Syrian Air Defence “wastes” Projectiles by Inaccurate Fire at Israeli Missiles

Russian-made air defence systems with the Syrian Army such as the Pantsir "waste" their missile-projectiles by inaccurately firing at air-to-ground missiles launched by Israeli F-16s.

Israeli intelligence website https://nziv.net/ commented quoting Israeli military sources that, to take down a single anti-radar missile fired by an Israeli F-16, the Russian air defence systems “waste on average 8-9 missiles, essentially firing at random."

However, giving credit to the Russian systems, the Hebrew language website said, “the Syrian air defense systems have been able to repel a missile attack on Damascus after the launch of several missiles, but some nevertheless destroyed their targets extremely successfully."

An Israeli Air Force’s attack on the evening of February 5 left Syrian air defence system seriously damaged and destroyed. Of the eight missiles fired by Israeli aircraft, four were shot down. In contrast, Syria’s anti-air defense used 35 surface-to-air missiles, which itself indicates "random, rather ineffective shooting,” the website said, without attributing the source of the information.

Thus, in order to repel a large-scale Israeli airstrike, Syria requires a much larger number of anti-missiles, although at present the ratio of missiles to anti-missiles is presumed to be 1:1 or at most 1:2, which raises a lot of questions.

The website speculates that Russia may not give the right defensive systems to take down Israeli warplanes as Moscow is not at war with Israel.

Earlier this month, a top official of the Russian manufacturer admitted that the Israeli military bombed and destroyed a Pantsir-S ADS after its Syrian operator left behind a mobile phone providing a lead to the location of the ADS.