Syrian TO&E thread

[rudel.dietrich]

I have done some looking and it looks like Syria uses a lots of different tank shells.

Most of their tanks have HE shells and HEAT rounds.

For anti armour they appear to still have alot of old AP shells.

Sabot rounds exist but are in short supply.

If I was BF here is how I would do it.

Reserve armour gets only AP shells.

Regular Syrian Army gets 25% Sabot and 75% AP.

For Guards tanks it should be 65% Sabot 35% AP

Most Syrian tanks are going to have to pray for side and rear shots using almost worthless AP shells.

Or use HEAT which is going to be almost useless against the Armour of an Abrams.

Since Sabot is going to be in such short supply I think BF is either going to have to give us the option of what to fire or make the AI ONLY use it against tanks or in the rare event that nothing else is left.

Most Sabot rounds seems to be some of the 1970s first gen stuff made from pure steel.

Most of it is 80s stuff that is tungeston and ok but by todays standerds lacking.

They have some qunaities of 90s stuff that has been redesinged and has a prayer of damagaing or killing an Abrams from the front. But chances of that are slim.

How BF is going to model this I dont know!

Glad im not the one doing it

Fans of Armour vs Armour are not going to like this game.

If modeled right Syria really has no chance in a head on fight.

Even ambushes are going to be maybe one damaged or lost tank for a entire platoon of Syrian tanks.

Against APCs they should fare better but they have little or no HEAT protections so American TOW and Javelin gunners are going to have a field day.

Only three types of Syrian tanks have ERA tiles and against the Javelin those are pretty useless.

They might help against a TOW but will probably not do a whole lot.

Ambushes are going to be the name of the game.

And forget about taking on a M1A2 in the front. Unless you get extremly lucky your not going to punch through that armour.

Artillery is coming up tonight!

[ September 04, 2006, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: rudel.dietrich ]

[John Kettler]

Steve, rudel.dietrich, et al.,

(warming to his earlier theme on size, fitness and nutrition)

Two real world data points from direct personal experience.

Example One

I'm on site in Glendale, Arizona, where our house is being built. I'm twelve, weigh 95 pounds and am squat and a bit pudgy (family trait for boys before puberty growth spurt). The foreman, Pedro, is a tally lanky Mexican, and his son, Augie, is my age and hits me shoulder high. He's helping his dad.

How? By hauling 60 lb. bags of cement into the house from the front yard! I was back then a typical roughhousing, bike riding, several kinds of ball playing, dirt clod throwing, tree climbing kid, but I could barely lift that sack six inches off the ground. He could do it all day and was smaller than I was.

Example Two

This weekend, I was involved in a crash pack and move drill for some dear friends. It was ~ 105 degrees, maybe hotter, in the San Fernando Valley and humid to boot. The move crew consisted of my whiter than white, six three, ~350 pound, ox strong, in D&D terms Con 100 (100) friend

who admittedly pilots a desk, yours truly at five eleven , 175, in okay condition, and two youngish looking Guatemalans, the tallest whom may've hit me shoulder high, were built like young teenage boys and looked impossibly undersized for the great stacks of book boxes and the like. They were doing the real heavy lifting, but it didn't seem to faze them at all. My Landsknecht proportioned towering friend was pretty much thrashed by the heat and the humidilty after yo ho heave hoing four heavy book boxes and was pounding water throughout the truck loading, and I got a bit of a workout, too, but mostly in the semiairconditioned apartment (not sun blasted all the time, just at points). Even so, I was sweating considerably and drinking water and other fluids in large quantities. By contrast, the small Guatemalan guys took in zero fluids throughout the entire hourlong loading exercise, and when they did pause before we moved to the offload, each drank one 16 oz. bottle. Period. My big friend was flushed and streaming sweat from every pore, but the Guatemalans looked as fresh as when they'd arrived.

After decamping to a hot, pooly ventilated, very dusty (ash sucked in from a nearby fire) storage unit and stevedoring the mostly book contents of a 5 x 10 foot unit, my friend nearly collapsed. I worked until I could barely move my arms, and the Guatemalans took load after load,

picked up dozens of heavy boxes, carted them several hundred feet down the way and loaded them into another storage unit. We went through all our remaining water, which wasn't much (no time to stop as had truck on clock with little time left), but even so, looked like wrecks. My friend's shirt and shorts were practically soaked through, I sweated so much my waistband was wet and I thought I'd never cool off, but the Guatemalans were barely mussed

and doubtless could've worked for many more hours, We ran out of time, though, and had to leave.

I suggest being extremely careful, therefore, in equating size or, short of real starvation, nutritional intake with load bearing capability, hardiness, or combat endurance. Remember, too, it takes lots of calories to power, move and fight a big brawny body, but relatively few for the other somatype under discussion.

Turning now to the MG-42 issue, the ammo count seems low for the LMG. I've seen plenty of stills and footage of such crews carrying not only the ammo boxes but also festooned with bandoliers of ammo draped around the neck.

Am very impressed with the discussion of Syrian tanks, but note that there seems to be some confusion. Tank platoon and company TO&E exactly conforms to the Russian approach, but I think there may be some confusion at battalion level, where for line tank units 31 (3 x Company + 1 HQ)

is normal. There is also, though, something called the ITB (independent tank battalion), which is used by the owning commander to deliver the killing blow, to which end it has the best men in the owning unit. There, the platoons have four tanks each, not three, thus a company is thirteen tanks total (12 + 1 HQ) and the ITB 40 (39 + 1 HQ). Please see Suvorov's INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY for the details from the perspective of a former tank company commander and later, miltary intelligence officer. Extremely valuable!

Generally, the Russian practice seems to be that the best unit, at whatever level of command, is that commander's reserve and is kept to TO&E even if it means stripping other formations of tanks and crews to do so, for it is the battle winner, whether on offense or defense. In a sense, the Russians are doing what the Roman legions used to do with the big first cohort at the decisive point.

As for tank ammo, SOFAIK, the T-54 and T-55, being built around a WW II ex-naval gun, the D-10, fire the kind of AP ammo the CMBB grogs know well. Modernized T-55s with Kladivo? fire control, though, fire modern tank ammo, and this has been true since the 1980s, when it gave us fits at Hughes just thinking about a first echelon horde of upgraded, ERA fitted T-55s firing long rod penetrators, nasty HEAT (the kind that could go right through a vanilla M1 frontally) and HE frag advancing into Germany as TOWs failed to penetrate, said echelon being trailed by the good tanks (T-62/T-64, later T-72/T-80), many ERA equipped and firing gun launched ATGMs. In those days, the entire battle hung on getting long range kills from TOW, for we lacked the combat power to go tank on tank while heavily outnumbered. And that was before we discovered how truly far behind the eight ball we were in both armor and antiarmor!

Offhand, I'd rate steel long rod penetrators as obsolete, even by export standards now (were wartime monkey model desperation stuff as of 1982, per Suvorov), though still devastating vs. all nontank AFVs, tungsten carbide as the real baseline, and DU as the high threat. If the Russians are willing to supply the Syrians with

modern ATGMs, then why not modern tank ammunition?

The same argument holds for HEAT, but even the older stuff could wreak havoc on anything less than an M1A2.

SOFAIK, only the T-55s and T-12 ATGs can even fire WW II pattern ammo, for everything later is smoothbore.

Great work!

Regards,

John Kettler

[ September 04, 2006, 07:28 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[rudel.dietrich]

Syrian Artillery

As promised here is some information on the guns of the Syrian army.

Formation matters little in something like CM. But gun types and ammo loads I guess would.

I am going to break it down into mortars, light field pieces, heavy field pieces and SP.

Like Iraq Syria has an impressive array of guns and number of guns.

But like Iraq it would be impressive if this was WW2 or Korea.

Syria can bring in massive weight of shell on any given target and in a conventional defensive war would probably fare well.

But they would have serious problems moving the guns against an air campaign.

Fire against a static target would be sucessful but shifting fire to compensate for the ever fluid battlefield would present a significant problem.

Fire beyond line of sight would also be a challenge since radar assisted artillery is in very short supply.

Most guns would rely on a spotter with a radio and the mark one eyeball.

Counterbattery fire would be almost non exsistent and US guns should be able to fire with impunity.

Couterbattery fire against Syrian batteries would be swift and decisive and within minutes of opening fire and betraying their posistions Syrian guns would be engulfed in metal and flame.

Not a very pretty picture is it!

But in a defensive scenario and with proper time given to pre planning fire missions the Syrian player should be able to bring in a massive amount of shell within a certain window.

If the US player lacks support then they would face the problem of inaccurate but heavy sustained barrages.

In short Syria has lots and lots of guns and lots and lots of shells to feed those guns.

But they lack quality and their lives can be counted in minutes after they open fire.

It would be a race to see if they would be preforated a few dozen times by a cluster bomb or torn apart by 155mm shells.

Anyways...here is what they have

Mortars:

Probably the most usuefull of all Syrian assests. These will be on the field of battle and are more mobile and harder to pinpoint their fire.

The standerd heavy mortar is the Soviet 120mm 2B.

Old and reliable they can fire up to 9km away.

Ammo load for each tube seems to be around 40 shells.

Syria also has a stock of the 160mm M43 mortar. Most of these would probably be in fixed locations.

Ammo load is 25 shells.

The medium mortar is the 82mm M37

Ammo load is 50

I found little to no evidence that Syria has gotten into the tactial mortar game of less than 82mm.

Light pieces:

Syria has lots and lots and lots of these.

For reserve formations besides mortars the only artillery they would be given would be the obsolete 85mm D44

Only upside is that their ammo load is 90 or so shells.

The backbone of Syrian artillery would be the 122mm D30.

Old but still able to launch a average powered shell almost 10.5km

I found evidence that Syria does have a number of RAR. These would increase range to probably ~25km but would mean little in game terms.

Ammo load for a 122mm D30 is 80 rounds

Next up is the 130mm M46

11km range

80 rounds per gun

Heavy pieces:

Next up is the stuff that puts big holes on things.

The 152mm D20

Cousin of the D30 this one can fire a very destructive shell 11km

Ammo per gun is 50 shells

Syria has RAR for this gun as well.

Then comes the king of what Syria can pound their enemies with.

The 180mm S-23

Able to launch a 7 inch shell 11.5km

Ammo load is 45 rounds per gun.

Syria has more guns than this, but these types cover the bulk of their field pieces.

They are also a good crossrange of sizes from smallest to largest.

I found evidence that Syria has very small stockpiles of airburst anti armour rounds.

Probably enough to model but each gun should probably only get a tiny handfull if any at all.

Most of their shell are good old HE blast the earth apart types of shells.

A battery is 3 guns.

A batallion is 6 batteries for 18 guns.

Uses mostly trucks to get around but also has MT-LBs and BTR-50PKs

SP guns:

Just two types of these.

2S1 Gvozdika

A 122mm D30 gun bolted onto a tracked carrier. Significant quanities of these.

Lack sophisticated fire control systems.

I have strong evidence that Syria can use these in a direct fire role and doles out very small quanties of HEAT shells to each vehicle.

36 HE shells and 4 HEAY shells per gun.

2S3 Akatsyia

152mm D20 also bolted on a tracked carrier.

28 HE shells and 5 HEAT shells.

A platoon (battery) of SP guns is 3 vehicles.

A batallion is 6 platoons for 18 guns.

Rocket batteries:

A number of old 107mm Type63 systems still exsist mostly with reserve and militia formations.

9 rocket barrage with one 9 rocket reload.

BM-21 Grad is a 122mm rocket bolted on a truck.

30 rounds

BM-22 Uragan is a 220mm rocket launcher bolted onto a truck

12 rockets

The only significant amount of ICM artillery I found is that Syria has a number of 220mm rockets that explode to deploy armour piercing bomblets.

Uses the BM-22 to fire these rockets.

3 platforms per battery

6 batteries per batallion

AT-Guns

Syria still fields a number of these.

Most have outdated shells so little use against tanks but can slap around a IFV prettt hard.

Militia and reserve units would probsbly field the 85mm D-44 gun.

Almost completly useless this gun might have some short range use against APCs.

Fire control system is Korean war vintage.

20 HE shells

20 HEAT shells

5 Sabot shells

30 AP shells

The 100mm BS-3 would be a little more usefull but still almost a waste of time.

A massive weapon.

20 HE shells

20 HEAT shells

5 Sabot shells

20 AP shells

The 100mm T-12 would be the most usefull gun Syria would field.

Might be able to damage a M1A2 from the front with a close range Sabot shell.

20 HE

20 HEAT

20 Sabot

I have found conflicting and questionable reports that Syria fields small numbers of the 125mm 2A45 AT gun.

If true then this would give Syria a major punch against US armour.

It is a giantic weapon but has a good fire control system and can punch a hole is almost anything.

Would have a good chance of killing an M1A2 from the front at medium range.

I am also looking for more info that the Syrian 100mm T-12 can fire ATGN missles.

One part of me thinks if they have the gun then it would be common sense that they would have purchased the missles. But I want to make certain.

I will keep looking.

Finaly the Syrian reserves and milita would be able to field the 107mm B-11 RR

Ammo would be 20HE and 40 HEAT

It could damage an APC that was stupid enough to blunded past it.

Otherwise useless.

There you have artillery.

Steve, I also have info on AA guns, SAMs, man portable SAMs and SP SAMs

I am going to make sure you can use this info before I spend time posting it.

Let me know.

Are you still finding this stuff usefull?

[hellfish]

What about SPG-9 73mm Recoilless rifles?

[rudel.dietrich]

I think I have shown that the Syria does not adheer to the normal Soviet TO&E

I have seen in a half dozen sources that a Syria armour batallion is 40 tanks with supporting SP ATGMS.

You are right about the independent rank brigade but that means little in CM terms.

Earlier by AP ammo I ment Sabot with a steel rod.

So useless it might as well be AP ammo.

I should have been more clear earlier

By Sabot ammo earlier I meant Tungsten.

Moderatly usefull but against a M1A2 front armour it will just chip the paint.

If the Syrians have DU ammo then I would be totaly shocked.

My understanding is that Russia themselves have very little.

Germany has been looking into making future tank shells out of it but have deemed it farrrrr too expensive to do so.

I think for the moment America has the inside edge on that sort of round.

[ September 04, 2006, 10:31 PM: Message edited by: rudel.dietrich ]

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by fytinghellfish:

What about SPG-9 73mm Recoilless rifles?

Oops

Forgot that.

Yes they have a number of them. Mostly given to special forces and airborne units.

Modern ammo for them as well.

[John Kettler]

rudel.dietrich,

Some of your syntax intrigues me, for example, characterizing the beautifully designed, amphibious 2S1 as "the 122mm D-30 bolted on..." Your profile says you live in Fairfax, Virginia (lived in Burke and Fairfax Station myself) and work as a Security Analyst. Judging by your impressive depth of military knowledge, am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that "Security" = defense, that you likely work for a "Beltway bandit" doing some sort of military analysis and that English isn't your primary language. Am I right?

Every Soviet/Russian artillery piece, to include SPs, MUST be able to fight tanks, to which end, direct fire sights are fitted, and AP ammo is provided, either HEAT or APHE, depending on the gun. Both the 2S1 and 2S3 are thus fully capable of direct fire engagement of tanks and other AFVs.

Your 130mm M-46 gun range number is not even close. It used to be one of the longest ranged field artillery guns on the planet, outranged only, circa Vietnam War, by the U.S. 175mm M107 SP and maybe the 8 inch gun. Isby, page 263, lists the range as 27.5 kilometers. This reach is precisely why the M-46

was NOT a divisional gun.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ September 05, 2006, 03:29 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[hellfish]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

rudel.dietrich,

Some of your syntax intrigues me, for example, characterizing the beautifully designed, amphibious 2S1 as "the 122mm D-30 bolted on..." Your profile says you live in Fairfax, Virginia (lived in Burke and Fairfax Station myself) and work as a Security Analyst. Judging by your impressive depth of military knowledge, am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that "Security" = defense, that you likely work for a "Beltway bandit" doing some sort of military analysis and that English isn't your primary language. Am I right?

Every Soviet/Russian artillery piece, to include SPs, MUST be able to fight tanks, to which end, direct fire sights are fitted, and AP ammo is provided, either HEAT or APHE, depending on the gun. Both the 2S1 and 2S4 are thus fully capable of direct fire engag

The 2S4 is a 240mm mortar - I don't think it has open sights. I think you meant 2S3.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

rudel.dietrich,

Some of your syntax intrigues me, for example, characterizing the beautifully designed, amphibious 2S1 as "the 122mm D-30 bolted on..." Your profile says you live in Fairfax, Virginia (lived in Burke and Fairfax Station myself) and work as a Security Analyst. Judging by your impressive depth of military knowledge, am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that "Security" = defense, that you likely work for a "Beltway bandit" doing some sort of military analysis and that English isn't your primary language. Am I right?

I would not really reguard any SP arty piece as a work of art

More functional than anything else

But take my little comments with a grain of salt.

I am by no means an expert and am trying to liven up a dull topic with little comments about the weapons.

And yes, English is one of my secondary languages.

I struggle through it the best I can.

You and others have probably noticed the dozens of spelling and grammer errors in these posts.

I am trying!

But please don't take offense to my comments.

They mean nothing. It really does look like they took a piece of artillery and bolted it onto a tracked carrier.

Nothing wrong with that if it works

And I do not take offense to any criticisms of pointing out my mistakes.

That is why I started this thread in the first place.

Hopefully we can shape the Syrian side to resemble reality in at least a small way.

Plese comb over my posts and post any corrections or errors or questions you might have.

And yes I do live in Fairfax. Very nice town in which to live.

And security means 'security'

Anyways, hope everyone is getting something from this thread.

Lets keep the disscussion going and I am happy to answer any questions I can.

[WineCape]

Rudel,

Don't worry abouth your English. The latter is my 3rd language; if I can understand you, I'm sure 99% on this board can. Carry on...

The backbone of Syrian artillery would be the 122mm D30. Old but still able to launch a average powered shell almost 10.5km

I'm aware that the D-30 towed howitzer has a fin-stabilized HEAT round, enabling it to engage AFV's in direct fire. Apparently it can penetrate +/- 450mm armor at any range.

The D-30 also has the ability to be equipped with IR or passive night vision sights for direct fire. Wonder if the Syrians have these add-ons?

[ September 05, 2006, 01:39 AM: Message edited by: WineCape ]

[John Kettler]

fytinghellfish,

Drat! That's what I get for trusting (rusty) memory instead of looking it up. A good catch, however personally embarrassing for me, and I have fixed it. Strongly concur that there's a huge difference between an open topped, nuclear capable SP 240mm mortar and a fully enclosed, turreted SP 152mm gun howitzer.

rudel.dietrich,

I have zero issue with your being from elsewhere, just got the impression that you were. Am a descendent of immigrants myself. My people got here on one side in time for the Civil War and on the other side to avoid the Franco-Prussian War.

No D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution) in my family tree!

Turning now to the ostensible topic, I think it's great that you've been able to unearth so much material on a fairly obscure subject, and at an extraordinarily low level of detail. Clearly, the devs find it valuable.

Almost wound up doing several versions of "security" myself, of both the out and about and desk jockey varieties, for entities with three and four letter acronyms. Used to have personalities from them come see me and also visited them on occasion. Wonder whether the DIA and/or whatever the Army's threat shop is nomenclatured these days

would be willing to let BFC see unclassified Syrian threat pubs. Really hated giving up the one on the Soviet Airborne division when I left Rockwell. And while I'm wondering, how would "management" view your taking the Syrian Defense Attache out to lunch? After all, Embassy Row's not all that far away!

Regards,

John Kettler

[rudel.dietrich]

Tonight im going to do airborne forces.

A subject dear to me

They get some of the better stuff so it is interesting stuff.

Stay tuned

[rudel.dietrich]

Syrian Airborne

Now we are getting into the good stuff.

The Syrian airborne IMO is every bit as poficient as the Syrian special forces and are better infantry than the guards forces.

They are highly trained and well equiped.

Organization is familiar but with a few changes.

A airborne squad is 8 men.

They have the training to break down into and fight in two fireteams.

One fireteam is four riflemen.

The other fire team is the LMG gunner, his assistant, the grenedier and the RPG gunner.

All airborne forces use the AKS-74, this version has a folding stock.

I have a few dozen pictures and all of them are late model AK-74s

Black plastic stock and furniture,black metal magazines, no wood at all. Not that is matters much, but these are light weight and the black colour must be reflected in the game or it is really going to bother me

Ammo load is 210 rounds per man

7 men in the squad are armed with AK-74s.

The squad machine gunner is armed with a 5.45mm RPK SAW.

These are also black platic with polymer handguards.

Now here is something I saw in a few sources and am attempting to verify.

They stated that all Syrian AK-74 SAWs are mounted with scopes.

One sources said they were all the RPK-74N version with an IR scope.

I will do more research in this area.

If true that should be modeled in the game somehow. More on that later.

This SAW also uses 75 round drums. Ammo load is 600 rounds in 8 drums.

Airborne squads make use of grenadiers.

This man is armed with a AK-74 that has a GP-25 40mm grenade launcher attached.

My sources listed 32 rounds are carried. That sounds like alot of rounds. Those would have to be carried by multiple squad members.

26 of the rounds would be frag rounds. 4 would be smoke rounds and 2 illumunation rounds.

The RPG seems to be the RPG-16D

Rounds seem to be somwhat modern as would be a threat against all APCs and tanks from the sides.

8 rounds are carried and all look to be HEAT rounds.

One source said 4 different men carry RPG rounds to offset weight.

I found no evidence that the RPG-29 is used.

A platoon leaders squad is just like a normal squad. A radio is carried per platoon.

Three squads make up a company.

The commpany command squad is also 8 men also with a radio.

3 platoon make up a company.

Each platoon has a sniper section.

This is two men.

One is armed with a late model SVD with an IR scope.

He carries 60 rounds.

The other man is security/spotting and carried IR binoculars and carries a AKN-74 with a 6x IR scope.

I guess he would also engage targets inside of 400m

So to sum it up.

Each company has

1x Company HQ squad

3x platoons with 12 squads

3x sniper sections with two men each

A batallion is 3 companies.

Only addition is two three men ATGM teams.

It seems all of Syrias Milan systems have been given to the airborne.

They seem to be Milan III systems with early/mid 90s missles.

While now outclassed the Milan is still a great system and with those missles posses a threat to just about anything.

They also appear to have small qunaities of the AT-13 Metis and AT-14 Kornet.

Deadly!

Ammo load is 4 missles

4 SPG-9 teams are also included per batallion. I guess these would be last ditch ambush attempts.

8 HEAT rounds and 4 HE rounds.

Another point of contention seems to be engineer companies.

A few sources said these were attached at the batallion level, a few more said a higher level.

A engineer company is two platoons of thre squads and each squad has 10 men.

They are armed soley with AKU-74s (late model, again in black)

This is the short barrel SMG version of the AK-74

One LMG per squad and one flamethrower per squad.

One RPG per squad.

They are loaded up with special equipment but it was a bit sketchy.

Grenades, grenade bundles, defensive grenades, breaching charges, mines, proximity mines etc.

I will try and find out more.

No snipers in engineer companies or platoons.

Not that it matters in CM. But Syrian airborne forces do not appear to be capable of actual parachute operations.

However they are capable and quite good at helicopter insetion on a small and medium scale.

For ground operation the main method of travel is trucks and some BTRs

As I said earlier in the thread and in another thread. Syria appears to have between 80-90 BMP-3s

If a ground war broke out a portion of their airborne forces would be mounted on these would be quite formidable in the defensive side of things.

I did not find any evidence of body armour for airborne forces.

However their radio network seems to be adequte and they do posses some IR and NV goggles.

They would have some ability to fight at night and in bad weather.

They also appear to make use of shaped charges, breaching charges and many types of grenades.

I found some evidence that several of the Soviet large radius defensive gernades are also in use.

Besides the special forces these will be the best equiped men that Syria has to offer.

I am going to do a bit more digging to see if I can find out more about their IR and NV equipment and study the ATGM and RPG-29 issue.

Hope this was interesting.

Up next I do special forces!

[ September 06, 2006, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: rudel.dietrich ]

[Jaska.]

This man should be given a free copy of CM:SF for his research !

With the devs' signatures !

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by Prinz Eugen_2:

This man should be given a free copy of CM:SF for his research !

With the devs' signatures !

Nah its actually sort of fun.

I enjoy this sort of stuff.

But people are starting to ask why im asking so many questions about Syria

[ September 05, 2006, 11:44 PM: Message edited by: rudel.dietrich ]

[dan/california]

We'll never tell.

[Battlefront.com]

Nah its actually sort of fun.

This is the sort of fun that we like to have on this Fourm

keep up the great work Rudel and tell your bosses you are thinking of going there on "vacation" and figure you might as well know what gaps there are in the intel so you can keep an eye open. Sure... that should work!

Steve

[rudel.dietrich]

I hear Damascus is lovely in autumn

[Jaska.]

Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

But people are starting to ask why im asking so many questions about Syria

Why not use that opportunity to "market" this cool upcoming wargame by BF.C ?

[MikeyD]

Looks to me like Christmas came early for BFC in the form of one rudel.dietrich!

Just the idea that the opponent in the game isn't going to be 'generic' (due to lack of data) but will be based on solid TO&E evidence doubles the game's appeal for me... and it was already pretty darned appealing to begin with!

[akd]

rudel, just out of interest, do the Syrian airborne forces use AKS-74?

or AKS-74M?

That is interesting if they truely use RPK-74N2s, but I would be very surprised if they used 75-round drums on them. The 45-round mag appears to be the current standard.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by akd:

rudel, just out of interest, do the Syrian airborne forces use AKS-74?

or AKS-74M?

That is interesting if they truely use RPK-74N2s, but I would be very surprised if they used 75-round drums on them. The 45-round mag appears to be the current standard.

They use the AKS-74. They have a stock.

The pictures I saw looked much like that one. Black plastic and polymer.

Light weight and more durable than wood.

Russia has finally joined the 20th century in that reguard.

I do not think their RPK-74s are the N models.

But I do think they are all equiped with scopes.

I am sure about the drum part, all pictures I saw of them in action and in review had drums attached.

[akd]

Note that this:

Does have a side-folding stock, but it is solid instead of skeletal. AK-74M also come with an optic rail, so if all these Syrian rifles truly have optics, I would suspect they are AK-74Ms. AK-74M is now pretty standard issue for the Russian military. Kalashnikov advertises a "AKS-74M" for "airborne forces," but I am have trouble determining if there is actually any difference from AK-74M.

The latest variation of the AK-74 breed, that was introduced circa 1991 and consequently replaced in production both AK-74 and AKS-74, is the AK-74M. The AK-74M externally differs from the AK-74 of late 1980s production by the side-folding, solid black plastic buttstock and by the scope rail, mounted on the left receiver as as a standard. Some minor improvements also were made in the production process and external finish of the new rifle. AK-74M retained almost all advantages and disadvantages of the earlier Kalashnikov designs, including reliability, simplicity of operations and maintenance, and less than ideal "human engineering" and ergonomics. At the present time the AK-74M, along with earlier AK-74/AKS-74 is the standard shoulder arm of the Russian Army.

AK-74M – modernized Kalashnikov assault rifle, caliber 5.45 mm. This model was designed under the supervision of chief designer N. A. Bezborodov and M. T. Kalashnikov, under the technical development plan of the Central Artillery and Missile Department, and included in the inventory in 1991. The AK-74М is based on all four AK-74 modifications. It has a folding plastic stock, which is similar to the stationary model in shape, and a lateral base for mounting an optical or night sight.

AK-74MP – modernized Kalashnikov assault rifle with optical sight 1P29, caliber 5.45 mm.

AKS-74 has not really changed since the 70s, other than the use of different plastics in the furniture and magazines.

Is there any mention of what optic the Syrian AB rifles carry?

I am sure about the drum part, all pictures I saw of them in action and in review had drums attached.

Kalashnikov still markets the 75-round drum, so I guess that a foreign contract could go with as many of those as they wished. Not entirely sure why they fell out of disfavor with the Russian military.

[ September 06, 2006, 04:26 PM: Message edited by: akd ]

[rudel.dietrich]

The stocks are skeleton stocks.

I did not know the AKS-74 did not have a sight rail...hmmm

However, I really see no reason that a sight rail could not be attached, even post production.

The Syrian special forces also use the AKS-74 along with the AKS-74U.

Skeleton stock on those too.

As for optics, I really have no idea.

I only saw pictures of short optics that were labled as 4x

I saw reference to larger optics that were almost the entire length of the gun itself and were labled as 8x IR sights.

As far as I can tell every Syrian special forces rifle mounts a scope except for the AKS-74U and those with gernade launchers.

I will touch on that more here in a few hours.

As far as I know the drum fell out of favour because of weight and feed problems.

Seems to be though that it would make the gun more balenced.

[akd]

Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

The stocks are skeleton stocks.

I did not know the AKS-74 did not have a sight rail...hmmm

However, I really see no reason that a sight rail could not be attached, even post production.

The Syrian special forces also use the AKS-74 along with the AKS-74U.

Skeleton stock on those too.

As for optics, I really have no idea.

I only saw pictures of short optics that were labled as 4x

I would guess the "1P29" unified gun sight.