On August 16, Russia launched the first airstrikes in Syria from Hamedan Air Base in Iran.
The next day, they released video of it, which highlights important differences between Russian and US or US-led coalition airstrikes.
The video shows a Russian Air Force Tu-22M3 strategic bomber flying high above the clouds and releasing a bunch of bombs over what Russia claims was Deir-ez-Zor, ISIS-held territory in eastern Syria. Though the footage may seem impressive at first glance, it shows there is still a lot to be desired from Russia as a modern military power.
In the slides below, see the two styles of air strikes compared side by side.
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Here is Russia's air strike from Iran, filmed on August 16.
The footage is full color, likely shot from a helmet-mounted GoPro on the escort pilot. The footage is branded by RT, a TV station, for broadcast.
All we see is the Tu-22s bomb bay open, and unguided, or "dumb" bombs, pour out. The pilot looks down as the bombs fall, but there is no way of seeing through the cloud cover.
Dropping a large number of unguided bombs is known as "carpet bombing," a terribly inaccurate way to inflict lots of damage cheaply. Bombs dropped from these heights, if not guided, can drift and explode far from their intended targets.
Given the haphazard nature of this bombing, it is little surprise that Russian war planes have been linked to bombings of hospitals and refugee camps.
In comparison, here is a US-led airstrike on a weapons storage facility in Raqqa, Syria, ISIS' capital there.
Note that this footage is most likely filmed by a drone flying steadily and removed from the subject, there is not the production quality you'd pursue to broadcast this on TV as propaganda.
When the bomb hits, it's a single projectile in a straight trajectory. That's because the US and US-led coalition airstrikes almost exclusively use precision-guided munitions.
You just don't see carpet bombing out of the coalition. This airstrike hits the intended target, and the secondary explosions seem to confirm that the building was storing weapons.
For context, here we see Iraqi helicopters gun footage as they savage a large convoy of ISIS vehicles.
The Iraqis don't go to much trouble with video production either. They simply posted the gun camera footage after a successful strike.
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