The U.S. military claims it racked up a perfect score in its surprise cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield, where the Pentagon says Bashar Assad was hiding chemical weapons, and from which a deadly poison gas attack was launched this week.
Two senior military officials, who spoke anonymously to discuss details of the military mission, briefed reporters Friday.
Pentagon planners had picked out 59 targets on the airfield, being careful to avoid Russian military helicopters and an estimated 12 to 100 troops who were also at the base.
The Pentagon says the highly-accurate satellite guided missiles, launched from two ships in the Mediterranean sea, hit every target with pinpoint precision.
It took launching 61 missiles total to put 59 on target. One missile failed, and another had to be aborted. In both cases another missile was launched to take its place.
The Pentagon released imagery that shows hardened shelters were no match for the cruise missiles. Each of the targeted shelters had a hole in the top, and charred airplane wreckage scattered nearby.
The U.S. is still doing a more complete assessment, but estimates 20 Syrian warplanes were destroyed either in bunkers or in the clear.
In addition, a Russian-made surface-to-air missile site and its associated radar was destroyed, essentially rendering the airfield unprotected against a future attack, at least in the short term.
#Syria: photos of the remains of regime warplanes in the Shayrat airbase after they were taken out by the #US pic.twitter.com/tQ2kKMBR1q
— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) April 7, 2017
The U.S. is convinced the base also housed a stockpile of chemical weapons used in the April 4 attack that killed as many as 100 civilians, but Pentagon planners intentionally did not target the chemical weapons to avoid spreading a deadly gas cloud.
The officials said President Trump ordered military option be drawn up Wednesday, one day after the attack, and he was presented those options Thursday after a review and recommendation by the National Security Council.
Trump selected the cruise missile strike on the Syrian air base and issued the order to execute the strike 4:30 Thursday afternoon.
Four hours later, the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean Sea fired their missiles. The U.S. ships had moved into position the day before, and the coordinates for targets already loaded in the missiles’ GPS.
The missiles landed about 8:40 p.m. Washington time, 3:40 a.m. in Syria.
Aside from the element of surprise, and trying to strike when few people would be around, the U.S. knew that Syrian pilots don’t fly at night. That was a consideration because the U.S. informed Russia that it planned to take military action against the air base without giving any details of the scale or timing of the attack.
The U.S. had no way of knowing whether the Russians would tip off the Syrians, so it was important that the strike happen quickly after the notification.
While there were reports in Syria that some planes were moved in the hour before the attack, the U.S. saw no evidence of that, officials said.
Syrian media say seven of its troops were killed. The Russians reported no casualties.
The U.S. is still doing a more |
