Syrian shootdown of Turkish jet serves as warning

By Greg Jaffe-The Syrian government’s shootdown of a Turkish fighter jet has served as a stark warning that its military is capable of mounting a sophisticated defense against potential enemies, complicating a Libyan-style intervention.Turkey has said that it has no immediate plans to respond to the incident with military action. But the Turkish prime minister warned Tuesday that he had ordered commanders along the country’s southern border to treat any Syrian military approach as a threat, escalating concerns that Turkey — along with the United States and its allies — could be drawn into a regional war.Details of the downing along the Syrian coast are still emerging, but officials said that Syria’s air defenses have been beefed up by purchases from Russia since Israeli fighter jets destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in the Syrian desert nearly five years ago. As a result, U.S. military officials said that, at least on paper, the Syrian air defenses appear to be far more robust than those encountered by NATO in Libya and stronger than even Iran.“I can name you worse [systems], but they are in places like China,” said an Air Force official who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.Concerns about the capability of the Syrian military are only one reason that the international community has refused to intervene in the bloody crackdown on opposition groups by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.The Syrian defenses are far from impregnable, but defeating them would require a sustained U.S. military effort that would probably lead to civilian casualties, complicating any Western intervention, said defense officials and military analysts.Those urging caution warn that any military action risks plunging Western forces into the middle of what is essentially a sectarian civil war that could spread throughout the region.At a time when the U.S. military is still fighting in Afghanistan and recovering from the long, bloody occupation of Iraq, there is also resistance inside the Pentagon to using force in instances where U.S. national interests are not directly threatened.“We can deal with the Syrian integrated air defenses,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who oversaw Air Force intelligence efforts in the Pentagon. “It is much, much more challenging than Libya. They have some of the most recent surface-to-air missiles out there. But before we address the how we need to address the why.”In the wake of a 2007 raid by Israel on the al-Kibar nuclear reactor, Syria spent billions of dollars to upgrade its 1960s- and 1970s-era missile defenses. Among those purchases was the SA-22 Pantsir armored rocket system, which some defense officials speculated may have been used against the Turkish jet.“The [Israeli] strike prompted the Syrians to purchase some very capable Russian systems,” said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow specializing in aerospace at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London.Most defense analysts said the Syrian system is similar to the Iranian air defenses in terms of technology, but they suggested that Syrian version is more effective because it is concentrated in a smaller area.

Source: http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/en-US/syria-turkey-cg-260.htm

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