Errant Syrian Missile Flies Over Mediterranean And Crashes Onto Island Of Cyrpus

on
Israel actually intercepted another Syrian S-200 SAM fired in a similar manner in 2017 with the Israeli Defense Forces newly operational Arrow 3 ballistic missile defense system. 




That system was activated by Israel's missile defense surveillance radars due to the weapon's parabolic trajectory. Regardless, firing off an S-200 without guidance could have sent it a very long distance as it wouldn't have burnt off any energy to engage a target.

Luckily, nobody was injured by the errant S-200.

S-200.


Apparently, Israel hit targets near Damascus and near Homs during last night's operation, with Syrian state media reporting that four were killed and 21 were injured in the strikes. Syria also says the strikes came from the Lebanese border, which is among the Israeli Air Force's most common vectors of attack on Syrian targets.

A video shot from the Lebanese coastline shows what appear to be the bright exhaust plumes of some sort of aerial vehicles roaring east towards Syria. Some have posited that these are cruise missiles launched from the sea. That is highly improbable.


What is most likely being seen in the video are Israel F-16s popping-up from very low over the ocean to make a high-speed dash towards the Syrian border, with the fighters releasing their weapons just before crossing into Syrian airspace. The high-speed release gives the standoff weapons longer range and the pop-up flight profile offers Syrian air defenders little time to respond to the impending attack. Lobbing some S-200s at the jets as they momentarily appear on radar operator's scopes could very well have resulted in the incident on Cyprus.

Isreal has stated that it has zero intention of stopping its air operations in Syria that primarily target weapons transfers from Iran to its Hezbollah proxies as well as other Iranian capabilities in the country.