New Syrian weapon developments

[rudel.dietrich]

Consider this an add-on for my Syrian TO&E thread.

These new developments are not nearly as exciting as the thread title suggests.

A few people around here know that I work in the 'security' industry.

My actual job is to track arms and hardware.

The who, what, when, where and how much of it.

Both on the record...and shall we say 'off' the record

Anyways without going into too much detail, I can comment on a few new developments.

The deals in place between Russia and Syria are still more or less static.

But some material between the two is happening.

Most of it is minor stuff like small arms, ammunition and spare parts.

The spare parts are interesting since they make up large sums of the shipments and Syria has a large fleet of hardware but it is rapidly decaying since spare parts and skilled technicians are lacking.

Modest quanities of spare parts and being imported however and some technicians to service the aging fleet of weaponary.

Plus large scale canibilization is occuring to strip badly decayed vehicles down to get the ones in not so bad shape into better working order.

As a result the entire fleet of tanks and APCs seems to be shrinking at a rapid pace, but at the same time those still around are probably experiencing fewer breakdowns.

That has an impact on CMSF

Small arms shipments are pretty boring stuff

But what is interesting is that it appears scopes and NV scopes for AK-74s and RPK-74s are coming into the country in modest quanities

The same can be said for NV scopes for Dragunov rifles

I think a decent % of Syrian SF and airborne (once they make it into the game) should be outfitted with scopes for their AKs and RPKs

And a smaller but still significant % with NV scopes.

These two sections of the Syrian military should have pretty good NF capability.

BMPs in Airborne formations are also getting pretty modern NV optics for their weaponary and vision capabilities.

This force looks like it is setting itself up to be a force to be reckoned with in night combat.

Iran is also shipping in a fair amount of weapons.

Most of it fairly standard stuff.

But some modern RPG rounds are finding their way into Syria as well as RPG-18s and more RPG-29s

The 29s still seem to be fairly rare

But in the last year or so the numbers seem to be on a steady increase

Probably still limited to SF and guards formations

But it would not suprise me if certain members of the mainline army had access to stocks of them in the outbreak of conflict

Modern tandem rounds for the RPG-7v seem to be ever growing as well

In fact most of the AP rounds for the RPG-7 should be modern rounds with many being tandem rounds

RPG fire should be alot more deadly than what was encountered in Iraq

This applies only to regular formations

Reserve and militia formations would still be fielding large amount of 'fire and pray' rounds probably with a large mixture of HE rounds

But regular army formations should never have to resort to HE rounds against armour.

MP Sam launchers are another growing field

But in CMSF terms that hardly matters

Tank rounds are another area of interest

Im not sure how BF plans to model varients of tank rounds

But it appears Syria for their front line T-72s and T-62 (guards units and a few regular army formations) have small stocks of good high quality modern shells

If different rounds are going to be modeled, then these tanks should each get a handfull of very good modern rounds.

Tank fired ATGMs are holding about steady.

Without a significant war to go on, it remains to be seen if these have any sort of battlefield applications.

They would be a total wildcard in CMSF

Infantry carried ATGMs have exploded since the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict

Kornets and Metis missles seem to be flowing into the country in very large numbers.

Many of these are probably finding their way in Lebanon

But it appears both Hezbollah and Syria have a significant stockpile of these missles and their launchers

They should be more common now in CMSF

The biggest hurdle still seems to be training personal on how to use them

The accuracy numbers from the Hezbollah teams using these weapons agaisnt the IDF is pretty applaing (unless your the IDF)

A shiny new tank busting Kornet missle is pretty useless unless you can hit a target with it

Milan missle stocks alos seem to be keeping up with expenditure

No idea where they are getting those... :confused:

Finally is the issue of tank electronics and sigting systems

The Syrians seem to have slightly went over to the idea of 'quality over quanity'

They are picking the best tanks and crews and focusing on that small % of their armoured force for upgrades.

I have a nice little document on the Turms system and how it is progressing.

It is going along on schedule and testing so far is positive and accuracy very much improved.

The list of what is entering the country is too extensive to list.

But new ballistic computers, thermal imaging systems, new optics and ERA tiles seems to be the main items in the shopping cart

Now sure if these are being haphazardly installed or if tanks are being converted into new varients :confused:

Is it highly confusing

If I was doing the game I would just toss out variants all together and allow the player to buy a base tank and them apply individual upgrades

But I digress

Anyways, that was a long post to really say nothing at all.

But just to let everyone know im still doing research.

And I know a few of you are interested in such matters

[Sixxkiller]

So what was new here? I see nothing in your entire post that suggests anything that BFC wouldnt know.

[akd]

Very interesting. Not really relevant to CMSF, but any comments on Su-30s, S-300s and SS-26s?

edit: that was rude sixxkiller. Rudel has access to some pretty up-to-date sources and given the very narrow focus of CMSF, these sorts of details are pretty important. I somehow seriously doubt that, for example, BFC knows that Syria is maintaining its Milan stocks (which is a fascinating tidbit if true).

[Battlefront.com]

Actually, most of the basic info is already known to us, in large part to Rudel's earlier work. So on that score there isn't much to learn here that is useful for CM:SF (though there are some things, like more NV scopes).

The rest indicates trends, with some things tending to increase and some things tending to decrease. This is very interesting and scenario designers should take note. However, it has no practical impact on coding the game since these things are "Rarity" issues and that isn't a concept we're supporting in CM:SF. Meaning, we already have the RPG-18 and RPG-29 in the game. How many people use is up to them, not us.

When we return to WWII we will likely reintroduce Rarity.

Steve

[Sixxkiller]

Originally posted by akd:

edit: that was rude sixxkiller. Rudel has access to some pretty up-to-date sources and given the very narrow focus of CMSF, these sorts of details are pretty important. I somehow seriously doubt that, for example, BFC knows that Syria is maintaining its Milan stocks (which is a fascinating tidbit if true).

What was rude? I simply stated that there was nothing new in that whole post. And it is a fact that they are maintaining thier Milan stocks and have been for some time, even with the expected sale of anti-tank and missle platforms from the Russians. Plus the Milan 3 post will be able to fire the Trigat MR missile and the new MILAN ADT/ER which has a longer range and a pretty good penetration factor against ERA and RHA armors. So does it not make sense that they would keep up thier stocks?

But anyway I was far from being rude.

[Peter Cairns]

What would be interesting is to what extent tis stuff is going to and staying in Syria, and to what extent syria is only a conduit for it mooving both West (to Lebanon as stated) and East (into Iraq).

If NV sights, ATGM's ( particularly awith anti helicopter capabilities) and ManPads start turning up in western iraq, the USwill know where they are coming from and CM:SF at least on a small border scale starts to look a possibility.

Peter.

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

When we return to WWII...

Yeehawww!

[Sgt Joch]

Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

Kornets and Metis missles seem to be flowing into the country in very large numbers.

Many of these are probably finding their way in Lebanon

But it appears both Hezbollah and Syria have a significant stockpile of these missles and their launchers

Any idea on the numbers? I presume these numbers are hopelessly out of date:

Syria - Army equipment

The accuracy numbers from the Hezbollah teams using these weapons agaisnt the IDF is pretty applaing (unless your the IDF)

A shiny new tank busting Kornet missle is pretty useless unless you can hit a target with it

According to Arabs at War , all arab armies have major problems with accurate weapon delivery, presumably due to poor training. Results of the 1982 war showed that this was a problem even for Syrian SF/commando units.

The Syrians seem to have slightly went over to the idea of 'quality over quanity'

They are picking the best tanks and crews and focusing on that small % of their armoured force for upgrades.

Again according to Arabs at War , after their poor showing against the IDF in 1973 and against the Lebanese militia in 1976, Syria started pooling all their best men in SF/commando units. This gave Damascus some relatively good units, but at the expense of lowering the overall quality of line infantry units. The SF/commando units even scored some modest successes against the IDF in 1982. It looks like they might be doing the same thing with their tank units.

Of course, the unanswered question in all this is why the buildup? The chances of an attack by the U.S. ( in real life http://community.battlefront.com/uploads/emoticons/default_wink.png' alt=';)'> ) are fairly low,the chances of war with Israel are also low ,the Assad regime seems fairly secure from internal enemies and Syria is going through some major economic/social difficulties due to the estimated 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees crowding into Damascus.

[MikeyD]

Any word on the Iranian 'Toophan' ATGM in Syria? That's their reverse-engineered copy of the U.S. TOW (thank you Oliver North!). I spotted photos of captured Hezbollah examples after the Lebanon conflict. One assumes if they're also falling into Syrian hands BFC could simply transfer their U.S. TOW polygons and animations over to the Syrians.

[Peter Cairns]

Syria has also had the additional economic double hit of the return of tens of thousands of labourers from the Lebanon.

Not only have they swollen the ranks of Syria's already high unemployment and urban poor, but the huge flow of foreign exchange that they generated has dried up.

Peter.

[civdiv]

Correct me if I am wrong but there is no Personal Message feature on this board, right?

civdiv

[Beastttt]

there is the email icon just to the left of the quote function

Originally posted by civdiv:

Correct me if I am wrong but there is no Personal Message feature on this board, right?

civdiv

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by Sgt.Joch:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

Kornets and Metis missles seem to be flowing into the country in very large numbers.

Many of these are probably finding their way in Lebanon

But it appears both Hezbollah and Syria have a significant stockpile of these missles and their launchers

Any idea on the numbers? I presume these numbers are hopelessly out of date:

Syria - Army equipment

The accuracy numbers from the Hezbollah teams using these weapons agaisnt the IDF is pretty applaing (unless your the IDF)

A shiny new tank busting Kornet missle is pretty useless unless you can hit a target with it

According to Arabs at War , all arab armies have major problems with accurate weapon delivery, presumably due to poor training. Results of the 1982 war showed that this was a problem even for Syrian SF/commando units.

The Syrians seem to have slightly went over to the idea of 'quality over quanity'

They are picking the best tanks and crews and focusing on that small % of their armoured force for upgrades.

Again according to Arabs at War , after their poor showing against the IDF in 1973 and against the Lebanese militia in 1976, Syria started pooling all their best men in SF/commando units. This gave Damascus some relatively good units, but at the expense of lowering the overall quality of line infantry units. The SF/commando units even scored some modest successes against the IDF in 1982. It looks like they might be doing the same thing with their tank units.

Of course, the unanswered question in all this is why the buildup? The chances of an attack by the U.S. ( in real life http://community.battlefront.com/uploads/emoticons/default_wink.png' alt=';)'> ) are fairly low,the chances of war with Israel are also low ,the Assad regime seems fairly secure from internal enemies and Syria is going through some major economic/social difficulties due to the estimated 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees crowding into Damascus. </font>

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by Sixxkiller:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by akd:

edit: that was rude sixxkiller. Rudel has access to some pretty up-to-date sources and given the very narrow focus of CMSF, these sorts of details are pretty important. I somehow seriously doubt that, for example, BFC knows that Syria is maintaining its Milan stocks (which is a fascinating tidbit if true).

What was rude? I simply stated that there was nothing new in that whole post. And it is a fact that they are maintaining thier Milan stocks and have been for some time, even with the expected sale of anti-tank and missle platforms from the Russians. Plus the Milan 3 post will be able to fire the Trigat MR missile and the new MILAN ADT/ER which has a longer range and a pretty good penetration factor against ERA and RHA armors. So does it not make sense that they would keep up thier stocks?

But anyway I was far from being rude. </font>

[Battlefront.com]

I remember those pictures of TOW missiles in Hezbollah's captured weapons caches. They probably came from the Lebanese Army through corruption or sympathy. It is really amazing what can turn up, even if in small numbers, in the hands of an unconventional force.

Steve

[rudel.dietrich]

From what little I read the TOW missle clones did not exactly work as planned and when they did were not as effective as the Kornet and Metis and were alot harder to use than the Milan

I have never heard good things about the infantry fired TOW even from the Americans I have talked too

But when it is vehicle mounted it really turns into an outstanding missle

[Sgt Joch]

Syria has apparently been receiving generous funding from Iran to acquire new weapons, including Scud ballistic missiles and new anti-ship missiles. They have also apparently redeployed troops closer to the Golan Heights.

Iran helping one of its few allies to improve its military capability makes sense, especially since the moves seem to be aimed at Israel, perhaps to dissuade Israel from intervening again in Lebanon or from striking Iran's nuclear facilities.

It is a bit of a gamble on Iran's part though, if Iraq slips into a full blown civil war, Syria would be more likely to support the Sunni side.

It's not CMSF related, but it is interesting to speculate.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, the TOW is barely man portable. It's why the US has always had a lighter system for typical dismounted use. First it was the Dragon, now it is the Javelin.

Steve

[John Kettler]

rudel.dietrich,

Don't know who you work for or quite what you do, but your sources, considering the granularity and specificity of the data you presented, must be phenomenal. I say this from the perspective of someone who, many moons ago, spent eleven plus years at Hughes and Rockwell as a highly regarded Soviet Threat Analyst for tactical and strategic systems. I can't recall ever seeing the level of detail for things like what you so casually reeled off. Color me both impressed and intrigued!

Regards,

John Kettler

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

rudel.dietrich,

Don't know who you work for or quite what you do, but your sources, considering the granularity and specificity of the data you presented, must be phenomenal. I say this from the perspective of someone who, many moons ago, spent eleven plus years at Hughes and Rockwell as a highly regarded Soviet Threat Analyst for tactical and strategic systems. I can't recall ever seeing the level of detail for things like what you so casually reeled off. Color me both impressed and intrigued!

Regards,

John Kettler

I gave everyone a high level overview of what I do.

Asset tracking

And alot of it is just educated guesses

Its like a jigsaw puzzle with 100 pieces

You may get 20 solid pieces and 30 half pieces with a few corners missing.

You take them and fit them together as best as possible and then look at the missing portions and using a little logic, a little history and alot of luck guess what the missing pieces look like.

It also helps since you usualy have an idea of what the overall puzzle should look like.

[John Kettler]

rudel.dietrich,

Got it! The process sounds rather like what I used to do, except that I used to call it building the mosaic. Much of the way I did that was by analyzing Soviet doctrine, weapon capabilities, writings about foreign military developments in the Soviet military press, and identifying perceived deficiencies and emerging requirements.

What you do seems to be much more near term focused, though, than what I was doing, for I was looking 15-20 years ahead in many cases, rather than at current capabilities. There were occasions when what a given country had right then was of great importance.

Regards,

John Kettler

[civdiv]

One issue I have is the handling of RPGs (Based on Iraq.). Theoretically, any RPGs that hit a HMMWV, LAV, AAV, etc, 'theoretically' had almost a 100% chance of killing them. The percentage drops when you talk about M1s and M2/3s. In practice 90% miss, and half of those that do hit fail to function.

[robplumm]

rudel.dietrich:

Happen to work on the ChuckWagon? It sounds like the type of work they do, anyway.

[flamingknives]

A HEAT penetration isn't always a kill, however.

[Battlefront.com]

civdiv,

One issue I have is the handling of RPGs (Based on Iraq.). Theoretically, any RPGs that hit a HMMWV, LAV, AAV, etc, 'theoretically' had almost a 100% chance of killing them. The percentage drops when you talk about M1s and M2/3s. In practice 90% miss, and half of those that do hit fail to function.

Quite correct, but unfortunately the same can not be expected every time RPGs are encountered. Besides the accuracy issue (which is mostly due to inexperienced gunners) the stockpiles of RGP rounds in a country like Iraq have a lot of older production rounds. There were significant manufacturing defects in these which means a fairly high chance of malfunction. Certainly storage issues might also be an issue for older stocks too. But the newer production apparently doesn't have such problems. That is unfortunate for us

We are treating some of the Syrian RPG-7V rounds as being mostly like Iraqi rounds... not very high quality. RPG-29 is all new production so there should be no quality issues there. Newer 7V based rounds also should have no quality issues of significance.

Steve