Like, Nobody Saw This Coming?
Turkey “accidentally” fired on US troops in Syria.
From the article: Multiple artillery strikes landed about 1 kilometer from a road where U.S. forces in northeast Syria were paroling on Sunday, according to officials with Operation Inherent Resolve — the U.S.-led mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
No U.S. forces were injured and the patrol was not hit, according to OIR. Officials with OIR provided no other details regarding the artillery strike.
But the statement from the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition came following news from the Russian Ministry of Defence that American troops were attacked on a strategic road near the Syrian town of Tel Tamir.
Russia said American troops came under attack Sunday from Turkish-backed forces as they were driving along the M-4 highway just outside outside of Tel Tamir. The American convoy was headed towards the Iraq border, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence. – article
The rest of the article is here: https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/11/04/artillery-fire-lands-near-us-troops-in-syria/
Category: Foreign Policy, Syria
Well, if the best Turkey can do is a kilometer away… either they are incompetent or they really aren’t trying.
As far as being under indirect fire, one kilometer is pretty damn close!! I’ve been about 200 maybe 300 meters from single 100mm mortar (yes, it’s a weird mortar size) rounds impacting in TQ and that is pretty unnerving – especially when under fire for the first time. “Multiple artillery strikes” – and I would assume they were firing more than one tube at a time (although I don’t know that for sure) – would be damn close enough!!
In case you might find it interesting. . .
Old mortar impacts at TQ (pictures from 2004):
https://get.google.com/albumarchive/104745627018165888181/album/AF1QipOm3I_VHW80jI5_DzNt8YRLRoPYI9MUHoVZksf-
The actual point of origin of the mortar rounds that hit TQ I referred to in the last post. My platoon was assigned the task to find the POO the next day.
https://get.google.com/albumarchive/104745627018165888181/album/AF1QipN623T3XqoS-yjFO7WtFmO87vlbe2t_DvOJ2O8t/AF1QipP9tuHLA3hMJ9thqmsY7b8KpMK4ikHYwmgJP77t
“Like, Nobody Saw This Coming?”
It would seem that Trump did.
Missed it by that much!
Maybe they were just practicing??
Going with FuzeVT here. 1K is pretty close, especially when you are not expecting incoming and/or there is not supposed to be an enemy with that capability within range.
Anybody here trust the Turks? Anybody here think that if the people firing that mission wanted to actually hit our troops they could have? Somebody poking the bear with the stick. The big question that we will never learn the answer to is; who gave the orders to fire?
I disagree.
Every time I have done a call-for-fire, our guys have placed the rounds right on target. The Turks are part of NATO, so I assume they have Geo-located laser range finders, where you lase a target and the targeting screen tells you the exact grid location of the target. Therefore is their artillerymen who suck, or they weren’t really trying to hit us.
Read both linked articles, the first one three times. Saw no mention of US troops being attacked in the first article. In the second article it’s third hand information from a source whose English may or may not be proficient in English. Without more, and more reliable, information it’s just another rumor as far as I can tell.
That sort of thing is going to happen in situations like that with no defined boundaries and troops unfamiliar with the ground.