Syria: US missile strikes could do more damage than west had believed

Analysts and defectors suggest war-weary troops and ageing equipment mean even limited strikes could have major effect

Peter Beaumont in Amman

The Observer, Saturday 31 August 2013

 

 

"The degraded situation of the Syrian military after two and a half years of war may mean it is more vulnerable to limited US missile strikes than some western officials have been suggesting.

While there has been widespread scepticism from military sources over the effect of the suggested air strikes, former Syrian military officers and some analysts believe even limited strikes might cause significant damage.
The view was shared by a report last week from the Rand Corporation thinktank, Options for Airpower in Syria. It argued that neutralising Syria's air defences and severely damaging its air force were likely to be much easier than some pessimists suggested.
Although it argued that "negating Syrian air power would have only a marginal direct effect on civilian casualties, which have mostly been caused by ground forces", it said this "could significantly assist Syrian opposition forces by denying air support and especially air mobility and resupply to the Syrian army"......

The view that Assad's conventional forces are vulnerable was endorsed by a Syrian air force defector in Jordan, interviewed by the Observer, who suggested that the regime's forces are more stretched than some analysts have suggested and are dangerously exposed in a number of key areas.
While the Syrian air force has been described as being on "its last legs", with crews cannibalising aircraft to keep planes in the air, other factors are likely to be problematic for the regime.
"They have been moving people out of security compounds," the defector said, repeating the claim made by others that prisoners and civilians had been moved into the vacated bases.
"But there are other locations that they can't evacuate. They rely on holding the big bases like Mezze. They can't abandon them.
"They will have to keep their forces manning the main supply routes and that makes them vulnerable to attack.........."