Så du trodde amerikanerne var ute av Syria? Nope, her har Trump & Co økonomiske interesser som skattebetalerne må bekoste. Uansett, det spesielle er typen droner og deres bomber. (Red.)
Drones Have Been "Raining" Small Bombs On American Troops Guarding Oil Sites In Syria
US. forces guarding oil and gas fields in eastern Syria have recently come under attack from small drones dropping improvised mortar bomb-like munitions. It's not clear what group was responsible for these incidents, which thankfully have not caused any casualties so far, but they are the latest examples of this steadily growing threat. The U.S. military, as a whole, has been developing and fielding an increasingly wide array of counter-drone systems in response.
NPR was first to report on what it described as "a multiday attack on two of the oil fields" that U.S. forces are presently guarding in Syria on Mar. 6, 2020. This is reportedly the first attack on American troops in these particular areas since the U.S. military first announced their new mission guarding oil and natural gas-related sites in the country in October 2019.
NPR's reporter in Syria, Tom Bowman, did not specify the exact locations of the attacks, or how many of them there were in total. He did say that members of the "West Virginia National Guard" had been on the scene of one of the incidents.
The West Virginia Army National Guard has troops assigned to the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team presently deployed to Syria. In October 2019, the 30th briefly deployed a contingent of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, as well as supporting forces, to two forward operating bases, one at the Conoco Gas Plant and another known as Green Village, both of which are situated in the Syrian province of Deir Ez Zor. Elements of the brigade remained in the country after the Bradleys returned to Kuwait between November and December 2019, a shift in forces that The War Zone was first to report on.
GOOGLE MAPS
A map showing the general location of both the Conoco Gas Plant
and Green Village sites in Deir Ez Zor province to the south, as
well as other oil fields that US forces are presently guarding in the
far northeastern corner of Syria.
Drones of an unspecified type, but "carrying a mortar [bomb]," attacked the West Virginian guardsmen on Mar. 4. More unmanned aerial vehicles conducted similars attacks two days later, both in the morning and the evening, according to Bowman.
"We immediately sprung, got in the vehicle. I got a REDCON-1 [Readiness Condition 1] status," Sergeant First Class Mitch Morgan of the West Virginia Army National Guard told NPR, referring to a full alert status ordering personnel to be ready to move and fight. "We were out in 2 minutes. We came out this way. As we were going out, they was [sic] raining mortars [bombs] in on top of us."
ARMY NATIONAL GUARD
Elements of the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team in Syria
in November 2019.
in November 2019.
NPR did not provide any pictures of the munitions, or their remains, employed during the attacks. Its report said that they left noticeable impact craters and sprayed at least one U.S. military truck, as well as oil tanks at the site in Syria, with shrapnel. "An interesting thing about these mortars is that some of them, we're told by Army investigators, were made with 3D printers, which means that obviously someone pretty sophisticated put together these mortars, perhaps a nation-state," Bowman said on-air on Mar. 6.
Without more details, how sophisticated the munitions actually are is unclear. From the overall description of the attacks, the mortar bomb-like payloads and the drones themselves sound similar to the types that ISIS and other terrorist and militant groups have employed in Syria, as well as Iraq, for years now. There were reports that some ISIS-made munitions were also 3D-printed, but pictures of various types that have emerged have all pointed more toward injection-molded construction of certain parts combined with items from actual military munitions.
Examples of 4 different types of munitions dropped by IS-operated quadcopters
3D printing is increasingly more accessible, sparking concerns about the ability for private citizens with relatively modest means to make guns in their own homes. The equipment and materials necessary are not automatically prohibitively expensive or otherwise unavailable for non-state groups who are already spending hundreds of dollars, if not thousands or more, on acquiring small commercial drones, such as quad and hexcopter types, or the parts necessary to make capable homebrew designs.
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