“The Syrians and Iranians will change their systems based upon that attack.”
That will be a neat trick. The new SAM systems are mobile. The only thing they can do is move them around. It didn’t work in the Bekaa Valley the last time they got big time stomped. There are only a few plausible places to put them based on what you are actually trying to defend.
If the target ain’t moving the SAMS don’t have much scope either. There are no emergency fixes they are going to apply to these systems that are magically going to make them work better.
I frankly doubt the operators are going to do all that great a job either. Firecontrol systems are hard enough to operate in a benign environment against big cooperative targets. I might credit the Serbs with coming up with some nasty trick and being smart enough to use this equipment to nail somebody but not the Syrians.
Sure there are. Russian technicians will replace dummied-down export components/programming with current in-house stuff. Not their cutting-edge R&D level components, but operational stuff. Won't render these systems immune to jamming/hacking, but will reduce the exposure considerably. And, yes, Syria and Iran will be charged accordingly.
I doubt that the Syrians or Iranians can counter the Israelis, but you wouldn't just freely give them the chance (e.g. spending megabucks to buy a new system from South Africa, Serbia, China, Pakistan, etc.).
If you were going to make a test run on Syria prior to hitting Iran, then Iran would have been hit about 2 hours after Israel was 100% certain that their September 6 raids worked as desired.
Because Iran *couldn't* make or buy, much less deploy, the necessary changes in 2 hours.
But in 2 years? An open question. Money can buy a lot of things (cue A.Q Khan). So you don't just give up your element of technical surprise.
“might credit the Serbs with coming up with some nasty trick and being smart enough to use this equipment to nail somebody but not the Syrians”
Or credit the Serbs of having heritage with mother Russia and access to the Russian’s more advanced equipment.
“I might credit the Serbs with coming up with some nasty trick and being smart enough to use this equipment to nail somebody but not the Syrians.”
It was dumb luck really. It seems that in certain conditions a black airplane at night can be seen (hence the reason for the “Gray Dragon”) and the SA-6 the serbs used to shoot down that F-117 was fired optically.