The released footage of drones, which attacked Russian military bases in Hmeymim and Tartus, shows three practically intact handicraft UAVs made from boards and plywood, with wires, wrapped in tape and green polyethylene. In addition, the photo shows the debris of three more apparatuses spread over separate heaps.
The Defense Ministry noted that the design used by the militants could only be obtained from a technologically advanced country, and warned of the danger of such attacks in any country in the world.
However, the Pentagon has refuted these claims by saying that such devices are "easily available" on the "open market."
The photos were published in the wake of the Russian Defense Ministry's January 8 report of a terrorist attempt to attack Russian military positions in Syria with combat drones that had been disrupted on January 6. Ten of the drones targeted the Hmeymim airbase and three were sent toward the Tartus naval base. As a result, three of the 13 drones were brought to the ground in a controlled area outside the base, while three UAVs exploded after colliding with the ground and seven UAVs were destroyed by regular Pantsir-S air defense missile systems.
As the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the official publication of the Russian Defense Ministry, has specified, the drones that attacked the Hmeymim airbase flew out of the area in the southwest of the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria, controlled by the so-called moderate opposition.
On Tuesday, we reported that the Russian military in Syria thwarted a massive drone attack at the Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval point in the city of Tartus on January 6, intercepting 13 heavily armed UAVs launched by terrorists.
Shortly after, the Russian Ministry of Defense released new information, noting "strange coincidences" surrounding the terrorist attack: these included a US spy plane spotted in the area, namely a US Navy’s Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft on patrol between the Khmeimim airbase and Tartus naval base in Syria during the time of the attack.
While the Russian Ministry of Defense consciously didn’t point any fingers when talking about the January 6 attack, it demonstratively pointed out that the technology used in the attack was telling. Advanced training in engineering in “one of the developed countries” would be necessary to program the principal controllers and bomb-release systems of an aircraft-type combat drone, the Russian statement stressed and added that "not everyone is also able to get exact [attack] coordinates from the space surveillance data."
"This forces us to take a fresh look at the strange coincidence that, during the attack of UAV terrorists on Russian military facilities in Syria, the Navy reconnaissance aircraft Poseidon was on patrol over the Mediterranean Sea for more than 4 hours at an altitude of 7 thousand meters, between Tartus and Hmeimim."
The Russian Ministry of Defense also declared that this is the “first time that terrorists massively used unmanned combat aerial vehicles of an aircraft type that were launched from a distance of more than 50 kilometers, and operated using GPS satellite navigation coordinates.”
The statement said the drones “carried explosive devices with foreign detonating fuses,” adding that the “usage of strike aircraft-type drones by terrorists is the evidence that militants have received technologies to carry out terrorist attacks.”
Which is why the presence of the Navy Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, a high-tech spy plane with electronic warfare components, in the region during the drone attack, does appear rather suspicious.
The Pentagon countered that while the US was “concerned” over the incident, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway, however, claimed that “those devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.” He later also told Sputnik that the US already saw what it called “this type of commercial UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] technology” being used in Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) missions.
Russia has repeatedly warned that US military supplies aimed at supporting “moderate” Syrian militants eventually end up in the hands of terrorists.
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