On January 28th, resistance forces in Iraq launched a cross border attack on a formerly secret American outpost in Jordan known as Tower 22. Tower 22 is an outpost of the much larger Al-Tanf base, one of the largest of the dozens of illegal American bases in Syria. Tower 22 was initially built to monitor the Rukban refugee camp, which at one point housed over 100,000 Syrians fleeing Obama’s intentional destabilization of their country. After years of NATO forces blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid to the camp, the population has dwindled to less than 7,500 today.
Despite Biden’s great hue and cry to the contrary, this was no terrorist attack, but rather an act of resistance from a people who have been illegally occupied and murdered by American backed bandits for over a decade. Attacking uniformed military forces illegally occupying a country against the will of it’s recognized government is not only not a terrorist attack, under all relevant international laws it cannot be.
Sadly, in the modern era terrorism has been degenerated into a word which simply means any action the US Government doesn’t like. This is an intentional act of subterfuge, designed to de-legitimize popular resistance while legitimizing an illegal military occupation.
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Al-Tanf is one of the the linchpins of America’s ongoing terrorist campaign in Syria. From this base, the 5th Special Forces group trains and leads the “moderate rebels” who ensure that Syria will stay divided and weak for the benefit of America, Israel, and most importantly, Lockheed and Raytheon.
Al-Tanf is the only remaining American outpost in the south of Syria, holding it allows NATO to threaten the Syrian capital Damascus and major cities such as Palmyra by infiltrating terrorists into the country from Iraq and Jordan. According to CENTCOM, the base houses around 350 personnel from both the US Army and US Air Force, which would indicate that it is used for targeting airstrikes and drones in the region.
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In light of this, the strike on Tower 22 represents a significant victory for the resistance, and yet another humiliating defeat for NATO’s vaunted air defense systems. While the government claims that the attack was carried out by a single drone which was only able to approach the base due to chance, the reality is likely much different.
The attack killed 3 people and wounded several dozen. 8 of those have now been evacuated due to critical wounds. According to the US Army, the soldiers were sleeping in Containerized Housing Units at the time of the attack, a sort of pre-fabricated barracks made from decommissioned shipping containers, which are then converted into individual apartments for the soldiers. A typical CHU is 22x8, and houses only 2 soldiers each. They can be stacked and satellite images of the camp show at least 80 visible CHUs, which would indicate they may be stacked in groups of two. This means that dozens of CHUs must have been hit and damaged.
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A single drone does not have the firepower necessary to cause these sorts of causalities. What is much more likely is that the base was targeted by a swarm of kamikaze munitions, which simply overwhelmed it’s air defenses. US bases are usually covered by CRAM, a land based variant of the Phalanx CIWS1 missile defense system. CIWS uses a radar and IR guided 20mm chain gun with a high rate of fire to target and destroy incoming projectiles at close range. On ships, CIWS represents the last line of defense against missiles that have already made it past the fleet’s own missiles and aircraft. This system has faced very few real tests, and when it has, it has failed every time, often catastrophically so.
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In Naval service, CIWS has not only consistently failed to stop attacks, it is responsible for multiple friendly fire incidents in both Iraq and the Falklands when the automated system fired on friendly ships, mistaking their own countermeasures for enemy missiles. During the Gulf War, a CIWS friendly fire incident put several rounds through the captain’s quarters of the USS Missouri, mistaking one of her chaff countermeasures for an Iraqi Silkworm missile. While the captain was not present at the time and no one was harmed, this incident scared the Navy badly enough that CIWS has become a largely vestigial system.
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Because of this, most US Navy ships do not turn on the system, as using it for anything outside of a strictly controlled training exercise is far too dangerous. The most famous example of this was the USS Cole attack, which would have easily been prevented by the CIWS system. However, the system had to be turned off as the high volume of civilian traffic in the area would have confused the system and led to a massacre as it automatically fired on civilian ships. Another example would be the USS Stark, hit and damaged by Iraqi Exocet missiles in 1987 while it’s CIWS system was switched off.
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The system is so bad that the only confirmed case of CIWS successfully intercepting a target outside of the firing range came in 1996, when the Japanese destroyer Yugiri was supposed to shoot down an aerial practice target towed by an American A-6 Intruder. Rather than aiming at it’s target, Yugiri locked on to the allied aircraft and destroyed it before the crew had even realized what happened. The towed target was undamaged, while the crew of the A-6 had to eject.
Of course, even decades of catastrophic failure is not enough to convince the US Military to stop using a very profitable weapon, so CIWS has been proliferated among American forces to the extent that it now operates from both land and sea. As usual, Raytheon has been richly rewarded for it’s failure with more lucrative contracts, the most recent of which was a $113 million deal in 2023 to rebuild and upgrade the aging system.
On land, CIWS is deployed as a truck mounted system called CRAM2 and it has been widely used in America’s illegal wars in the Middle East. There, it has faced little else beyond sporadic mortar and homemade rocket fire, which are slow targets moving in a predictable parabolic arc. CRAM has proved somewhat effective at intercepting these easy targets, but the attack on Tower 22 represents a much sterner test, and once again the system has failed.
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Although CRAM is a gun based system, meaning it costs far less to operate than equivalent missile based air defense systems, it shares the same fundamental drawback as they do. It simply does not have enough ammo. While the magazine of 4500 rounds sounds impressive, CRAM fires 75 rounds a second, meaning that it only has around 1 minute of firing. The US Navy estimates that this is enough time to engage 5 targets. While the system can be reloaded, the process takes around 5 minutes using the automatic systems aboard ship. 5 minutes is an eternity when facing an air raid.
This is not a major problem in Naval use, where each ship can potentially have several CIWS batteries, plus dozens of missiles and aircraft. This layered system allows at least some of the fleet to continue firing at incoming targets as the rest reload. However, the land based systems operate solo, with no missiles to cover the gaps and no automated systems to help reloading. After the magazine is depleted, the ground forces are left with no protection at all.
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Adding insult to injury, the exotic, armor piercing depleted uranium and tungsten ammo used by the CIWS is so expensive that the estimated cost to engage one target is $30,000. While this is hundreds of times lower than a surface to air missile, it is still far more than the rockets and drones used by the resistance. This is not even mentioning the permanent damage caused to the land and water by the radioactive bullets, the widespread use of such in Iraq has already caused rates of cancer several thousand times higher than normal.
The weaknesses of this system are not a new discovery, the only issue is one of scale. In the past, American forces were facing poor, ill-equipped militias who lacked the firepower to break through their protection.
After decades of organization to form a unified front against American imperialism, the resistance is no longer what it once was. They can strike back at the NATO assassins who terrorized their skies for decades with drones of their own.
In the wars raging throughout the world from Donbass to Gaza, we now see the skies full of incredibly cheap, effective drones and rockets which are capable of easily destroying the best weapons NATO can provide. Some of these weapons are so simple they can be built by hand and without electricity.
Even now, resistance forces in Gaza are destroying IOF armor using homemade weapons deployed from hand dug tunnels. Despite the “primitive” nature of these attacks, the resistance is killing dozens of invaders with each strike. Their causalities are so severe that the IOF was forced to withdraw an entire brigade and cede northern Gaza back to Palestinian control.
Years of colonial wars spent massacring civilians and poorly armed militias has left NATO soft and incapable of sustaining a determined attack. Decades of arms acquisition policies decided by the arms contractors to maximize profits instead of efficiency has left them with equipment so expensive and ineffective that every time they try to stop the resistance, it only benefits them.
The solution to these problems is simple. Withdraw American troops from their illegal bases in the Middle East and end support to the genocidal apartheid regime of “Israel.” If this is done, there would be peace.
Unfortunately, it seems like the Biden regime is determined to lead the world down the path of war once again. Just like the last time, they will be defeated by the resistance. We can only hope that this war will be their last.
Close-In Weapons System. Pronounced C-Wiz
Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar. Pronounced C-Ram
The US military should be sent back to American soil and when they do ,the world will rejoice for it will it will be a sign of finally the reign of peace ,long sought after.
Well said article .Branding people of being terrorists when they are protecting their lands only exposes their hypocrisy .