Syrian Armed Forces today

The Syrian Armed Forces today are among the most capable in the Middle East. Naturally, they are inferior in many respects, for example, to the IDF. At the moment, Syria is a civil war . The armed forces of this country, fighting for two years, not only give hope for the preservation of the rule of law, legitimate power and security of millions of citizens, but also gain invaluable experience.

The Syrian Arab army was established in the forties of the last century. Since then, she has repeatedly participated in various armed conflicts. These include two major wars with Israel, riots in Lebanon, a war in the Persian Gulf, the suppression of the uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood and the current events in that country. Thus, the armed forces of Syria have considerable combat experience. Consider what they are at the moment.

For 2011, the Syrian Armed Forces numbered a total of 320,000 men and about the same number of reservists. Naturally, some of them later joined the rebels. It is also worth considering the gendarmerie - about eight thousand people, and the pro-government militia "shabih." Ground forces are twelve divisions, seven of them are armored, three are motorized, one is special forces and one is the Republican Guard. The latter is the most combat-ready part.

Armed with the Syrian Arab army more than five thousand tanks. About two thousand of them are obsolete models of T-54 and T-55, some are stored. The main combat vehicle is the T-72, T-62 is also used. The armed forces of Syria have an outdated tank park, since the vast majority of models were delivered long ago from the USSR. However, much effort is being made to modernize it. In particular, back in 1995, two hundred T-55s were sent to Ukraine to strengthen the armor, the installation of dynamic protection. The T-72 tanks used by the Republican Guard were also modernized. In the artillery regiments of mechanized divisions, M-46 cannons and D-30 howitzers are in service. The purpose of infantry brigades is to act on secondary sectors of the front. The Syrian Armed Forces have up to 2,600 infantry fighting vehicles and about 1,500 armored personnel carriers.

In the Air Force of Syria serve about forty thousand people. The air force as a whole is obsolete. The most combat-effective model of the aircraft is MiG-29. There are about fifty of them, they were modernized by Russian specialists until the beginning of the 2000s. Aircraft Mig-21, which are still in service with the Syrians in the number of 150, are hopelessly outdated. They can not be compared, for example, with modern Israeli fighters. It is worth mentioning the Su-24 models, which can move at extremely low altitudes.

The neighborhood of the Syrian Arab Republic with such a rather aggressive state as Israel, makes one pay attention to air defense. However, its SAMs are morally outdated, although efforts are being made to modernize them. In particular, this circumstance caused several successful attacks by Israelis from the air on the military and research facilities of the Arab Republic, undertaken in recent years.

The armed forces of the countries of the world are constantly acquiring new technology. Syria is no exception to this rule. Russia constantly exports weapons to the Arab Republic. In 1998, Damascus concluded an agreement with Moscow on the supply of thousands of anti-tank "Cornets" and "Metis-M" complexes. In particular, at the moment contracts for the delivery of Yak-130 fighters and S-300 complexes are gradually being implemented, despite the opposition of this number of Western forces.