(Washington Post) Recently released satellite images of the airfield Russia uses in Syria suggest that a contingent of jets from Russia’s lone aircraft carrier, which is floating off Syria’s coast, have been moved inland.
The pictures taken Nov. 20 and released to the defence analysis company IHS Janes, show nine jets adjacent to the tarmac at Khmeimim air base in northern Syria. They are the same types as those flown off the Admiral Kuznetsov, an aging, Soviet-era heavy-aircraft-carrying missile cruiser that began launching jets into Syrian airspace earlier this month.
If confirmed, the transfer of the aircraft from ship to shore is just one more wrinkle in the Kuznetsov's very public insertion into the Syria campaign, an action that began in October when the 1,000-foot hulk steamed through the English Channel on its way to Syria and continued earlier this month when a carrier-based jet crashed into the Mediterranean before landing.