In a trial to understand the current inventory of aircraft the SyAAF is currently operating, I worked to survey and available records of attack sorties the SyAAF 'Jet' units are performing. Fortunately, I found trustful entries -from a group specialized in observation of air sorties- for Hama AFB (Hama governorate) & Sh'eirat (Homs governorate) AFB, and accordingly prepared a log of the number of air raids started from both.
The charts above stipulate the daily air raids from both air bases in the first quarter of this year. We can notice that January witnessed the least sorties due to the bad weather in some days, while in February the more sorties been performed stably from both airports. In March the rate was unstable in terms of continuity of the same number of aircraft started from both airbases especially from Sh'eirat.
22 is the maximum number of air raids conducted in a single day from Sh'eirat on 20th Feb. and 14 in a day from Hama on 15th Mar. which drives us to a conclusion that at least there were 11 operational (Su-22M-3/4 / MiG-23BN) and 7 operational (MiG-21bis / MiG-23MF) in Sh'eirat and Hama AFB's respectively (this if we estimated that each aircraft scrambled twice a day).
At last, I would remind that this survey is limited to Jet Fighters/Bombers and there are twice the number of raids carried out by helicopter starting from these both air bases.
In clear the arrival of the Shahed 129 UCAV will reduce the use of the jet and helicopter bombing all over Syria?
ReplyDeleteThe UCAV -currently- can't be substitute to the Jets which are more effective in terms of armament and destruction in cities, I believe the Syrian regime will keep using its current arsenal of Fighters/Bombers till the last moment.
DeleteThe UCAV are thought to be still under the control of IRGC and will play a role in 'hunting' more than destroying.