Foreign Policy: Just How Deadly Is Assad's Arsenal?
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Syria's government
has been moving its stockpile of chemical weapons — thought to be the
world's largest. It is not clear whether the regime is preparing to use
them or simply trying to keep them out of rebel hands, but either way
the news was disturbing: The use of chemical weapons would radically
escalate a conflict that has already claimed more than 10,000 lives, and
the prospect of unsecured stores of nerve agent raises serious
proliferation concerns.
As Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, warned American lawmakers in March: "We need to be especially
alert to the fate of Syria's chemical weapons. They must stay exactly
where they are."
With the exception of reports that the CIA and other foreign
intelligence agencies are covertly providing arms to Syrian rebels, the
United States has been unwilling or unable to take military steps to
stop the slaughter of protesters. That could well change if Bashar
Assad's regime deployed chemical weapons — the pressure for
international action would certainly increase dramatically — but any air
campaign, like the one that helped oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi
last year, would have to face Syria's anti-aircraft systems, which have
grown more advanced in the last five years thanks in large part to
sales from Russia.
Meanwhile, Assad's assault on the rebels — with armor,
artillery and aircraft — continues unabated. Building on Foreign
Policy's earlier analysis, here is a detailed look at just how dangerous
Syria's arsenal is:
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds
of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin
and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents — all of which can be
launched by Scud missiles, artillery or aircraft, according to Charles
Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation
of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles
with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said
Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from
the weapons and that exact estimates about the size of the regime's
stockpile are almost impossible to come by.
Although the U.S. government has released only vague
estimates as to the size of Syria's chemical and biological weapons
stockpile, Dempsey told lawmakers in March that the arsenal was "100
times the magnitude we experienced in Libya." Libya acceded to the
international Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 and had largely
destroyed its useful stockpile of such weapons by the time Gadhafi's
regime fell in 2011, according to Blair.
"Outside of the people who actually made and have guarded
this stuff, I doubt that anyone could answer your question with any
amount of accuracy," said Amy Smithson, a senior fellow with the James
Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Although Assad's stockpiles are thought to be considerable,
Blair believes the dictator is unlikely to deploy them because using
chemical weapons against civilians would only "build support for
international intervention."
"I think they are moving them to protect the weapons from a
preemptive attack by Israel," Blair said, or because information about
the locations of the weapons — which he called the "top gems" of the
Syrian military — have been compromised by high-level defectors from the
Syrian army.
Aram Nerguizian, an expert on the Syrian military with the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed, saying that
Syria has so far restrained itself from using the most potent weapons in
its arsenal, such as fixed-wing bombers and its larger multiple-launch
rocket systems, against the rebels for fear of fueling international
outrage, the way Gadhafi's government did in Libya. "You haven't had the
utilization of mass airpower or mass artillery," such as guided
rockets, he said. "If airpower is a red line, using chemical weapons
would go well beyond any red line."
"I'm more concerned about a direct strike against the regime
or other military actions," said Nerguizian. "Those are the kinds of
things that would really make units [guarding the chemical weapons]
abandon their posts and expose chemical or biological weapons and major
SAM and other systems to acquisition by outlaw third parties. We often
hear we need to intervene to secure those chemical weapons. The reality
is, if we intervene, we're going to destabilize a lot of the safeguards"
keeping those weapons safe.
Blair agreed, saying that it would likely take tens of
thousands of people to guard Syria's chemical weapons should the regime
crumble, saying, "any cohesive plan that secured all [chemical
munitions] sites" would be difficult to implement.
AIR DEFENSES
Syria has invested in upgrading its 1970s air defense
systems since the Israeli attack on a suspected nuclear facility outside
the city of Deir ez-Zour in 2007, buying at least 36 SA-22 mobile air
defense systems from Russia. The SA-22 was developed in the 1990s and
2000s and comes equipped with its own target-acquisition and tracking
radars, along with 12 radio-guided medium-range surface-to-air missiles
and two 30 mm auto-cannons for close-in engagements. The system is
designed to protect ground troops, cities and more advanced,
high-altitude surface-to-air-missiles. An SA-22 might have been used to
down a Turkish reconnaissance jet flying off the Syrian coast last
month.
Still, these missile systems, with a range of about 12
miles, can be handled by U.S. fighter jets using a combination of radar
jamming and HARM missiles, which have a range of 60 miles.
Russia may also have provided Syria with SA-17
self-propelled medium-range air defense missiles. These are an upgraded
version of the 1970s-vintage SA-6s that shot down U.S. Air Force Capt.
Scott O'Grady's F-16 over Bosnia in 1996. Like the SA-22, a big
advantage of these weapons is that they are mobile, meaning they can
briefly turn on their radars, fire at an enemy aircraft, and move before
they can be targeted by enemy bombers. Still, while these weapons, with
their 16 mile range, can deter jets flying at low or medium altitudes,
they could be overcome by a well-coordinated air attack using "enormous
force," according to Nerguizian.
More worrisome are reports that Syria has ordered SA-10
(known as S-300s in Russia) long-range, high-altitude surface-to-air
missiles that are some of the most advanced in the world. Some variants
of this missile have a range exceeding 200 miles. As one Air Force
intelligence officer who did not want to be identified puts it, "You
wouldn't send a fighter against an [SA-10 series missile]. It could
reach out and touch you before you could hit it with a HARM." The good
news is that Russia has apparently declined to ship the missiles to
Syria.
The Syrian army has also purchased one of Russia's newest
shoulder-fired air defense missiles, the SA-24 Grinch version of the
Igla missile. The heat-seeking missile entered Russian service in 2004
and has a range of up to 11,000-feet, a top speed of Mach 2.3, and is
designed to overcome modern countermeasures. While the relatively
short-ranged Grinch missiles might not be much of a threat to NATO
warplanes, they could pose a serious threat if they fall into the hands
of terrorists who could use them to target civilian airliners.
Besides these modern systems, Syria defends its capital with
the long-range, 40-year-old SA-5 Gammon antiaircraft missile and the
SA-6 medium range missile. NATO forces have become quite adept at
evading these systems after decades of flying against them around the
world.
"What you have is a combination of low-altitude and
medium-altitude systems that are relatively modern to very modern and
those do fill a significant gap in the Syrian air defense structure,"
said Nerguizian. "They don't compensate for the fact that Syria's SA-5s
are aging systems and heavily centralized and static and geared toward
air defense against Israel, but they do send an important message that
any air operations against the Syrian military will not be easy and will
require contingencies for a potential loss of aircraft by an opposing
force. Do they have the best air defense system in the region? No. Do
they have enough to make any air operations against them really
challenging? Yes."
Barry Watts, a former fighter pilot and air power analyst
with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, is more
dismissive of Syria's air defenses. "It's older Soviet equipment for the
most part. Gadhafi and company had some SA-5s and I can remember a lot
of discussion about that, but it was a really old system and the NATO
guys pretty much took them out and that was the end of that," said
Watts. "I don't think it would be difficult or a stretch for us to do if
we decided to it. I think the issue is this administration is not
interested in starting another war in the Middle East."
ARMOR
Although chemical weapons and air defense systems may be the
most potent weapons in Damascus' arsenal, the Syrian military has used a
host of older Soviet and Russian gear to suppress the uprising.
The Syrian army has been forced to use its fleet of
Soviet-designed armored personnel carriers — mostly BMP-1s — to fight
the rebels, who have become increasingly adept at destroying these
vehicles with roadside bombs and armor-piercing rocket propelled
grenades. In fact, because of this vulnerability, Soviet and Russian
troops made it standard procedure to ride on top of BMP-1s in
Afghanistan and Chechnya lest they be caught inside if a bomb or RPG
penetrated the vehicles' light armor, igniting the BMP's high-explosive
ammunition and its fuel tank, which sits inside the troop compartment.
The majority of the Syrian army's main battle tanks are
Soviet T-72s that were designed in the 1970s. For all this tank was
feared when it was first deployed in the late 1970s, the ones Iraq
fielded during Operation Desert Storm were soundly defeated by American
M1A1 Abrams tanks. Still, the T-72 has much better armor than the BMPs
and other armored personnel carriers, allowing it to better withstand
attacks by the rebels while punishing them with its 125 mm main gun. The
tanks can be defeated by well-trained infantry, however, if they take
advantage of the vehicles' lack of external visibility and
maneuverability in urban settings. That's likely why Assad's tanks have
reportedly been escorted by soldiers on foot.
ARTILLERY
While the Syrian government may not be using its heaviest
rockets against the rebels yet, it has been using the world's largest
mortar system, the Soviet-made M240 "Tulip" breech-loading mortar
system. Originally designed to take out NATO bunkers during the Cold
War, the Tulip has been used to lob massive, five-foot-long, 240 mm
mortar rounds onto civilian populations, including in the Syrian city of
Homs.
And that's not all: The U.S. State Department has posted
photos suggesting that the Syrian army has positioned its Soviet-built
D-30 122 mm towed howitzers outside of several cities. The D-20 dates to
the 1960s and can fire a rocket-assisted artillery shell up to 21
miles. The State Department also published pictures of what may be
Syria's Soviet-made self-propelled 2S1 Gvozdika122 mm howitzer, which
uses the same gun as the D-30 system. The State Department photos also
show what might be the self-propelled 2S3 Akatsiya 152 mm self-propelled
howitzer, which is capable of firing chemical weapons, anti-personnel
shells, and laser-guided high-explosive shells.
Assad's army may have also parked Soviet-designed BM-21 Grad
rocket launchers around Homs, according to the State Department. The
Grad dates to the 1960s and consists of 40 launch tubes sitting in the
back of a six-wheeled truck that can fire two 120 mm unguided rockets
per second up to 20 miles. The Grad is an evolution of the World War
II-era Soviet Katyusha rocket, a weapon sometimes fired into Israel from
southern Lebanon. The three-meter-long Grad rocket is not very
accurate, but it can carry everything from high explosives to mines,
radio jammers, chemical weapons, and cluster bomblets. These rockets
have been used for decades by forces that just want to batter large
areas. (Its name, Grad, means "hail" in Russian).
AIRCRAFT
In addition to pummeling civilian centers with tanks,
artillery, and mortars, the Assad regime has reportedly used its
Soviet-built, Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, along with Mi-8 and Mi-17
Hip transport helicopters outfitted as gunships. As you can see in this
video, the Mi-8/Mi-17 can carry quite a bit of firepower. Still, the
Mi-24 is even more ferocious, armed with a 23 mm main auto-cannon and a
mix of dozens of S-8 rockets, the AT-6 antitank rocket, and up to 2,000
pounds of bombs carried on its stub wings.
It's also heavily armored, with the fuselage capable of
withstanding hits from .50 caliber ammunition. In fact, some argue that
the Hind is so good at suppressing ground fighters that the Soviet war
in Afghanistan was only swayed in favor of the mujahideen once the CIA
began to send the insurgents shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to deal
with Soviet Mi-24s. Russia is reportedly trying to ship three Hinds that
it repaired back to Syria — along with an air-defense system — a move
that has been met with widespread international criticism.
So far, Syria is not thought to have used its Soviet- and
Russian-made fighter jets. Of these, the most advanced are the newly
purchased Mig-29 Fulcrums, a Mach 2 fighter first fielded by the Soviets
in the 1980s to achieve air superiority against U.S. jets like the F-15
Eagle and F-16 Viper. Although the MiG-29 is a relatively new airplane,
the Fulcrum did not perform well against NATO fighters in the former
Yugoslavia and Iraq. Should the Syrian air force begin attacking the
rebels with fast jets, it would likely use its Su-24 Fencers and Su-22
Fitter supersonic ground attack jets, which were built by the Soviets in
the 1970s and early 1980s. That might not end well for Assad: Gadhafi
used both to attack Libyan rebels, but the rebels were able to shoot
down both with heavy anti-aircraft guns.
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John Reed is Foreign Policy's national security staff writer.
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