Military operation in Syria gave Russia some benefits which are mostly invisible to specialists. Aside from the obvious benefits from the support to friendly countries and extremely painful attack on terrorism, which deprived terrorists of a large part of weapons and profits from oil smuggling, Russia managed to increase its political weight and credibility in the Middle East. The Russians also got some hidden profits which, however, are quite important and significant. The issue is about military-technical component.
May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the officials of the Russian Defense Ministry and the representatives of military-industrial complex. A significant part of the meeting was dedicated to the summing-up of the active phase of the operation in Syria. One particularly important point was mentioned by Vladimir Putin:
“However – and now we have to pay all attention to this – the operation in Syria has identified certain problems and shortcomings. The most thorough investigation should be conducted concerning any problematic issue, I mean a professional investigation, the most thorough analysis, and then we need to take necessary measures to solve these problems. This will allow to refine the future plan of development and improvement of military equipment.”
Leading Russian military experts have commented on the words of Putin. The comments received allow to fully appreciate the strategic importance of the military operation in Syria in the long term and understand how much we have learned from this campaign. Director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade, a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense, Igor Korotchenko, made a following statement:
“When using new types of weapons, we discover a number of issues related to the peculiarities of combat employment, the impovement of design, taking into consideration the wishes of the military who are operating certain types of weapons. In Syria, the latest developments of the Russian defense industry were used; so at the meeting the President said that it was necessary to use and adapt this military experience as soon as possible. He also demanded to improve and launch the production line of military equipment based on the results that had been obtained during combat operations.”
Thus, the operation in Syria, in addition to the main objectives, pursued other goals. First, in order to increase own defence of the country and the cost of weapons in the foreign market, it is always useful to check it out in real combat situation, not just test on polygons. Even the toughest tests do not recreate the entire complex of factors of a real battle. Besides, there are no climatic zones in Russia with climatic conditions relevant to Syrian. Russian weapons are usually created primarily as weapons of defense, and are designed for the Russian theater of operations. However, many buyers of Russian weapons, on the contrary, are located in the climatic zones with conditions like in Syria.
Therefore, and this is the second moment, that Russia did what Igor Korotchenko called “the using of the whole range of the latest developments”. Put simply, the theatre of military action in Syria was used as a large test area, where in real combat conditions a wide range of Russian most modern weapons were tested, and not only just Russian air forces.