DOD Releases Warship Footage Showing Tomahawk Missiles Being Fired in Late-Night Strike
It looks a lot worse on the other end.
As word spread about the late-night attack launched against Syrian sites Friday by the United States, Britain and France, details began to emerge that showed the sheer scale of the operation.
And images that are being made public by the Defense Department were giving the American public an idea of what it looked like up close.
According to Military Times, the missiles that hit three sites linked to Syria’s chemical weapons program were fired from ships and warplanes that launched a total of 105 strikes on three Syrian sites.
They encountered minimal resistance from air defenses — either Russian or Syrian, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters.
Russian system didn’t attempt to stop the allied attack, he said, according to Military Times. About 40 Syrian surface-to-air missiles were fired, but only after the last of the allied missiles had already landed.
“I think we dealt them a severe blow,” said McKenzie, director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to Fox News. “We’ve attacked the heart of the Syrians’ chemical weapons program.”
This is what it looked like when a Tomahawk missile was fired from the deck of the USS Monterey, a Navy cruiser stationed in the Red Sea.
The guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) fires a Tomahawk land attack missile April 14. #Syria https://t.co/8p0K9v4HPH pic.twitter.com/HRIOkL0LWC
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 14, 2018
What happened on the ground when all those missiles landed is still not clear.
According to Fox, McKenzie said he had not been informed of civilian casualties from the operation.
But from a political and strategic viewpoint, the overnight raid by three allied militaries likely made the point to Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus, as well its patrons in Moscow and Tehran:
The West is not trying to escalate the proxy war in Syria into the real thing, but there are limits that are going to be enforced. The days of the Obama administration, when the Syrian regime could disregard American “red lines” with impunity, are over.
“It’s intolerable for a civilized nation to use chemical weapons,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told reporters, according to Fox. “This is a regime that murders its people daily.”
And if that keeps up, it’s a good chance there will be more Tomahawks and other missiles being fired by warships like the Monterrey.
And they’re going to look pretty bad to the soldiers on the receiving end.
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