Re: Trial by fire
Somehow, dunno why, I would take declarations of a 70% kill rate against incoming missiles by Syrian state media with a large grain of salt
Errr... Dunno. For Damascus the 70% number is quite likely. Homs - we do not know, can't find any evidence. On Damascus and evidence - go and get some of the live footage. It made a hell of a depressing sight. If Trump has any Russian backhanders/Interests Almaz-Antei (the makers of Buk) are one of them. Best advert for it I have ever seen. On the positive - it was an OBVIOUSLY upgraded Buk to M2 spec or higher. Not 30 years old hardware. More like 2 years old.
You cannot mistake it for anything else as the picture is different from most other missiles. It is a dedicates stealth aircraft killer by the way.
Fire, up it goes - very very very high, mostly straight line. At that point it supposedly disengages earth control and engages own radar head. You can literally see the missile weaving a bit for a while until it grabs the target from ABOVE, then DOWN it goes in a straight line like a sledgehammer. Bang. 0.7M (if Storm Shadow) or 1.5M (if Tomahawk) taxpayers money jizzed over the Syrian countryside. And again. And Again. And Again. One shot, one kill. Delivered in a way where the F35 and all other "stealth" aircraft are practically non-stealthy - looking from above. So thanks god it was not there and it was just cruise missiles. The losses would have been ugly.
The clearest indicator that the numbers are not off is the amount of pictures for short range AA/close in defenses speaking over Damascus. All the media is repeating same shots from the same "one got through".
The close ins appear to be have upgraded too. The pictures in the media (both Russian and Western) are from that - pretty, but not informative. Classic case of journos going for "whoaaah, shiny" - so you do not see what is really happening.
Again - that appears to be upgraded. The pics look like Pantsir-S1 firing in both modes (autocannon and short range missiles).
So at least for Damascus (where there is enough alternative and amateur footage to see what has happened) the figures are more or less spot on.
The positive part is that it was not really 30 year old hardware - 2M is relatively new and Pantsir-S1 is pretty much off the production line. The negative is that the mode of operation of the mid-range defense pretty much negates stealth and demonstrates it with gusto. It also appears to work.