Analyst Types, What Is This?

[Darrell]

My sister was snooping around in Syria on Google Maps. She was looking in the Raqqa area, which may be where the Jordanian pilot was burned to death. She found this circular formation in the desert and wondered if it was some sort of fortification. Interesting pattern in how it's laid out. What say you?

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7891306 ... a=!3m1!1e3

ETA: This is also the area where the Syrian air forces were captured, marched out into the desert and massacred.

[Jered]

It looks like a message from our lizard people overlords to the mothership.

[JAG2955]

SAM site?

If A-10 Attack/Cuba taught me anything.

[Steamforger]

Looks like the standard, Soviet era SAM set up to me.

[tfbncc]

Looks like an old soviet export SA-2/SA-3 SAM site.

Check out this article on soviet missile installations. About halfway down the page, they show several example photos of typical SAM setups.

Link

[tfbncc]

Dang it, ya beat me to it by mere seconds.

[Jered]

Bah! My guess was off!

[Steamforger]

In speaking with some cold war era intel types and reading on my own, my take-away is that the Soviets did not either allow modifications to, or even entertain the idea of modifications to, standard layouts like this. When Soviets set up a Battalion HQ, SAM site, or other similar thing, it was always done according to the plan. The upshot of this, if you are not Soviet, is if you can spot one particular piece of the puzzle, the rest can be interpolated with a large degree of accuracy. As one friend in the groundpounders told me "If you could spot the brewery, everything else fell into place."

Since the armies of the ME were essentially sandy bloc nations, it stands that the Soviet doctrine of laying things out the same way every time was passed onto (beaten into???) ME militaries. This is an outstanding resource on the subject. I remember paying $20 for mine and it came with the companion softcover.

Any one with actual, been there experience feel free to dial this in for me.

[Darrell]

Thanks, gents, that's pretty much what I thought.

[randy]

Late to the party, but yeah, that's an inactive SAM site. I've seen (and developed target packages on) enough of those over the years.

Without any equipment deployed couldn't tell you which kind, but the Syrians had SA-2's and 3's. Doesn't look like an SA-5 site to me.