The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[IanEye]

I had read somewhere that drones can be launched from subs now (in addition to missiles obviously).
I will see if I can find that article.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Aye: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-rele ... -submarine

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with funding from SwampWorks at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Department of Defense Rapid Reaction Technology Office (DoD/RRTO) demonstrated the launch of an all-electric, fuel cell-powered, unmanned aerial system (UAS) from a submerged submarine. From concept to fleet demonstration, this idea took less than six years to produce results at significant cost savings when compared to traditional programs often taking decades to produce results.

"Developing disruptive technologies and quickly getting them into the hands of our sailors is what our SwampWorks program is all about," said Craig A. Hughes, Acting Director of Innovation at ONR. "This demonstration really underpins ONR's dedication and ability to address emerging fleet priorities." The successful submerged launch of a remotely deployed UAS offers a pathway to providing mission critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to the U.S. Navy's submarine force. Operating under support of the Los Angeles class USS Providence (SSN 719) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Newport Division (NUWC-NPT), the NRL developed XFC UAS—eXperimental Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial System—was fired from the submarine's torpedo tube using a 'Sea Robin' launch vehicle system. The Sea Robin launch system was designed to fit within an empty Tomahawk launch canister (TLC) used for launching Tomahawk cruise missiles already familiar to submarine sailors.

Once deployed from the TLC, the Sea Robin launch vehicle with integrated XFC rose to the ocean surface where it appeared as a spar buoy. Upon command of Providence Commanding Officer, the XFC then vertically launched from Sea Robin and flew a successful several hour mission demonstrating live video capabilities streamed back to Providence, surface support vessels and Norfolk before landing at the Naval Sea Systems Command Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC), Andros, Bahamas. "This six-year effort represents the best in collaboration of a Navy laboratory and industry to produce a technology that meets the needs of the special operations community," said Dr. Warren Schultz, program developer and manager, NRL. "The creativity and resourcefulness brought to this project by a unique team of scientists and engineers represents an unprecedented paradigm shift in UAV propulsion and launch systems." The NRL Chemistry and Tactical Electronic Warfare Divisions team includes the design-builder of the Sea Robin, Oceaneering International Inc., Hanover, Md.; the fuel cell developer Protonex Technology Corp., Southborough, Mass.; and NUWC-NPT's Autonomous and Defensive Systems Department for Temporary Alteration (TEMPALT) and test demonstration support. The XFC is a fully autonomous, all electric fuel cell powered folding wing UAS with an endurance of greater than six hours. The non-hybridized power plant supports the propulsion system and payload for a flight endurance that enables relatively low cost, low altitude, ISR missions. The XFC UAS uses an electrically assisted take off system which lifts the plane vertically out of its container and therefore, enables a very small footprint launch such as from a pickup truck or small surface vessel.

[coffin_dodger]

The Synchronicity is strong today. Just heard an advert on the radio recruiting for the Royal Air Force. I can't remember the wording verbatim, but it ran something along the lines of - 'Join the Royal Air Force and you'll use technology so advanced that very few people know it exists' Yikes.

[AlicetheKurious]

Huge oil discovery in Golan Heights - Israeli media
Published time: 7 Oct, 2015 15:12

A big oil deposit has been found in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, with enough reserves to last Israel for decades, according to the country's media.

The Israeli presence in the Golan Heights is in dispute. The region is internationally recognized Syrian territory that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab states. UN Resolution 242 (1967) demands the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the conflict. Israel disagrees with the wording of the resolution, saying the territories are disputable.

Reportedly, the potential production may reach billions of barrels, while Israel consumes 270,000 barrels per day. Israel currently imports up to three quarters of its oil from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, the Financial Times reported in August.

"We are talking about a strata which is 350 meters thick and what is important is the thickness and the porosity. On average in the world strata are 20-30 meters thick, so this is ten times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities. The important thing is to know the oil is in the rock and that's what we now know," Israel business website Globes quotes Yuval Bartov, chief geologist of Afek Oil and Gas as saying. Afek is a subsidiary of the America’s Genie Energy.

The reported discovery coincides with the civil war raging in Syria. Israel has been accused of taking advantage of the conflict. The Israeli-occupied Golan Heights also border Syrian territory controlled by anti-government rebels. Israel has reportedly provided medical aid to the rebels and has responded to rocket fire from rebel-controlled territory by striking Syrian Army positions. Israel's explanation has been that it "holds the Syrian military responsible for all events stemming from its territory." Link

[MinM]

Huge oil discovery in Golan Heights - Israeli media
Published time: 7 Oct, 2015 15:12

A big oil deposit has been found in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, with enough reserves to last Israel for decades, according to the country's media.

The Israeli presence in the Golan Heights is in dispute. The region is internationally recognized Syrian territory that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab states. UN Resolution 242 (1967) demands the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the conflict. Israel disagrees with the wording of the resolution, saying the territories are disputable.

Reportedly, the potential production may reach billions of barrels, while Israel consumes 270,000 barrels per day. Israel currently imports up to three quarters of its oil from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, the Financial Times reported in August.

"We are talking about a strata which is 350 meters thick and what is important is the thickness and the porosity. On average in the world strata are 20-30 meters thick, so this is ten times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities. The important thing is to know the oil is in the rock and that's what we now know," Israel business website Globes quotes Yuval Bartov, chief geologist of Afek Oil and Gas as saying. Afek is a subsidiary of the America’s Genie Energy.

The reported discovery coincides with the civil war raging in Syria. Israel has been accused of taking advantage of the conflict. The Israeli-occupied Golan Heights also border Syrian territory controlled by anti-government rebels. Israel has reportedly provided medical aid to the rebels and has responded to rocket fire from rebel-controlled territory by striking Syrian Army positions. Israel's explanation has been that it "holds the Syrian military responsible for all events stemming from its territory." Link

Sounds like the slant-drilling scenario that was used to setup Saddam.

[AlicetheKurious]

Sounds like the slant-drilling scenario that was used to setup Saddam.

No, Israel doesn't need to slant drill into the Golan: the territory is illegally occupied by the Zionist entity, so it can just steal what it wants by drilling straight down.

Israel Grants First Golan Heights Oil Drilling License To Dick Cheney-Linked Company

Michael B Kelley

Feb. 22, 2013, 2:45 PM 94,194 10

Israel has granted a U.S. company the first license to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports.

A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

That geographic location will likely prove controversial. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. Its administration of the area — which is not recognized by international law — has been mostly peaceful until the Syrian civil war broke out 23 months ago.

"This action is mostly political – it’s an attempt to deepen Israeli commitment to the occupied Golan Heights," Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi told FT. "The timing is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is dealing with violence and chaos and is not free to deal with this problem.”

There are about 20,000 Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights.

Earlier this month we reported that Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area.

The move would overtake the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone that was established in 1973 to end the Yom Kippur War and to provide a buffer zone between the two countries.

Reed notes that recent natural gas finds off Israel’s coast in the Mediterranean have made the country's offshore gas reserve one of the largest of its kind in the world, meaning Israel may become a significant energy exporter in its region.

http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-g ... nse-2013-2

[Searcher08]

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/02/israel-grants-oil-rights-in-syria-to-murdoch-and-rothschild/
Israel Grants Oil Rights in Syria to Murdoch and Rothschild

by craig on February 21, 2013 2:24 pm in Uncategorized

Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release:

Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”

“I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”

For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria.

In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.

[backtoiam]

Now that Russia is winning the war on terror the police can stop being such assholes.

[backtoiam]

By Lolita C. Baldor - Associated Press - Friday, October 9, 2015

LONDON (AP) — The U.S. will overhaul the failed Syrian rebel training program, working more closely with capable Kurdish and other forces in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday.

No details were immediately available, but the $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group is widely considered a failure. It has produced fewer than 80 soldiers, many of whom had fled, been captured or killed in early fighting.

Carter said at a news conference in London that the work the U.S. has done with the Kurds is a good example of an effective approach with a capable, motivated ground combat force. He did not provide more details.

U.S. officials have said the new effort would focus more on embedding recruits with established Kurdish and Arab units, rather than sending them directly into front-line combat. Last week, a commander of one of the U.S.-trained rebel units turned over a half-dozen U.S. vehicles to extremist militants.

“The work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria is an example of an effective approach,” Carter said. “That’s exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward.”

He called it a “more strategic approach” than what the U.S. has been doing from the beginning. “We have been looking for now several weeks at ways to improve that program,” Carter said. “I wasn’t satisfied with the early efforts in that regard.”

Instead of fighting IS in small units, the U.S.-trained rebels would be attached to larger existing Kurdish and Arab forces. They would be equipped with U.S. communications gear and trained to provide intelligence and to designate IS targets for airstrikes in coordination with U.S. troops outside of Syria, the officials said.

The $500 million training program has been beset by a series of embarrassing setbacks. The first group of trainees largely disbanded soon after they were sent into combat; some were captured or killed, while others fled. A second class yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from U.S. lawmakers who condemned the program as a joke and a failure.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. Lloyd Austin, acknowledged that the program got off “to a slow start” and he told Congress that he looking at options that would best employ the moderate forces.

Officials have also said the new plan also scales back the number of rebels the U.S. expects to train from the initial 5,400 per year to a much smaller total. It also would streamline the vetting process designed to weed out terrorist infiltrators.

Copyright © 2015 The Washington Times, LLC.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... g-program/

[Wombaticus Rex]

No details were immediately available, but the $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group is widely considered a failure. It has produced fewer than 80 soldiers,

6.25 million per fighter? Sounds legit!

We could probably stuff a Boston Dynamics Killbot into a fucking TALOS suit for less than that.

[AlicetheKurious]

Actually, the final figure was "four or five" actual fighters. At a cost of $500 million to US taxpayers. You do the math. (And Americans thing SYRIANS need a revolution.... )

[PufPuf93]

This is probably total bull shit.

Russia has kind of pointed out that the Emperor wears no clothes.

Russia just handed ISIS a 'big win' in Syria's largest city

The terror group ISIS made gains near Syria's largest city in the last 24 hours, indirectly aided by Russian airstrikes that drove other groups out.

ISIS militants seized five villages on the northern edge of Aleppo, putting them within 1 mile of territory held by the Syrian regime, Reuters reports.

Russian airstrikes in the area reportedly killed hundreds of anti-regime rebels, many of whom ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh) was also fighting.

"Daesh has exploited the Russian air strikes and the preoccupation of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army in its battles in Hama, and advanced in Aleppo," one rebel commander told Reuters.

Hassan Hassan, an expert on Syria who recently coauthored the book "ISIS: Insider the Army of Terror," told Business Insider that ISIS' gains near Aleppo are a "big win."

"I’m sure ISIS has sleeper cells in Aleppo," Hassan said. "If they pushed, if they held their ground then that would be … a big win for them.

"They could actually establish a foothold inside Aleppo, and it also helps them to make more progress in Hama," another key city in western Syria......

More (including nice maps) at:

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-j ... ty-2015-10

[zangtang]

utter wholesale disconnect from reality.
some things aren't funny anymore.
Not that it was funny, but that was a way to pretend to cope.
What this is like if it (the USA........ooh rah, git sum!)
is your country, i cannot imagine........

How many milestones or watersheds do you need? I guess there is no one event but a spectrum of individual realisations that you need a
comprehensive political financial cultural and personal revolution and you need it now....which of course is not easy (!!!!!)
but you might as well because the alternative is to pretend you have a choice which you don't.

It might be instructive to get an accounting of that 500 million - if its possible to do that without getting locked in a shipping container & being threatened with death (remember that?)
guess the best you could hope for is that the actual money went to private military contractors offering 'consultancy services' & that the cash is at least in american,albeit corrupt
war-profiteering hands. to be spent in the U.S.
I think i could take test pilots & turn them into astronauts for less money, but i'm sure the pentagon knows what its doing. They have, after all, won so many wars.
- but enough cynicism....the real positive spin here is the U.S.' laudable attitude to abject failure, however humiliating on the world stage, & to remind us all, as Hollywood & the positive thinking
cottage industry unceasingly bludgeon us, that 'winners never quit' (ooh rah). Excellent softening-up for some shit-useless Pentagon/ White house spin-wonk to tell you that
'Lessons have been learned'....& then go out do exactly the same thing, do it worse, &have it cost you twice as much money................that you don't have.

I'm tired of being right, & you're prolly tired of listening.
- Just tell 'em my price went up to 94 thousand a day, & don't hang about -
it'll be 110 by Tuesday.
- plus expenses !!!

[AlicetheKurious]

This is probably total bull shit.

I'm not up on the latest news, but it sure looks like it. The "big gains" by "ISIS" being trumpeted in the media, are of positions already known to be held by anti-government terrorists by whatever name they call themselves. It should be clear by now that the various terrorist groups have revolving doors, with individuals switching back and forth between them. In effect, they're the same people, they're run by the same handlers, and they switch names like some people switch hats: one day it's Al-Qaeda, then it's the so-called Free Syrian Army, then it's ISIS, then it's Syrian Conquest, etc., etc.

According to this map published by The Atlantic on September 11, 2015, they've been surrounding Aleppo for some time. Today, the US badly needed some propaganda, so presto! "ISIS" has made gains! The terrorists around Aleppo are no longer gobbledy-gook, but "ISIS"! I have no doubt they will get their asses kicked anyway, whatever they call themselves.

[conniption]

This is probably total bull shit.

I'm not up on the latest news, but it sure looks like it. The "big gains" by "ISIS" being trumpeted in the media, are of positions already known to be held by anti-government terrorists by whatever name they call themselves. It should be clear by now that the various terrorist groups have revolving doors, with individuals switching back and forth between them. In effect, they're the same people, they're run by the same handlers, and they switch names like some people switch hats: one day it's Al-Qaeda, then it's the so-called Free Syrian Army, then it's ISIS, then it's Syrian Conquest, etc., etc.
...

and one day it's...

British SAS Special Forces “Dressed Up as ISIS Rebels” Fighting Assad in Syria
By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, August 04, 2015