The armed forces of Israel and Syria have evolved in response to continued tension and the prospects for conflict between the two countries. The attached report summarizes the development of each country’s conventional military strengths and weaknesses in force strength, force quality, capabilities, and leadership. This report can be downloaded from the CSIS web site:
This report shows that there are significant uncertainties in the force counts of Israeli and Syrian forces available from unclassified sources. Israel's quantitative lead is matched by an even greater qualitative lead. This explains in good part why Syria is deterred from military adventures, rather than portraying what might happen in war.
Comparative Manpower Quantity and Quality
Total manpower is an uncertain measure when countries have such different force structures and set such different standards for manpower quality and training as Israel and Syria. Israel's active manpower has not changed radically over time, but has fluctuated according to fiscal and security pressures.
Israel remains heavily dependent on reserve versus active manpower, but it has now halted a recent trend toward force cuts and is rebuilding the training and readiness of both active manpower and reserves. If its high-quality reserves are added to its total actives, its force strength is far more competitive with its Arab neighbors.
Syria maintained extremely high manpower levels after its 1982 war with Israel, but then cut them back in the late 1990s, partly because of their cost and partly because it could not properly equip, train, and support such forces.
There is a serious gap in manpower quality between Israel and Syria, and Israel is the only country that has made major progress in developing a modern mix of "jointness" among its military services.
Israel also has modern and relatively well-trained reserves, many of which have had extensive practical experience in asymmetric warfare since 2000. Syrian reserve military forces are little more than "paper" forces with no real refresher or modern training, little or no exercise experience, poor equipment and readiness support, and little or no experience in mobility and sustainability.
While the number of total combat aircraft is not irrelevant, high quality air assets are the ones that really count. Israel has done the best job of emphasizing overall force quality over numbers and of funding full mission capability with all of the necessary munitions, force enablers, and sustainability.
Syria’s lead in total aircraft numbers is driven in part by the large number of obsolete and obsolescent aircraft in the Syrian forces. Syria is also trying to train for, maintain, arm, and sustain far too many different types of aircraft. This puts a major – and costly – burden on the air force and dilutes manpower quality, and does so with little, if any, actual benefit.
Israel has a major lead in both the quantity and quality of the air battle management, intelligence, warning, and targeting systems critical to making use of modern airpower and precision weapons. This advantage is greatly enhanced by the use of other technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and intelligence satellites.
Israel and Syria both have large numbers of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), but only the Israeli Air Force has truly modern medium and long-range systems, radars, and command and control facilities. Israel also has access to the latest U.S. weapons and technologies and can develop advanced weapons systems of its own.
Syria’s system has many obsolescent and obsolete weapons and sensors and is vulnerable to Israeli real-time targeting, precision air and missile attack, and electronic countermeasures. Many of Syria’s longer-range systems – particularly the SA-2, the SA-3, the SA-5, and the SA-6 – are now so old that electronic and other countermeasures, including anti-radiation missiles, can deprive them of much of their effectiveness.
Comparative Naval Strength
Syria and Israel still maintain significant naval forces, but only Israel retains significant operational capability, and the naval forces on each side are now more likely to be used for asymmetric warfare missions or amphibious raids than in conventional combat. The Israel-Hezbollah War in 2006 showed that a non-state actor such as Hezbollah could use anti-ship missiles to attack one of the Israeli Navy’s most modern ships.
Israel has relatively modern and effective submarines and surface forces, backed by effective airpower. Israel has effective anti-ship missiles, as well as superior systems and targeting/electronic warfare capabilities. Syria’s navy is largely obsolete, ineffective, and dependent on aging anti-ship missiles. Its main surface assets spend little meaningful time at sea, while its three Romeo-class submarines have been withdrawn from service.
Israel maintains a clear lead in military expenditures, although its spending efforts dropped significantly after 2001 in spite of the Israeli-Palestinian War, while other Israeli security-related spending increased to pay for such civilian programs as roads and settlements.
Syria’s military expenditures continued to decline over most of the last decade and have been less than one-third of the level needed to pay for the mix of manpower quality, readiness, and modernization it would need to compete with Israel in overall conventional force quality. It is striking that Syria’s military expenditures burden is so close to that of Israel. Syria’s slow economic development has been a major factor limiting what it can spend.
Israel has continued to receive far more arms imports than Syria and has placed far more new orders. Israel also has had large-scale access to U.S. arms imports, including the most modern equipment. Syria did increase its new orders during 2003-2006 versus 1995-2002, but the total remained less than one-third that of Israel, and again, Israel has the additional advantage of a major military-industrial base while Syria does not.
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