File talk:USS Donald Cook outside Tartus 9 April 2018.jpg

USS Donald Cook is only 100 km from Tartus. That is far TOO CLOSE to launch Tomahawks with a 1,500 km range. More likely it is there for missile defense, targeting the Russian anti-ship missiles and counter attacks. Russia cannot attack a ship that *did not* launch missiles at Syria, that would be an escalation. (Sinking the ships that *did* fire missiles at Syria is OK under the rules of the game.) -- Petri Krohn (talk) 22:48, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

It could also be there to enforce a literal no-fly zone over Syria. Russia wouldn't be too happy about that. --Charles Wood (talk) 01:47, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Is this a genuine new photo of Donald Cook? It departed Cyprus, but my impression from reading machine translation of Hurriet is that the story was not confirmed: ''The Navy denied allegations that the USS Donald Cook ship was approaching Syrian territorial waters and harassed by Russian aircraft. '' If an amateur is photographing from sea level, the horizon is ~ 3.57 h^(1/2) km with h in meters; that is 18 km for height of 26 m; so photo cannot be made from shore; sailing/flying off Syria is kind of adventurous for an amateur --Resup (talk) 04:05, 11 April 2018 (UTC)