Russia’s Gambit with Syrian deployment of SSN-30A “Kalibr” Supersonic Cruise Missile

Russia’s Gambit with Syrian deployment of SSN-30A “Kalibr” Supersonic Cruise Missile

By E. Stanley Ukeni

In what is being dubbed an escalation in the already brutal Syrian civil conflict, the Russian Navy has introduced a new, and potentially decisive, variable in the country’s nascent involvement in a military campaign against purported Islamic State terrorists and other militant groups fighting to topple the regime of the embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In a surprise display of advance warcraft capability, the Russian Navy, on Wednesday, October 7^th 2015, fired twenty-six intermediate-range cruise missiles from a flotilla consisting of the Gepard Frigate and Buyan Corvettes Naval vessels that were deployed at approximately one thousand five hundred (1,500) kilometers (932 miles) away in the Caspian Seas.

A video footage released by the Russian Defense ministry in Moscow showed what it described as a Russian naval strike group firing off ship-based supersonic missiles from the Caspian Seas. In the footage, the missiles are seen streaking through the night sky—tracing a flight path as they navigate through a rugged terrain from as low as fifty (50) meters.

The cruise missiles’ flight trajectory clearly indicates that the precision weapons possess advanced inflight navigation capabilities—shocking many western military analysts who were awed by the weapons’ range and maneuverability.

The missiles cruised at an impressive distance of approximately 1,000 miles of precision flight—flying over the Caucasus Mountain, the stretch of the Iranian and Iraqi territories, before veering towards areas of Syria controlled by the Islamic State terrorist group and Jabhat al-Nusra—an al-Qaeda affiliated group.

In a nationally televised briefing with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, explained to his Commander-in-Chief that “four destroyers from the Caspian Flotilla launched twenty-six “Kalibr” sea-based land attack cruise missiles at eleven targets…in Syria”

Shoigu further stressed that “no civilians were hurt during the attack.”

Reports indicated that the strike targets included munitions factories, militant command structures, weapons warehouses and depots and terrorist training camps.

It would not be too farfetched to speculate that the cruise missile strikes is not entirely about the Syrian, despite what the Russian officials are saying. I am thoroughly convinced that the bold act of launching a precision long-range missile strike from the far away region of the Caspian Sea—a range greater  than 1,500 kilometers, and hitting all its intended targets with pinpoint accuracy may actually be more of a show of Russia’s newly acquired lethal and expansive force-projection capability. This, in my opinion, is Russia’s demonstration to the world that it is still a formidable world class superpower to be reckoned with.

The long range land attacks were a display of Russia’s advance military technological prowls—announcing to the world, an advanced level of Russia’s warcraft mastery. And they occurred without any prior warning to the U.S. led collation conducting airstrikes against ISIS over Syria.  

The Russian naval strikes were the first known operational theater fielding of the state-of-the-art SSN-30A “Kalibr” intermediate-range supersonic cruise missiles, which are quite similar to the American-made, equally impressive, Tomahawk missiles—dubbed the “Aircraft Carrier killers”.

The SSN-30A “Kalibr” intermediate-range supersonic land attack cruise missiles were added to the Russian conventional military hardware arsenal just this summer, after seven years of development.

The missile strikes marks the first time Russia has operationally deployed a navy-launched, surface-to-surface, long-range ballistic missile in a battlefield theater of war. This theater deployment of the Kalibr cruise missiles is a definite game changer for global warcraft practitioners, which is sure to reverberate far beyond the current Syrian theater of war.

As anyone who has kept up with developments in Syria, in recent weeks, would attest, the dominant narrative from military strategists and pundits—before the Russian battlefield deployment of the SSN-30A “Kalibr” supersonic cruise missiles, was that Russia’s direct military involvement in Syria would be met with stiff resistance from battle-hardened western-backed rebel groups, militias and terrorist fighters. This narrative further contended that the Russian arm-forces would be bugged-down in an intractable quagmire in Syria, and may be forced to withdraw from the conflict after public opinion back in Russia turns against the country’s involvement in the conflict, due to mounting unacceptable casualty levels. However, with the Kalibr firepower, this narrative may no longer hold true.
My sense is that anxiety about the strategic implications of this new precision weapon system is reaching feverish levels in amongst the leadership of smaller countries that have been openly antagonistic towards the Kremlin in recent years.

This article is authored and published by E. Stanley Ukeni. Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved. This material and other articles or stories posted on this blog site may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior expressed written permission from the author, E. Stanley Ukeni.