Russian military says US spy aircraft monitored drone attack on Syria bases

(SouthFront) – The US Navy’s Boeing P-8 Poseidon military aircraft was on detected in the area between Russia’s Khmeimim air base and Tartus naval facility in Syria when militants attacked the facilities using 13 armed drones during the night on January 6, the Russian Defense Ministry has said in a statement.

Russian forces thwarted the attack intercepting six and shooting down seven UAVs.

“This forces us to take a fresh look at the strange coincidence that, during the attack of UAV terrorists on Russian military facilities in Syria, the Navy reconnaissance aircraft Poseidon was on patrol over the Mediterranean Sea for more than 4 hours at an altitude of 7 thousand meters, between Tartus and Hmeimim,” the statement reads.

Following the attack, the Russian military said that it was the “first time that terrorists massively used unmanned combat aerial vehicles of an aircraft type that were launched from a distance of more than 50 kilometers, and operated using GPS satellite navigation coordinates. Technical examination of the drones showed that such attacks could have been made by terrorists from a distance of about 100 kilometers.”

The ministry added that the advanced technologies used by the militants “could have been obtained only from a country possessing state-of-the-art technologies, including satellite navigation and remote control of … explosive devices [for] release at certain coordinates.”

However, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway commented on the issue saying that that “those devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.”