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SSNeoman posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean Turkey's OP ain't going well? Those positions went from blue to green p quick. no, green and pink and blue were all turkey-oriented forces they're expanding, just more slowly than i thought
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Aug 29, 2016 18:00
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Aliquid posted:no, green and pink and blue were all turkey-oriented forces Gotta give ISIS enough time to pack up all their stuff.
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Aug 29, 2016 18:02
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pretty much
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Aug 29, 2016 18:05
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Huh, maybe the Sajur river will be a boundary after all: https://twitter.com/GlobalEventMap/status/770239500802985984 quote:The SDF does not control any territory north of Sajur river after the rebels launched their offensive today. https://twitter.com/sayed_ridha/status/770205198895583232 quote:Kurdish official tells al-Mayadeen: Kurdish forces refused request by US to go towards Raqqa And now, an FSA/rebel advance on a completely unexpected front: https://twitter.com/QalaatAlMudiq/status/770241492799614976 quote:Breaking. Rebels took control of the town of Helfaya in N. #Hama, major gain of the offensive started this morning. http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=35.259357&lon=36.606445&z=12&m  Helfaya/Halfaya is apparently a pretty big town (21,180 in the 2004 census, for what that's worth), so this is a bigger loss for the SAA than it initially appears to be.
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Aug 29, 2016 18:37
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fade5 posted:Huh, maybe the Sajur river will be a boundary after all: The area was mostly inhabited by Levantines and Shia Muslims and has been part of the war front for quite some time. In other words, Helfaya is probably a ghost town.
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Aug 29, 2016 19:10
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Here's a map of the gains near Hama today https://twitter.com/QalaatAlMudiq/status/770268135018602500
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Aug 29, 2016 19:11
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The official Euphrates Shield Twitter account is doing animated gifs now https://twitter.com/EuphratesShield/status/770323605641170945 Another recent map of the border area https://twitter.com/Nawaroliver/status/770323981320744960 Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 19:16
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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/turkish-backed-syrian-rebels-advance-manbij-160829154225197.html Turkish-backed Syrian rebels advance towards Manbij FSA fighters head towards northern Syrian city recently captured by the YPG, as the US tells all sides to stand down. jesus christ US. you've created and endorsed a monster. it's obvious the US got played hard by Turkey.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:17
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Whelp Raqqa ain't never gonna fall.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:19
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My guess is that Turkey pretty much said they're doing it whether we support it or not, and we climbed on board as much as a face saving measure/attempt to moderate the incursion as anything. Then once they got rolling, Turkey pretty much figured they may as well do what they really wanted to do, especially since Russia seems more or less okay with it. Even if the US decided to throw Turkey out of NATO or just end bilateral military cooperation, it's not like we're going to start a war with a regional power over it.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:20
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Does anyone know who these rebels are that Turkey is supporting? FSA remnants? Al-Sham? "Turkmens" whoever they were? Literally ISIS?
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Aug 29, 2016 20:21
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Sinteres posted:My guess is that Turkey pretty much said they're doing it whether we support it or not, and we climbed on board as much as a face saving measure/attempt to moderate the incursion as anything. Then once they got rolling, Turkey pretty much figured they may as well do what they really wanted to do, especially since Russia seems more or less okay with it. Even if the US decided to throw Turkey out of NATO or just end bilateral military cooperation, it's not like we're going to start a war with a regional power over it. But if this is their thinking, why didn't they do this months ago when the YPG crossed the Euphrates? This is all changing so quickly. If the US is actually being hosed over by this they can respond, they have a wide variety of levers they can use to move Turkey around. But maybe the US is completely ok with all this?
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Aug 29, 2016 20:24
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Count Roland posted:But if this is their thinking, why didn't they do this months ago when the YPG crossed the Euphrates? Erdogan has a lot more political capital at home after the coup attempt than he did before, and has a lot less to fear from alienating pro-American elements in the military. The continued PKK and ISIS attacks strengthened his hand too; it's hard for us to say he has no basis for his actions when our own involvement in Syria is based on considerably less than that. The problem for us is that it definitely seems to be aimed at punishing the YPG more than fighting ISIS. Even if that was predictable, maybe Washington was hoping for the best if we tried bear hugging him in the early days. Or maybe we'll just decide we're okay with it because a rupture with Turkey is unthinkable, even if they're making GBS threads all over the policy we've been working on while they did nothing against ISIS for years. It'll be interesting to see if we do anything beyond the White House saying the equivalent of 'why can't we all just get along?'
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Aug 29, 2016 20:31
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Count Roland posted:Does anyone know who these rebels are that Turkey is supporting? FSA remnants? Al-Sham? "Turkmens" whoever they were? Literally ISIS? Here you go, FSA and Turkmen: https://twitter.com/metesohtaoglu/status/770237736406179844
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Aug 29, 2016 20:34
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Ham posted:Here you go, FSA and Turkmen: Thanks. Though I'd thought the FSA was all but defunct at this point? The US had stopped calling them "moderate rebels" ages ago, and they had a pretty drat low bar for moderate, useful allies.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:55
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Count Roland posted:Thanks. Though I'd thought the FSA was all but defunct at this point? The US had stopped calling them "moderate rebels" ages ago, and they had a pretty drat low bar for moderate, useful allies. You thought wrong. You can't go a day without seeing a development from an FSA affiliated group. It's like saying you thought the IRGC weren't in Syria. It takes a conscious effort to gloss over something so ubiquitous.
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Aug 29, 2016 21:19
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Young Freud posted:Footage of a supposed urban sweep operation in Jarabulus. So much sweeping! 
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Aug 29, 2016 21:24
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Volkerball posted:You thought wrong. You can't go a day without seeing a development from an FSA affiliated group. It's like saying you thought the IRGC weren't in Syria. It takes a conscious effort to gloss over something so ubiquitous. 1) Some of us don't trawl twitter constantly for news about Syria. 2) I've asked this thread several times in the past few weeks if the FSA was still a coherent group and got little. I got the impression, not sure if from this thread or not, that they were still running some stuff but only in the far south of Syria.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:05
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The FSA is amorphous. Expect any group that is fighting under Turkish protection to automatically be labeled "FSA" even if they are former ISIS fighters. Barzani is going to see which way the wind is blowing and he'll understand that America will gently caress over the Kurds when push comes to shove, and the only thing stopping the Iraqi Army from rolling up into Kurdistan like the old days is the fact that they're fighting a civil war with ISIS, who is conveniently between them. Reminder that Maliki was close to declaring war on the Kurds before the ISIS rebellion put that issue on hold.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:18
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Volkerball posted:You thought wrong. You can't go a day without seeing a development from an FSA affiliated group. It's like saying you thought the IRGC weren't in Syria. It takes a conscious effort to gloss over something so ubiquitous. But the IRGC is a branch of the Iranian military, while anyone can claim to be affliated with the FSA (what is the heirarchy or actual organizational map of it now? I lost track years ago) with a Tweet and a logo.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:29
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Sergg posted:The FSA is amorphous. Expect any group that is fighting under Turkish protection to automatically be labeled "FSA" even if they are former ISIS fighters. I'd be surprised if Turkey is deliberately recruiting ISIS fighters to join the FSA group they're supporting, but I'd also be very surprised if they aren't deliberately looking the other way as some number of fighters flow between them. Even Petraeus wanted to recruit Nusra fighters, who are even more likely to be represented given Turkish support for them. It just seems strange that the same group the weaker part of the YPG was kicking around in Northern Aleppo is now kicking the hell out of the SDF north of Manbij, even if they do have more Turkish support.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:43
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Sergg posted:The FSA is amorphous. Expect any group that is fighting under Turkish protection to automatically be labeled "FSA" even if they are former ISIS fighters. Firstly, Barzani has nothing to do with Turks in Syria, FSA in Syria, and former ISIS fighters in Syria. Kurdistan is not Syria. Iraq is not Syria. Secondly, US involvement in Iraq is not the same as involvement and alliances in Syria. US in Iraq are focused on Mosul, and nothing is stopping that now. In Syria, they want SDF focused on Raqqa. The Iraqi army is nothing like the 'old days' army under Saddam, nor is it even the same predominant religious base. The army after Saddam was disbanded and basically beheaded. Nor is the war effort in Iraq even remotely under the control of ISF or them being the prominent force. The Peshmerga are engaged with over 200,000 now war experienced soldiers, with foreign military equipment, fighting only ISIS in Iraq. if you think that the ISF would somehow roll over these troops if there was a post war ISIS vacuum, you don't understand the dynamics and claims to land involved. You severely misunderstand the situation in Iraq. Unrelated to the above, insider scoop; today Iraqi government is investing and released funding for 50 million to Kurdistan Mosul response, 50 million to Iraqi government mosul response, and another 50 million into UN response. Mosul offensive is going to happen without a doubt in the coming few weeks to 2 months. ISF are telling all civilians in cities, towns and villages along the South corridor to stay in their houses and raise a white flag to indicate they are not a part of ISIS, and to not leave. Pesh are doing a pincer around the west flank of Mosul, and claiming villages swifly on a daily basis on the east flank, and to the south the ISF only have two main cities to take on the south flank along the tigris. Bagdadi has executed and replaced all his Iraqi commanders in Mosul with foreigners because they were giving intelligence to the coalition forces/Peshmerga and he doesn't trust them to stay and fight, and most towns are being taken by ISF and Pesh now are, sadly, defended by under 18s who are given the choice by ISIS to die by desertion or die fighting. Inner city Mosul has been divided by districts in each tribe and areas blocked off by residents with blockades so not to be targeted by ISIS. The US is pushing for Mosul liberation before the election. Mosul will be cutoff and surrounded within a month. Lascivious Sloth fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 22:49
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Back Hack posted:So much sweeping! I love the part later on where they take cover behind a sheet.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:59
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The Ape of Naples posted:I love the part later on where they take cover behind a sheet. The first time these guys run into actual ISIS, they are going to fold like one, too.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:05
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Volkerball posted:You thought wrong. You can't go a day without seeing a development from an FSA affiliated group. It's like saying you thought the IRGC weren't in Syria. It takes a conscious effort to gloss over something so ubiquitous. Whatever calls themselves or comprises the FSA is so far removed from what was originally meant by that moniker that it's a meaningless term now -- you seem completely unable to drop the idea of a cohesive moderate opposition from your lexicon for whatever reason but it just doesn't exist anymore. Your response is also quite antagonistic considering that poster's notion is basically how many experts on the subject view the situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army#2015:_debates_as_to_whether_FSA_still_exists As others have suggested, the FSA is: Lynch posted:“something of a myth, with a media presence far outstripping its actual organizational capacity” and amounted to little more than “a diverse array of local defense forces, ideological trends, and self-interested warlords. It exercised little real command and control, and had little ability to formulate or implement a coherent military strategy.” It's not even in the same universe as the Kurdish acronyms which while admittedly fluid have a much more rigorous definition than some dude on twitter calling himself an FSA commander.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:10
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Lascivious Sloth posted:Unrelated to the above, insider scoop; today Iraqi government is investing and released funding for 50 million to Kurdistan Mosul response, 50 million to Iraqi government mosul response, and another 50 million into UN response. Mosul offensive is going to happen without a doubt in the coming few weeks to 2 months.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:39
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fade5 posted:This right here, this is an excellent post. I'm really glad to hear there's a concrete plan for how Mosul's liberation is going to go. It's amazing how thing have changed in a year. Wasn't the deadline for the Mosul Offensive supposed to be October 2016? I really didn't think they'd hit it in time, there has been constant talk of delays for months. This is great news.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:47
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I'm an FSA commander  Also, fun fact: Flight Tracker 24 tracks combat jets over Syria. It's kind of neat to see the war in Syria in a real time perspetive.
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Aug 30, 2016 00:01
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I am continually amazed at how many armored vehicles are still rolling around Syria.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:42
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Torpor posted:I am continually amazed at how many armored vehicles are still rolling around Syria. Our perception of the war is one defined by ATGM Sick Nasty Kill videos and those don't really reflect the reality of the situation because videos of men shooting through peepholes in Aleppo is a lot more boring.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:46
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Young Freud posted:Footage of a supposed urban sweep operation in Jarabulus. These guys are about to graduate from the University of A Single TOW Missile, class of Wednesday
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Aug 30, 2016 01:49
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Torpor posted:I am continually amazed at how many armored vehicles are still rolling around Syria. ISIS often welds lots of metal sheets and armor onto Toyota trucks and then puts steel mesh around it to protect it from RPG fire, then uses the trucks in SVBIED attacks. They used to have way more Humvees when they captured huge swathes of Iraq in 2014. And obviously I'd expect the SAA to still have lots of armored vehicles.
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Aug 30, 2016 02:18
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Surely just welding steel plates isn't that effective against RPGs?
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Aug 30, 2016 03:23
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It's actually the steel mesh that helps more against RPGs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slat_armor
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Aug 30, 2016 03:27
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Ragingsheep posted:Surely just welding steel plates isn't that effective against RPGs? The steel plates are for small arms fire
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Aug 30, 2016 03:29
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Ragingsheep posted:Surely just welding steel plates isn't that effective against RPGs? It's actually reasonably effective if you can offset it by a meter or so away from the vehicle with a second layer of armor beneath. The outer layer sets off the shaped charges on the RPG and allows a lot of the force to dissipate to the inverse square law. We use it in our own vehicles too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slat_armor
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Aug 30, 2016 03:30
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3kQUKQQo4Y SAA continues to lose armor and men against the wall of the military college.
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Aug 30, 2016 03:41
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rear end struggle posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3kQUKQQo4Y This is basically Battlefield 1942 where people keep taking the vehicles, bee lining to the enemy base and immediately die. What the hell?
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Aug 30, 2016 04:01
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Brother Friendship posted:This is basically Battlefield 1942 where people keep taking the vehicles, bee lining to the enemy base and immediately die. What the hell? Gonna guess that their computer training sim is literally Battlefield 1942.
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Aug 30, 2016 04:05
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If you think that's bad, watch this https://youtu.be/ijCVfKsLMOQ
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Aug 30, 2016 04:05
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