Brown Moses Blog: UB-16-57UMP

Friday, 18 January 2013

More Information On The Equipment Looted From Taftanaz Air Base

Since the opposition capture of Taftanaz air base I've been trying to gather information on exactly what equipment was captured at the air base. This video from Ahrar al-Sham, a loose collection of Islamist and Salafist opposition groups, showing the attack on the base provides some more information

Two sections are of particular interesting, first of all at this point in the video we see what looks like at least a dozen UB-16-57UMP S-5 rocket pods stacked up in a warehouse

S-5 rocket pods featured heavily in the Libyan Civil War, frequently welded to the back of trucks and used as rocket artillery. So far in Syria there's only been a few rare examples, including one welded to the back of a military truck in Taftanaz air base and used by the defenders, shown at the bottom of my earlier post on Taftanaz air base.

Of course, rocket launchers aren't much use without rockets, so later on in the video we see another warehouse filled with crates. Unfortunately we don't get a good look at the crate marking, and only a brief look at a couple of rockets stacked on one of the crates, but what we do get a good look at this

What we have here is the warehouse stock list, titled "Aerial Munitions Available in Storage # 6". The three columns with text in are, from left to right, the available stock, the description, and a sequential number. The description includes Cyrillic descriptions of the items, and the list states the following items are in stock (thanks to Omar for translation)

1 - 3743 - S-5KO unguided rocket
2 - 3228 - S-5KP unguided rocket
3 - 3669 - V-5K fuze for armoured piercing rocket
4 - 115 - V-5M1 fuze for armoured piercing rocket
5 - 722 - Flare - Red Star
6 - 469 - Flare - White Star
7 - 680 - Flare - Green Star
8 - 564 - Flare - Yellow Star
9 - 949 - PPZ Fire suppressing round

The S-5KO and S-5KP are both types of rockets for the previously shown UB-16-57UMP rocket pods, and the V-5K and V-5KM1 are fuzes for S-5 rockets, more details of which can be found here. While it's hard to know how up to date the warehouse stock list is does seem to indicate that the piles of crates in that warehouse do still contains various types of S-5 rockets, maybe thousands of them, so I fully expect members of Ahrar al-Sha, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other groups involved with the attack to be welding rocket pods to the back of truck and using them as artillery in the future.

Friday, 11 January 2013

Highlights From The Video Tour Of Taftanaz Air Base

Today it's been reported that a major helicopter base near Taftanaz, southwest of Aleppo, was overrun by the Syrian opposition and as with all overrun bases in Syria a series of videos have been posted online showing both the battle and the aftermath. Among those videos is this lengthy 34 minute tour of the air base

As it's rather long I thought I'd pick out a few interesting highlights from the video. First we have this brief shot of the building that the remnants of the forces defending the base retreated to, before being hit by artillery/tank fire, as shown in this video. This screenshot shows the damage done to the building

This next section shows a Hip helicopter armed with UB-16-57UMP launchers loaded with S-5 rockets, with rockets waiting to be loaded in the background

This would seem to suggest that this aircraft was in use, not just rusting on the tarmac. Later on we have this shot of a badly damaged Hind helicopter armed with a pair of what I believe are UPK-23 gunpods, and a pair of OFAB 100-120 high explosive fragmentation bombs. There's also a number of bombs on the ground surrounding the aircraft

So this appears to be another aircraft that was in active service when it was destroyed. What interesting about the OFAB bomb is Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the group apparently involved in the attack, has used unexploded bombs in VBIED attacks, so I'm very curious in the number of bombs that were captured in the air base attack, as it's likely they'll be parts of future VBIEDs.

Another example of a Hip armed with loaded UB-16-57UMP launchers is shown, and then we have this very interesting example of an RBK cluster bomb tail unit, something that's always left over when a RBK cluster bomb is used

Although it's hard to be 100% sure this might indicate that the Syrian Air Force dropped cluster bombs on it's own air base during the battle, something that could be confirmed with UXO evidence.

Another video tour was posted on Bambuser, which at the 22:14 mark shows a military truck mounted with a UB-16-57UMP launcher. This seems to show that the Syrian forces at that base were building their own DIY rocket launchers to defend the base

At 16:18 in the Bambuser video we also see this cluster bomb on the ground next to a damaged helicopter