Saturday 31 August 2013

Proof The Syrian Military Is Using Improvised Rocket Assisted Mortars In Syria

One of the munitions I've been tracking in the conflict is an Improvised Rocket Assisted Mortar/Munition (IRAM), which the Syrian military has been using against opposition forces across the country for quite some time.  An IRAM is basically an artillery rocket that's had the payload removed and replaced by an oversized warhead carrying a far large amount of explosive.  What you lose in range and accuracy, you make up with explosive power.  I've been collecting videos of the munitions here, and last week a video was posted showing the munitions piled up in a recently captured government munitions warehouse.  Now, thanks to ANNA News, who has had unique access to government forces, we now have proof they are being used by government forces.  The below video, pointed out to me by @ghostLot1, shows an IRAM being loaded by government forces as 1:15


The one thing that's very interesting about IRAMs is their history of use by Iranian backed groups in the region, in particularly Iraq, where they were used by Iranian backed groups to defeat the anti-mortar systems used at American bases (more details of which you can read here).

Update Thanks to @DeSilento who sent me the following images.  These were taken from a Jabhat al-Nusra report, showing IRAMs and a launcher they captured from Syrian government forces






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You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com
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12 comments:

  1. Nameless One31 August 2013 at 07:39

    Judging by their use of sneakers instead of boots, lack of army insignia and a total lack of camo on one guy, I'd say the fighters loading the IRAM are pro-government militia or Hezbollah, not the regular Syrian army soldiers.

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    1. Khalid31 August 2013 at 12:59

      This may be a combination of the SAA with a few Shabiha/national defense force. Irregulars don't have armored divisions or targeting electronics. The SAA is not a clean cut and well supplied military force. Just look at the bunkers captured by the rebels and the dead SAA defenders, and you know the dismal state of the regular SAA.

      Even the guy wearing a sneaker is an SAA. How many dead SAA's have you seen wearing sneakers? A lot.

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    2. Nameless One31 August 2013 at 15:32

      I was referring only to the 3 guys loading the IRAM, which is the subject of the blog post. The tanks and other equipment do not have to be related to them. It's a TV report probably put together from loads of different material. Just listen to how many names are listed as correspondents at the end of the report.

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  2. Mark Pyruz31 August 2013 at 10:11

    Nameless one, I thought the same.

    We keep hearing of "Alawite paramilitary forces" engaged in the Syrian conflict. There is also video evidence of Iraqi Shia militias engaged in the Syrian conflict, including Badr Organization which has a history of ties to IRGC.

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  3. Daniel S.1 September 2013 at 03:37

    I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to prove here. Shocking! Conventional weapons used by conventional forces. Slight modifications made to suit purposes in a time of crisis.

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    1. Nameless One1 September 2013 at 10:40

      Now, Daniel, you're making me come to Moses' defence. I've been following this blog since almost the beginning of the Syria conflict because it seemed to focus on finding out the truth from the neutral viewpoint, despite the FSA donations banner on the side. The blog is not about chemical weapons only. Moses has identified weapons being used in the conflict and in the process debunked the rebel claims that the army is using scuds against rebels and civilians back when the rebels thought those would provoke an international invasion of Syria.

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    2. Khalid1 September 2013 at 12:41

      Dud thermobarics cannot cause the slaughter that we have seen. Check out the science. You are wrong.

      Nameless - where did BM say that scuds were not fired into neighborhoods?

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    3. Brown Moses1 September 2013 at 13:11

      If SCUDs were used you'd expect to see some remains of them, and I've been in contact with media centres in Damascus who have made no mention of them, which I think points to them not being used. Happy to be proven wrong though.

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    4. Khalid2 September 2013 at 11:05

      We know that SCUDs are being fired from Base 155. I believe we have seen one or two unexpoded ones in fields. Where do the rest go? The trajectories and timing match the target devastation we witness.

      The devastation of concrete/masonry buildings is huge. Not even aerial bombardment can match it.

      Is it possible that the remnants are buried under the rubble? None of the hit sites has been cleared of the rubble - there is no rebuilding going on. Does the SCUD penetrate the target before detonation? What kind of remnants have we found for larger aerial bombs and barrels?

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  4. Nameless One1 September 2013 at 10:42

    A question for Brown Moses. In one of your earlier blog posts, you presented the evidence that Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham has almost completely taken over Jabhat al-Nusra operations in Syria. Now I see that both you and the popular media are back to referring to extremist rebels as Jabhat al-Nusra. What happened on that front? Has Jabhat al-Nusra reasserted their control of extremists in Syria?

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    1. Brown Moses1 September 2013 at 13:09

      My understanding is it caused a split in JAN, so the Al Qaeda leadership issued a statement telling them to reverse the decision, ISIS refused, causing even further division. There's some more detailed stuff on this, I'll see if I can dig it up.

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    2. Brown Moses2 September 2013 at 07:45

      Try these
      http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/where-does-jabhat-al-nusra-end-and-the-islamic-state-of-iraq-ash-sham-begin/
      http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/jabhat-al-nusra-and-islamic-state-of.html

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