When is an airstrike not an airstrike?

Syria claims to have driven off Israeli fighters over its territory. The Israel-Syria Mutual Admiration Society has achieved a new level of inconclusive results from a border incident.

The fighters are said to have approached from the Mediterranean, and attacked a site in northern Syria. The Syrians say they fired at the planes over an uninhabited area, which “dumped” their munitions, and drove them away. The implication is that there was no airstrike, just an incursion. Turkey says it found drop tanks which may have from the planes on its territory, meaning the planes used Turkish air space as an exit point. The BBC has done an interesting analysis of the possibilities and the available evidence. Israel is saying nothing, so quite a bit of inference has taken place. No images of the site allegedly hit have been released by the Syrians, so some of their statements have to be taken on trust. They are, however, furious about something. Theories, there are many. Everything from testing new Syrian air defence systems to mapping out an approach route for an attack on Iran was suggested, prior to the rumor that the planes had attacked a ground target. Current theories now involve a strike on hidden North Korean nuclear equipment, or a strike on a Hezbollah weapons facility. The BBC points out that the Syrian statements don’t explain why these planes were carrying air to ground munitions over Syria. It is a rather odd omission from an outraged party trying to complain about violations of its airspace. There’s no obvious reason why they would want to keep the use of the weapons secret, because it could only support their arguments. According to the dpa article today, Syria alleges in its complaint to the UN that munitions were dropped “without causing human casualties or property damage”, which adds nothing to the actual case in terms of information. Israel is hardly famous for ambiguity about the targets it hits. Normally, these are specified, not denied. Aircraft don’t carry munitions over foreign airspace for decoration, either. It’s also a bit debatable whether dumping munitions is much use when under attack from modern missile systems. Most ground strike aircraft are usually prepared for opposition. As a test of the new Syrian missile systems, it doesn’t quite ring true. There are much cheaper, safer, covert ways of getting that sort of information. Analyzing missile locks isn’t necessarily the best way to do it, either, risking the needless loss of a plane and a lot of hostile propaganda. A hit on a ground target is a somewhat more likely scenario. Why fly so far into hostile territory, on a circuitous route, to do nothing? Another characteristic of this information is that the Israelis don’t seem to have been too worried about interception from either the Turkish or Syrian air forces, which would have been within their rights to do so. Israel has preeminent regional air superiority, and when going after remote targets, the Israeli air force has proven its ability to hit them. So it’s stretching plausibility to assume that on some whimsical excuse Israeli aircraft: 1. Took it upon themselves to go and check out a bit of dirt in northern Syria, 2. Decided to panic, and 3. Headed off pausing only to violate Turkish air space. Conclusion: 1. There probably was an airstrike. 2. Syria doesn’t want to say what was hit, but is sufficiently annoyed to make an international issue of it, even on this standard of evidence, where they’re not even supporting their own complaint with hard facts. 3. Israel is saying nothing, for either operational reasons or political. It’s very rare that Israel misses an opportunity to embarrass its neighbors’ security. The BBC mentions “an air of satisfaction” being apparent in Israel, to support its view of the incident. I don’t quite know how this information was acquired. Did they do a poll of Israelis, asking how satisfied they were with an incident their government doesn’t admit to have occurred? Or did they walk around Tel Aviv with a divining rod, or a few tame psychologists on leashes, sniffing for pleasure hormones? Talk about unqualified statements in news analysis.