Syrian Army’s new-found operational flexibility demonstrated in south Aleppo offensive

A series of operations in southern Aleppo province – started just a little over a week ago – have served to demonstrate the new-found operational flexibility of the Syrian Arab Army.

The initial phase of the south Aleppo offensive – the Al-Hass plateau operation – saw the Syrian Army use mostly light motorized forces deploying them in small modular battle-groups where troops and most of their fire support weapons (heavy machine guns and cannons) were carried by pickups – not too unlike the force recon structure of the US Marine Corps.

Since the capture of the Al-Hass region, Syrian Army assault forces quickly (within a matter of days) transformed to a mechanized infantry format which whilst armed pickups and gun-trucks were retained nonetheless saw a major re-equipping of offensive units with battle tanks and self-propelled artillery.

As easy as it sounds in theory for individual army outfits to switch up their battlefield doctrine it is in fact far from being so.

Indeed it takes tactical army units many years of experience – in particular requiring the front-line commanders of such outfits to become adept in multi-doctrines – to learn how and when to switch (sometimes during the same battle) the format of their forces and to both confidently exploit to maximum as be aware of the limitations of each doctrine.