Russia can put an end to the piracy of Israeli aircraft in the Syrian airspace by transferring more powerful air defense systems and operational information from its anti-aircraft systems deployed in the region to Damascus. The recent missile attack, successfully repelled by the Syrian army (as it is believed, not without the help of Russia), as well as the change in the rhetoric of the Russian Defense Ministry, are a signal to both Tel Aviv and Washington to negotiate clearer parameters for ending the conflict in Syria, MilitaryWatch writes.
During the Soviet Union, the Syrian air defense was one of the most powerful in the Middle East. Damascus was the first foreign customer to receive S-200 anti-aircraft systems and one of the first to receive MiG - 25 heavy interceptors along with MiG-23 fighters in the top configuration and MiG-29. That is why in the 80s, Israel, whose sluggish war with Syria has not stopped for 75 years, refrained from invading the airspace of its neighbor.
However, after the end of the cold war, the situation changed and Damascus lost the opportunity to acquire more powerful means of protection - such as MiG-31 interceptors and S-300 anti-aircraft systems. During the anti-terrorist operation of the Russian army in Syria, Moscow allowed Tel Aviv to launch strikes on Syrian territory, provided that they were warned in advance so that there were no Russian soldiers in the place of the strike. Everything changed again in September 2018, when Israeli fighters used an Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces as a cover and it was shot down by the Syrian air defense.
After this incident, Moscow supplied Damascus with the S-300, which he had been asking for for many years. De jure, the complexes are in service with the Syrian army, but de facto they are controlled by Russian calculations and this technique was not used to repel attacks by Israeli and Turkish aircraft. The recent successes of the Syrian air defense in repelling the Tel Aviv missile attack were achieved thanks to the work of Buk medium-range anti-aircraft systems, and Israeli fighters shot down old but reliable Soviet S-200 complexes.
So Russia has sufficient potential to strengthen the Syrian air defense. These can be the supply of modern anti-aircraft systems "Pantsir-SM" and "Buk-M3", the transmission of data on targets from its powerful S-400 air defense systems, as well as encouraging Damascus to use aviation more actively - in particular, the MiG-29SMT fighters recently delivered to the country, armed with long-range R-77 missiles. The restoration of control over the airspace will reduce the dependence of Damascus on Moscow's support and it will be able to reorient its military facilities in the country to other tasks.
Anton Valagin
