https://southfront.press/u-s-military-surveillance-blimp-reportedly-shot-down-over-northeastern-syria-videos/

US Military Surveillance Blimp Reportedly Shot Down Over Northeastern Syria (Videos)

A large surveillance aerostat of the United States military crashed on May 15 near the town of Rimelan in the northeastern countryside of Syria’s al-Hasakah.

Videos posted to social networks showed the aerostat falling from the sky and later its wreckage on the ground near Rimelan, where the U.S. maintains a base. American fighter jets were reportedly spotted flying over the area at the time of the incident.

The base in Rimelan is one of several military installations the U.S. maintains in Syria, mainly in the northeastern governorates of al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor as well as in the southeastern area of al-Tanf, under the pretext of fighting ISIS remnants. At least 900 troops are deployed there.

Some Syrian activists said that the aerostat crashed as a result of a malfunction, while others alleged that it was in fact shot down. The Pentagon is yet to clarify what happened.

The U.S. first deployed aerostats in its bases in Syria years ago. However, they were much smaller in size than the one that crashed near Rimelan.

The large size of the aerostat suggests that it was equipped with advanced surveillance systems, very possibly an aerial radar.

U.S. forces in Syria and neighboring Iraq were attacked more than a hundred times, mainly using suicide drones, after the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Palestinian Gaza Strip last October, with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) claiming responsibility for most of the attacks.

The IRI, an umbrella group of Iranian-backed armed factions in Iraq, suspended attacks against U.S. forces last February after the death of three American troops in a drone strike on a base in Jordan, reportedly upon a request from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Nevertheless, the group escalated attacks against Israel starting from March using suicide drones and cruise missiles.

The U.S. may have deployed an early warning radar aerostat in northeastern Syria in order to improve the protection of its forces there as well as to help Israel rebel attacks by the IRI.

Based on this, it is possible that the aerostat was shot down by none other than the IRI. Rimelan base is located less than 25 kilometers from Iraq, meaning that it could have been targeted using a medium-range air defense system deployed on the Iraqi side of the border.

The IRI has already used a similar system when it shot down a U.S. MQ-9 combat drone over the northeastern Iraqi governorate of Diyala on January 18.