Syria's Air Defences, Among Mideast's Strongest, Pose Challenge To Outside Intervention

[Purveyor]

--CLIP
Syria, experts say, possesses one of the most robust air defence networks in the region, with multiple surface-to-air missiles providing overlapping coverage of key areas in combination with thousands of anti-aircraft guns capable of engaging attacking aircraft at lower levels.

Six years ago, the system was showing signs of neglect.

In 2007, Syria's aging Soviet-supplied air defence system received a shock when Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria. The attack proved deeply embarrassing and provided a jolt to the Assad regime, which responded by making a concerted push to upgrade its air defences, and turned to the country's traditional arms provider, Russia, for help.

Moscow, which has been the source of most of Syria's military hardware since Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez, courted the Kremlin decades ago, was more than happy to oblige.

It provided Syria with new systems, such as 36 Pantsyr mobile surface-to-air missile systems and at least eight Buk-M2E mobile SAMs. The Pantsyrs, considered particularly effective against attacking aircraft, feature a combination of 30mm cannons paired with a radar and anti-aircraft missiles all on the same vehicle.

At the same time, old SA-3s were upgraded to Pechora-2Ms — essentially a new and much more capable system.

MORE...

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/world/Syrias+defences+among+Mideasts+strongest+pose+challenge+outside/8328421/story.html

[pampango]

1. Plus, even if Assad's air defences were neutralized somehow, Syria is way different than Libya

According to a post today from Juan Cole:

Sen. John McCain argues for an aerial intervention, which more or less worked in Libya. But Syria is not like Libya in any way.

Syria’s weapons depots, tanks and artillery are not out in some desert where they can be bombed with few casualties. They are in the cities. Bombing them would kill a lot of innocent civilians. Even just trying to take out the large number of anti-aircraft batteries (the essential first step of any aerial intervention) would be very costly in lives.

Everyone always forgets that if foreigners bomb a hated regime’s installations and accidentally thereby kill large numbers of innocent civilians, the dead civilians show up on the front page and everyone turns against the foreign air force. NATO only avoided this outcome in Libya by staying mostly away from the cities (it did not actually intervene in the Misrata siege). The few bombing raids on Gaddafi’s HQ, the Bab al-Aziziyah, did give the regime some propaganda points, since you can’t bomb downtown Tripoli without casualties.

So an air intervention is impractical in Syria, because its geography and the distribution of weapons are just different from those in Libya. And, any air intervention could well become unpopular both in Syria and the world, really, really fast.

http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/doesnt-intervene-syria.html

Not only are the air defenses quite formidable but there would be few viable targets to attack that would not result in massive civilian casualties that would make Assad stronger not weaker.

[FogerRox]

2. The Pechora-2m seems to have a better communications suite

than the Pechora-2A. Quicker deployment time. 35km range.

Pantsyr, 20km range.

The Buk-M2 30km range?

These are all short range systems. My understanding is that its better to build layers of air defense.

Didnt Syria have S-300 Favorits, 90-120 mile range.....& the Tor M-1 is a very short range system, 12 km range. Combined with the Pechora or Buk, this trio might make a nice integrated system.