Russia flexes new muscle in Syria
Weaponry, tactics show military transformation.
— Two weeks of air and missile strikes in Syria have given Western intelligence and military officials a deeper appreciation of the transformation that Russia’s military has undergone under President Vladimir Putin, showcasing its ability to conduct operations beyond its borders and providing a public demonstration of new weaponry, tactics and strategy.
The strikes have involved aircraft never before tested in combat, including the Sukhoi Su-34 strike fighter, which NATO calls the Fullback, and a ship-based cruise missile fired more than 900 miles from the Caspian Sea, which, according to some analysts, surpasses the U.S. equivalent in technological capability.
The operations reflect what officials and analysts described as a little-noticed — and still incomplete — modernization that has been underway in Russia for several years, despite strains on the country’s budget. And that, as with Russia’s intervention in neighboring Ukraine, has raised alarms in the West.
In a report this month for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav Gressel argued that Putin has overseen the most rapid transformation of the country’s armed forces since the 1930s.
“Russia is now a military power that could overwhelm any of its neighbors, if they were isolated from Western support,” wrote Gressel, a former officer of the Austrian military.
Russia’s fighter jets are, for now at least, conducting as many strikes in a typical day against fighters opposing the government of President Bashar Assad as the U.S.-led coalition targeting the Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.
The operation in Syria — still limited — has become, in effect, a testing ground for an increasingly confrontational and defiant Russia under Putin. In fact, as Putin himself has suggested, the operation could be designed to send a message to the United States and the West about the restoration of the country’s military prowess and global reach after decades of post-Soviet decay.
“It is one thing for the experts to be aware that Russia supposedly has these weapons, and another thing for them to see for the first time that they do really exist, that our defense industry is making them, that they are of high quality and that we have well-trained people who can put them to effective use,” Putin said in an interview broadcast on state television last week. “They have seen, too, now that Russia is ready to use them if this is in the interests of our country and our people.”
Russia’s swift and largely bloodless takeover of Crimea in 2014 was effectively a stealth operation, while its involvement in eastern Ukraine, though substantial, was conducted in secrecy and obfuscated by official denials of direct Russian involvement. The bombings in Syria, by contrast, are being conducted openly and are being documented with great fanfare by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, which distributes targeting video in the way the Pentagon did during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
That has also given officials and analysts far greater insight into a military that for nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union was seen as a decaying, insignificant force, one so hobbled by aging systems and so consumed by corruption that it posed little real threat beyond its borders.
“We’re learning more than we have in the last 10 years,” said Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noting the use of the new strike fighters and the new cruise missile, known as the Kalibr. “As it was described to me, we are going to school on what the Russian military is capable of today.”
The Russian advancements go beyond new weaponry, reflecting an increase in professionalism and readiness. Russia set up its main operations at an air base near Latakia in northwestern Syria in a matter of three weeks, dispatching more than four dozen combat planes and helicopters, scores of tanks and armored vehicles, rocket and artillery systems, air defenses and portable housing for as many as 2,000 troops. It was Moscow’s largest deployment to the Middle East since the Soviet Union deployed in Egypt in the 1970s.
“What continues to impress me is their ability to move a lot stuff real far, real fast,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said in an interview.
Since its air campaign started Sept. 30, Russia has ramped up its airstrikes from a handful each day to nearly 90 on some days, using more than a half-dozen types of guided and unguided munitions, including fragmentary bombs and bunker busters for hardened targets, U.S. analysts said.
Russia is not only bringing some of its most advanced hardware to the fight, but it has also deployed large field kitchens and even dancers and singers to entertain the troops — all signs that Moscow is settling in for the long haul, U.S. analysts said.