Syria War 11 February 2016 Russian airstrikes restore Syrian military balance of power. Russia's airstrikes on Syria struggle to spur progress on the ground. When Russia launched an air campaign to support Bashar al-Assad, it was banking on a ground force of Syrian troops to finish what its warplanes started. Damage from airstrikes is intensifying. Russian long-range warplanes drop 1,500 bombs on ISIS targets in Syria. Russian long-range warplanes have carried out 145 sorties against Islamic State targets since joining the country’s anti-terror campaign in Syria in mid-November. “In total, long-range aviation aircraft in Syria have carried out around 145 mission sorties, some 1,500 bombs have been dropped and about 20 cruise missiles have been fired," Gen. Anatoly Konovalov, deputy commander of Russia’s long-range aviation force, told Ekho Moskvy radio station. The crews of Tu-22 (Blinder) and Tu-160 (Blackjack) strategic bombers took off from airfields in Russia and spent 16 hours in the air to fulfill their combat tasks in Syria, he added. Previously, sorties in Syria were carried out exclusively by Sukhoi warplanes, including the cutting-edge Su-34 as well as the tried-and-tested Su-25 and Su-24M aircraft. Russia has been conducting dozens of combat flights against Islamic State and other terrorist targets in in the country on a daily basis since September 30 after an official request by President Bashar Assad. Russia delivers up to 40 airstrikes daily to help Free Syrian Army fight terrorists - General Staff. Warplanes of the Russian task force in Syria deliver 30 to 40 airstrikes daily in support of the Free Syrian Army, the General Staff reports. Some 5,000 FSA troops together with the Syrian Army are on the offensive in Hama, Homs, Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. The number of FSA personnel who have come over to the Syrian Army is constantly growing, Russia’s Defense Force Chief of Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, said. No US airstrikes in Syria since Russia deployed S-400 systems. Both the American and Turkish air forces halted their strikes on Syrian territory around the time Russia deployed S-400 air defense complexes at the Khmeimim airbase, from which it stages its own incursions against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).The S-400’s radar has a range of 600 kilometers and is capable of discriminating even objects moving on the ground, such as cars and military vehicles. War in Syria against ISIS continues. February 2016. S-400 radar covers Syria, western regions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, nearly all of Israel and Jordan Egypt’s northern Sinai, a large part of the eastern Mediterranean and Turkish airspace as far as the capital Ankara. During the Russian airstrikes the Syrian Army freed 217 settlements. Syrian Army offensive. Kurdish Peshmerga also offensive and pressing ISIS positions.

• published: 11 Feb 2016
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