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No one said the SAMs that Syria bought are wonder weapons. All I got was that Syria purchased the Pantsyr-S1E anti-aircraft system which admittedly are advertised as pretty good, but all weapons have their limitations. If the Israeli F-16s (or F-15s, I haven’t heard which it was) just stayed out of range to test the Syrian response—after all, they are short range SAMs— then they obviously weren;t going to score any hits no matter how good they were.

Furthermore, even if Syria has received them and had time to deploy them, I don’t think they would’ve had much time to receive training on how to use them just yet. In addition, you have the fairly consistent Arab problems with training and tactics. Not to mention, considering who their mentors were, I’d expect the SAM operators to need to get permission to fire from several rungs higher up the chain of command, especially given the volatility of the situation.

Also, I doubt that the Izzies would have actually destroyed the Syrian air defenses since that would be an obvious act of war, and as we all know, Israel isn’t allowed to do that, even if Syria is supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.

I’m not saying Russian weapons are the best, but I certainly wouldn’t underestimate them. Also, you also have to account for the fact that their defense industry is just getting back into the swing of things after losing the Cold War—many of the designs that they are fielding as new are designs they were developing nearly 20 years ago. Give them time, I’m sure they’ll more or less catch up if their population decline doesn’t ruin them first.