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Syrian military

Syrian Arab Armed Forces
القوات المسلحة العربية السورية
Syria Armed Forces Emblem.svg
Coat of arms of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces
Flag of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces.svg
Flag of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces
Founded 1946
Current form 1971
Service branches Syrian Arab Army
Syrian Arab Air Force
Syrian Arab Navy
Syrian Arab Air Defense Force
Syrian Military Intelligence
National Defence Forces
Headquarters Damascus
Leadership
Commander-in-Chief Marshal Bashar al-Assad
Minister of Defence General Fahd Jassem al-Freij
Chief of Staff General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub
Manpower
Military age 18–49 years old
Conscription 1-3 years depending on circumstances
Available for
military service
11,550,588, age 18–49
Fit for
military service
9,939,661, age 18–49
Reaching military
age annually
250,000
Active personnel 150,000 to 178,000(30% to 50% shrink according to sources)
Expenditures
Budget $3.3 billion
Percent of GDP 5%
Industry
Foreign suppliers  Russia
 Bulgaria
 Belarus
 Serbia
 Armenia
 China
 Iran
 North Korea
 Cuba
 Venezuela
 Vietnam
 Laos
Related articles
History Military history of Syria
1948 Arab-Israeli War
March 1949 Syrian coup d'état
1954 Syrian coup d'état
1961 Syrian coup d'état
1963 Syrian coup d'état
1966 Syrian coup d'état
Six Day War
War of Attrition
Black September in Jordan
1970 Syrian Corrective Revolution
Yom Kippur War
Islamic uprising in Syria
Syrian occupation of Lebanon
1982 Lebanon War
Gulf War
Syrian Civil War

The Syrian Arab Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة العربية السورية‎‎) are the military forces of the Syrian Arab Republic. They consist of the Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Air Defense Force, and several paramilitary forces, such as the National Defence Force. According to the Syrian constitution, the President of Syria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

The military is a conscripted force; males serve in the military upon reaching the age of 18, but there are many women in the armed forces. Since the Syrian Civil War, the enlisted members of the Syrian military have dropped by over half from a pre-civil war figure of 325,000 to 150,000 soldiers in the army in December 2014, due to casualties, desertions and draft dodging, reaching between 178,000 and 220,000 soldiers in the army, in addition to 80,000 to 100,000 irregular forces.

Before the start of the Syrian Civil War, the obligatory military service period was being decreased over time. In 2005, it was reduced from two and a half years to two years, in 2008 to 21 months and in 2011 to year and a half. Since the Syrian Civil War the Syrian government has reportedly engaged in arrest campaigns and enacted new regulations, with even citizens who have completed mandatory conscription being called up for reserve duty.

The French Mandate volunteer force, which would later become the Syrian army, was established in 1920 with the threat of Syrian−Arab nationalism in mind. Although the unit's officers were originally all French, it was, in effect, the first indigenous modern Syrian army. In 1925, this force was expanded and designated as the Special Troops of the Levant (Troupes Spéciales du Levant). In 1941, during World War II, the Army of the Levant participated in a futile resistance to the British and Free French invasion that ousted the Vichy French from Syria during the Syria–Lebanon Campaign. After the Allies takeover, the army came under the control of the Free French and was designated the Levantine Forces (Troupes du Levant). French Mandate authorities maintained a gendarmerie to police Syria's vast rural areas. This paramilitary force was used to combat criminals and political foes of the Mandate government. As with the Levantine Special Troops, French officers held the top posts, but as Syrian independence approached, the ranks below major were gradually filled by Syrian officers who had graduated from the Homs Military Academy, which had been established by the French during the 1930s. In 1938, the Troupes Spéciales numbered around 10,000 men and 306 officers (of whom 88 were French, mainly in the higher ranks). A majority of the Syrian troops were of rural background and minority ethnic origin, mainly Alawis, Druzes, Kurds, and Circassians. By the end of 1945, the army numbered about 5,000 and the gendarmerie some 3,500. In April 1946, the last French officers were forced to leave Syria due to sustained resistance offensives; the Levantine Forces then became the regular armed forces of the newly independent state and grew rapidly to about 12,000 by the time of the 1948 Arab−Israeli War, the first of four Arab−Israeli wars between 1948 and 1986.


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Wikipedia

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