Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) on the Syrian Airfield shows that Russia Lied.

Russia and Syria claimed that only 23 out of 59 US Tomahawk Cruise Missiles actually impacted their targets, and the rest landed somewhere in the desert. No evidence was provided to back up this assertion, but many, I'd say most, people (on the Internet) were more than willing to believe it.

I stated on many Internet forums and blog comment sections that while I didn't necessarily support the action or see a need for it, I was very surprised that our targeting systems would fail at such a rate. I also asked why we would be inclined to believe a BDA from Russia or Syria any more than our own BDA. I suggested they were lying and that our Tomahawks probably had an accuracy rate of more like 99%. The Russian government has a history of lying that trumps our own government's.

Turns out I was correct. Or rather, 98.3% is correct. Wouldn't you know, someone who's job it was to know our own capabilities vs the enemy's capabilities and who's job it was to detect lies, didn't just jump on the "America sucks at everything" bandwagon. And don't think I wasn't ridiculed a bit for not just believing everything Russia said about our strike.

A satellite photo available to the public for your own BDA:

Enough patting myself on the back...

Apparently, we can see from public satelitte technology that at least 58 of the 59 cruise missiles did in fact hit their targets. The relative lack of damage to the airfield wasn't caused by the missiles missing their targets, but by the fact that a Tomahawk cruise missile, being a surgical strike weapon, doesn't have that big of an explosive warhead at all, the warhead weighing less than 250lbs. Yes, that is a SMALL explosive warhead. It's not going to penetrate earth, it's not going to wipe out double hardened aircraft hangars, it's not going to permanently destroy an entire airfield.

They're simply not made to do the things that the public apparently expected them to do.

In this case, I suppose they really were used to send a message, even if I don't necessarily support the action or the location of the action.