Here’s how the Russian Air Force moved 28 aircraft to Syria (almost) undetected

The deception almost certainly depends upon cooperation between Russia and the Iranians, who appear to have arranged an unnecessary – but convenient for the deception - stopover at Hamadan. Many analysts believe that Putin’s pivot to the Middle East has two goals, first there is a desire to keep his regional ace-in-the-hole Bashar al-Assad in power. However, just as – or maybe more – important, Putin sees Syria as a lever to use in negotiations to assure his hold on Crimea and a continuation of the frozen conflict in the Donbas.

By David Cenciotti for Defense News, Sep 23, 2015

It’s not easy to move 28 aircraft and keep the deployment confidential.

Satellite imagery released in the last couple of days has exposed the presence of 28 Russian aircraft at al-Assad airfield, near Latakia, in western Syria.

The photographs taken from space gave us the possibility to identify the combat planes as 4x Su-30SMs, 12x Su-25s (based on their color scheme, these are Su-25SMs belonging to the 368th Assault Aviation Regiment from Budyonnovsk) and 12 Su-24M2s along with about a dozen helicopters, including 10 Mi-24PN, Mi-35M and a couple of Mi-8AMTSh choppers, from the 387th Army Aviation Air Base Budyonnovsk.

One of our sources with IMINT Imagery Intel experience, who has had access to the imagery in the public domain, noticed something interesting on one of the Su-30SM the first on the left (the one closer to the runway threshold) should be equipped with a KNIRTI SPS-171  L005S Sorbtsiya-S midhigh band defensive jammer (ECM) at the wing tips. To be honest this is almost impossible to verify unless more high-resolution images become available.

Whilst satellite shots provided much details about the deployed assets, they obviously didn’t help answer the basic question how did they manage to reach Syria undetected

According to one source close who wishes to remain anonymous, the Russian combat planes have probably deployed to Latakia trailing the cargo planes that were tracked flying to Syria and back on Flightradar24.com, something that other analysts have also suggested.

There is someone who believes that during their ferry flight, some if not all the formation (each made of a cargo plane and four accompanying fast jets), may have made a stopover in Iran before flying the last leg to Latakia. This would also explain why some Il-76s (with an endurance that would allow a non-stop fly from Russia to Latakia) were observed stopping at Hamadan on Sept. 18-19, just before the Sukhois started appearing on the tarmac at Latakia.............

ukrainebusiness.com.ua