REBELS STRIKE BACK IN SYRIA BUT REGIME BOMBS CONTINUE TO FALL
▶ Russia helps the Syrian Air Force rule the skies, despite missile attacks and US strikes, writes Tom Rollins
For years, Syrian aircraft have inflicted untold damage on cities, towns and villages up and down the country. One of the defining features of the nine-year conflict has been aerial bombardment – first by Syria’s air force, followed by Russian jets after President Vladimir Putin intervened in the civil war in 2015. The air power of Russia secured victory for the Assad regime and brought vast destruction on cities and towns under opposition control.
But this month two incidents suggested the rebels may have offered something of a limited riposte.
Man-portable air defence systems, commonly referred to as Manpads, are hand-held anti-aircraft weapons capable of downing helicopters and some types of fighter jet.
Rebels used a Manpad missile to bring down a Syrian transport helicopter over Idlib’s countryside on February 11, with another shot down over the western Aleppo countryside three days later.
Both were Russian-designed transport helicopters.
The Syrian Air Force has a fleet of approximately a dozen active Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters.
While the aircraft are used for transport, reconnaissance and supply missions, they are probably most notorious for barrel bombing.
For years, the Syrian Air Force has flown helicopters over rebel-held areas and dropped oil drums and barrels packed with dynamite, shrapnel and petrol on to buildings, with devastating effect.
But how crucial a loss were the two helicopters?
Estimates suggest Syria had more than 460 fixed-wing or rotary combat aircraft and another 76 training aircraft before the uprising against President Bashar Al Assad’s regime in 2011.
That fleet included Russian or Soviet-made “L-39s, MiG21s, MiG-23s, MiG-29s, Su-22s, and Su-24s for strike missions, and Mi-8/17s and Mi-24s for barrel bombing and strafing attacks”, according to a 2014 profile by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
A recent report by Tobias Schneider, a research fellow at Berlin’s Global Public Policy Institute, estimated there were “six to 10 Mi-8/17 helicopters more or less consistently involved in the … barrel bombing campaign” that led to thousands of civilian deaths.
The helicopter fleet may be closer to 50, although large numbers are believed to be out of service at any one time.
Researchers use a combination of open-source intelligence, satellite imagery and social media to build a picture of Syria’s military hardware.
And while the findings cannot be exact, the research builds a clear picture of how Syria’s nine-year war has degraded the government’s air capabilities.
The two helicopters shot down are not the first to be lost in the conflict.
Rebels who stormed Syrian army bases managed to commandeer anti-aircraft weapons and some groups received a limited number of Manpads from foreign backers.
Strikes by foreign states, including the US, have also badly damaged several Syrian airbases and potentially the regime’s aircraft, too.
According to Nicholas Heras, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War think tank in Washington, about “30 per cent of the Syrian Arab Army’s aircraft is believed to have been destroyed by US action since the start of the conflict”.
The US Department of Defence said a strike on the Shayrat airbase in Homs in April 2017 – an attack carried out in response to the regime’s Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons attack – destroyed “20 per cent of Syria’s operational aircraft”.
But Mr Heras said Syria’s air force was significantly bolstered by Russia’s intervention in the conflict. “The Russians brought … significant, advanced aircraft – particularly fighter jets,” he said.
Despite the strikes against helicopters this month, the government bombing has not stopped.
After the second helicopter was shot down, Syrian forces briefly adjusted their aerial tactics and kept the more vulnerable helicopters away from opposition-held territory.
Perhaps most importantly for the three million civilians in the region, this led to a pause in barrel bombings.
An attempted Manpad strike on a Syrian jet over the Idlib town of Saraqib on Wednesday reportedly missed its target, but did force the aircraft out of opposition airspace.
Yet Russian and Syrian jets still regularly bomb rebel positions and hit civilian communities, including hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing north.