Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "" video.

A particularly partisan view of the battle. While the outcome of that battle doesn’t seem to be disputed, virtually every report I have ever read of it has been liberally laced with partisan invective and free of any objectivity. This is far from unusual, especially during the Cold War and especially with regard to matters of Soviet military aviation. It’s also particularly notable when the subject of Israel comes up. While aces like Asher Snir are well known and widely recognised and actions like the Bekaa Valley Air Battle have been well covered by more neutral reporting, it hasn’t stopped a certain amount of sneering and even outright propaganda from entering the discussion. Your comment leaves a lot of room for doubt and a detailed explanation of that action Is decidedly lacking, which rather leaves your opinion open to intelligent question.
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@trespire ALL defence systems are inherently authoritarian. Some have greater degrees of freedom than others to make decisions but command structures exist for a reason. To take the example of the Israeli-Syrian war of 1982, with particular reference to the Bekaa Valley, authoritarian politics had nothing to do with the outcome. The Syrians were using late-60s/early 70s export MiG-21 and MiG-23 types which had zero capacity for network centric warfare. They had no C3 aircraft, like the Hawkeye, used by the Israelis and had very limited jamming capabilities. Their GCI tactics were born not from authoritarianism but from cost. Most people decry GCI but used well, it can be extremely effective. However, in this case, the level of competence was simply not up to the task and the fighters could not be networked anyway. The Israelis, on the other hand, were heavily supported by the United States and were using the latest F-15 and F-16 fighters, equipped with the new, all aspect, AIM-9L, which seems to have been the most effective weapon. The Israelis had also trained for months in Southern Israel and were well prepared. The Hawkeyes were backed up with jammers which blinded the Syrian airborne radars and trashed their communications systems. So they were both blind and deaf, relying on the old Mark I eyeball. If their pilots had been better trained, the result might not have been so one-sided. But the Syrian Air Force tended to select its pilots based on influence rather than competence and their tactical thinking was not in the same class as their Israeli opponents. In one case they formed a Luftbery circle. The Israelis went in basically in the vectors provided by the Hawkeye and used sidewinders to shoot them down. As is common, the majority had no idea they were even being targeted. The Syrian SAM systems were a joke. There was nothing wrong with them at all techno level but the operators put them in the valleys, rather than on top of the hills because they refused to dig latrines. However, this is specific to one conflict and what applies in one case does not necessarily apply to all cases. Whatever else it is, it’s not simply authoritarian systems vs freedom and any suggestion that this is the defining factor is simplistic at best. Israel has always enjoyed the maximum support the United States can provide and has had a number of other benefits, such as exchange programs and surveillance that were simply not available to their opponents. But nobody should ever assume that their opponents can’t or won’t learn and sneering at them is never a safe option. Getting your information from f-16 dot net and the like means you rarely get a complete picture. The USAF and US State Department go to great lengths to ensure we get their version of events but it takes a certain amount of bloody mindedness - which is what I’m equipped with - to adequately research some of these stories. I know enough to know that I don’t know much.
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@trespire Specific to Operation Rimon, there is almost no reliable information available about it. The only stories we have come from the same sources we always seem to come back to. I think it’s highly unlikely we will ever have a complete picture of what happened. But one thing everyone should be aware of is that nobody in this debate can assume they are in full possession of all the facts. More often it’s what we don’t know that matters and when it comes to Israel, there’s always a lot of that. The nearest I have found to a reliable source is Austrian researcher Tom Cooper but even his information is far from complete.
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@trespire Okay but without a blow-by-blow account, with perspectives from both sides, at all levels, our understanding of what happened will be necessarily limited. Factors like nationalism and perceived security, as well as the unavailability of first hand Soviet accounts, will always make the account incomplete. I almost never trust the first thing I read on the internet on these things. Even when I read that the F-15 has a scorecard of 104-0 I retain a level of skepticism. I can’t prove absolutely that it isn’t true but by God, nobody can prove absolutely that it is. Of course, the same things apply as is the case with the Bekaa Valley: that the F-15 has pretty much always fought in a networked environment with C3 and jammer support and against second tier air forces. Do I believe it? Possibly. But I retain an element of doubt. Again, nationalism, tribalism, machismo and even a perverse kind of ‘brand loyalty’ conspire to make it extremely difficult to get a reliable picture. Question it publicly and you risk a flame war or being called a communist. I’m thick skinned enough for that not to worry me too much but I’m also aware that it means there is very limited interest in a reliable picture. This is why I called the original post particularly partisan.
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