they manage to avoid them. There is also a question, where are stationed french VL MICA SAM complexes. If they are stationed at the border and those drones and missiles manage to fly over them undetected, than it is a big fiasco for France as well.

Saudi Col al-Maliki spokesman for Islamic NATO alliance press conference claim of evidence Iran attack on Aramco oil-processing facility Abqaiq
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/18/saudi-oil-attack-rouhani-dismisses-us-claims-of-iran-role-as-slander

yavar wrote:Saudi Col al-Maliki spokesman for Islamic NATO alliance press conference claim of evidence Iran attack on Aramco oil-processing facility Abqaiq
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/18/saudi-oil-attack-rouhani-dismisses-us-claims-of-iran-role-as-slander

Saudis are bad at lying and twisting reality. They try to prove, attack was done from Iran by Ya Ali cruise missiles, which have range of 700 km. Ya Ali are totally different missiles.



Ya Ali is smaller, have engine inside and only air intake under the missile in square small stabilization wings in the back. YOu have to forget for booster behind, which only push missile to needed speed and altitude.

Remains are clearly from Yemeni Quds-1 cruise missile.



Quds-1 LACM from Yemen.



Reality.

Instead of attempting to create phantasious excuses for what happened, Saudi Arabia should abandon procurement of defensive systems from a country that has created its entire military structure mostly around the idea that opponents would be always no more than weak insulated nations to be attacked in big coalitions with overwhelming forces and that ,therefore, only offensive doctrine and systems should be developed.....for the others nuclear deterrence would be more than sufficient.

I have said more times in the pasted years that military (particularly airfields and command centers) and civilian infrastructures defended by western "integrated air defense systems" are at today ridiculously exposed to even the most trivial missile/UAV attack and that those attacks, in absence of a robust, dense and multilayered IAD with active and passive hard/soft defeating elements , could in few minutes reduce hundreds of billions of dollar investment in offensive air force and ISR assets in burning scrap.

The problem experienced by Saudi Arabia lie mostly in:

- Narrow field of view coverage of Patriot missile battery radar -120 degrees at optimum conditions -,easily exploitable by any competent enemy flight pact planner of a cruise (even subsonic ones) or ballistic missile attack.
- Lack of low altitude bi-band radar network
- Lack of highly mobile, advanced SHORAD systems with high number of interceptors capable of engagement at extreme altitudes
- Lack of multisystem EW network with role-optimized elements


Nothing of that is efectively available from US and European firms.

Defense of Abqaiq rafinery compose 3 batteries of Skyguard AA guns and one battery of Crotale SHORAD. They are there exactly to engage low flying drones and missiles.

Saudi Arabia also poses the most modern European (French) SHORAD/medium range SAM complex VL MICA, which is supposed to engage such targets.

None of them was designed to engage small and slow drones.

Mica is r-77 generation air to air missile designed to fight mig-29 and su-27 not small drones. Mica VL doesn't change the fact since it's the same missile with the same radar.

IMO such system are programed to reject slow and low flying targets because 99.99% of the time it would be birds. You don't want your radar screen to see hundreds of birds, specially when there is an attack going on. That would increase the computing time of all the targets by the computer but also make the work of the radar operator very difficult as he would have 100 targets on a screen as big as the screen of your computer.

Most of AD struggle when it comes to see slow helicopter which are huge targets.


The only system designed to fight slow and low flying object are tor and pantsirs. And there should be very little radars that could see them for an early detection.

Looks like the Saudis have just suffered their biggest defeat so far....

3 Saudi brigades fell in hands of Yemen’s Houthi fighters in Najran south of Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds killed/injured and detained. A huge quantity of  weapon including armored vehicles. Saudi senior officers among the war prisoners.

The operation is the biggest ever.

https://twitter.com/narrabyee/status/1177950290852618240

Video
https://twitter.com/i/status/1177954371461681152

https://www.armyrecognition.com/france_french_army_vehicle_missile_systems_uk/vl_mica_land_short_range_missile_system_technical_data_sheet_specifications_description_pictures.html

The MBDA VL MICA (Missile d’interception et de combat aérien, “Interception and Aerial Combat Missile”) is an anti-air multi-target, all weather, fire-and-forget short and medium-range missile system. It is intended for use both by air platforms as individual missiles as well as ground units and ships, which can be equipped with the rapid fire VL MICA Vertical Launch System. VL MICA provides an optimum level of defence against a wide range of targets, including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and UAVs. Moreover, its characteristics (fire-and-forget guidance, vertical launch) make it particularly effective against saturation attacks carried out by a large number of low signature targets such as guided bombs or missiles and cruise missiles attacking from any direction (360° coverage). Thanks to its range and altitude, VL MICA’s performance in providing area defence, the protection of highly sensitive civilian or military assets as well as cover for manoeuvring land forces is unmatched by any other low-level air defence system.

Yemen Ansarullah, Ambushed inside Saudi Arabia, 3 Saudi brigades destroyed, and capture/kill large number of Saudi personal in Saudi Arabia south Najran

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/09/28/607363/Three-Saudi-brigades-destroyed-1000s-of-mercs-taken-hostage-in-Najran-offensive-Yemeni-Army-spox

Great victory for Houties. Congratulations. Saudi army is becoming epic disaster. Where is Homer, when you need him? I hope Hollywood is now making new movies about great Saudi victories ehm failures.

Now to return to VL MICA. It is designed to engage such targets as drones and cruise missiles and those were not made by stealth technology. VL Mica is the most modern European (French) and western SAM complex together with its German counterpart Iris-T SL, they are of the same generation and are the most modern western complexes. There is nothing more modern in that class in the West. On the paper, those drones and cruise missiles should not be a problem for Mica. Even if they fly outside missile range, they should be well detected by their most modern AESA radars. VL MICA and Iris-T SL cost enormous amount of money and such targets should be only basic shooting drill.