The New Era of Military Theater

Those of you who know me well know that I am a life long student of military history, tactics, and weaponry. There are some things that simply don’t add up to me about the recent cruise missile attack that Trump ordered against the Shayrat air base in Syria.

Sophisticated Russian air defense systems, such as Pantsir, S-300, S-400, Buk-M2 and Tor complexes, could have easily protected the Shayrat airbase from the 1980’s era Tomahawk missiles launched by the American USS Ross and USS Porter destroyers. These air defense systems have been deployed in Syria for many months. They are designed to defeat US air attack systems, including ALL of our stealth aircraft and, especially, cruise missiles.

We know that the Russians and Syrians were warned about the strike in enough time for them to move valuable assets. We know that the Russians did not defend against the incoming Tomahawks. We know that the Syrians did not defend against the Tomahawks... not even using their own S-200 systems and highly capable mobile anti-cruise missile 9K33 Osa batteries. This is very strange - especially considering that they knew when and where the strike would come from.
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And here’s the strangest thing of all... absolutely no US military planners would recommend striking an airfield without first taking out the damned runway! Let’s not even talk about the many days of careful planning, and logistics needed to put two US cruise missile destroyers in just the right place to execute such a highly orchestrated attack.
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Draw your own conclusions, but as far as I am concerned, the US military was punked, the American people have been played, and Putin wins again. This is all seriously dangerous to our nation. I can't help but wonder if Trump knew about the Tuesday Syrian chemical attack in advance (just as the Russians knew about ours). I wonder if he and Putin dreamed it up as a way to deflect criticism and investigations about Trump from going forward. If this is true, we'll have to add genocide to the treason charges to be brought against Trump in impeachment hearings.