| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syrian Leader's Weapons Under Strain |
| 2012-08-03 |
| With diplomatic efforts dead and the future of Syria playing out on the battlefield, many of the Syrian government's most powerful weapons, including helicopter gunships, fighter jets and tanks, are looking less potent and in some cases like a liability for the military of President Bashar al-Assad. Rebels have turned part of Mr. Assad's formidable arsenal on his own troops. Anti-Assad fighters on Wednesday shelled a military airport in the contested city of Aleppo with captured weapons. On Tuesday, rebels used commandeered Syrian Army tanks in a skirmish with Mr. Assad's troops. Perhaps even more worrying to Mr. Assad, his military has come to rely more heavily on equipment designed for a major battle with a foreign enemy, namely Israel, rather than a protracted civil conflict with his own people. Close observers of his military say Syria is having trouble keeping its sophisticated and maintenance-intensive weapons functioning. The strain is likely to grow more acute as the government depends on helicopter gunships to extend its reach to parts of the country rendered impassable to logistics convoys and even armored vehicles by the rebels' improvised bombs. More at the link |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #2 From the NYT: C.J. Chivers takes up a growing issue for the military of President Bashar al-Assad: troops have weapons that do not match well with the civil war they are now fighting. Here, this guy's talking about how Assad has too many heavy weapons. I have to shake my head in disbelief. Heavy weapons are how you minimize friendly casualties. They are why powerful countries have large numbers of them, and armies that have very few are merely a step up from militias. How does he think the US achieved 20 to 1 kill ratios in Vietnam? Via light infantry one-shot one-kill engagements? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2012-08-03 20:37 |
| #1 According to his bio, Chivers is a former marine who served in Desert Storm. His website talks about how Gaddafi met his end from weapons taken from his own inventory, but conveniently omits the fact that these self-same weapons were impotent against Gaddafi's armor, artillery and air attacks, until NATO jumped in and took out those assets. This guy's not an observer bloodlessly analyzing both sides' military capabilities based on numbers, equipment, organization and so on. He's already picked a winner based on a NATO intervention that may or may not materialize. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2012-08-03 20:03 |