Ammar Johmani learnt from an undisclosed special source that the regime air force has re-equipped four MiG-23 ML aircrafts that were previously stockpiled as unsuitable for use in the recent period.
Russia is the regime’s key strategic ally, but the age of the regime’s aircrafts makes the Russian task to help the regime very difficult. Re-equipping all the old aircrafts (MiG 23 and SU 22 in all their classes) is difficult as the spare parts are not available or there are no more factories that produce or maintain these spare parts in Russia.
According to the source, the Russians were forced to form a technical team of older Russian specialists from different disciplines and who worked on these models in previous decades to manually repair some of the air craft electrical systems in Russia. The technical teams also reconstructed some of the MiG 23ML engines manually in Russia. Russian cargo planes recently flew several repaired engines to Aleppo International Airport where they will be used to equip the stockpiled regime aircrafts there.
Speaking to Ammar Johmani, the source explained that the aircrafts which have been technically re-equipped are not guaranteed to survive for long because of the depreciation of the technical life of the aircraft structures even if they receive the required repairs. These issues lead to a significant loss of aviation safety due to mechanical stresses which the aircrafts experience as part of their normal functioning. The stresses can exceed the carrying capacity of these aircrafts, which have exhausted their technical life entirely, and lead to first class aviation accidents such as crashes, the separation of aircraft parts or the explosion of the engine automatically.
The source considered that the regime air force command is risking the lives of its remaining pilots to continue killing Syrians.
He stressed that the regime air force is currently unable to receive modern warplanes from Russia due to the lack of technical staff and pilots trained on the newer models, the lack of safe air space to train new pilots, and the high costs of supplying the air force with modern Russian aircrafts.
The opposition argues that Russia follows double standards in dealing with the Syrian issue. It offers considerable support to the al-Assad army while trying to appear as a guarantor of the ceasefire agreements and “de-escalated tension” areas. Other than its support for the regime in the Geneva negotiations, Russia has prevented any international intervention against the regime by using its veto vote in the Security Council. The Russian support and inability of the international community to stop the regime atrocities continues despite the regime committing massacres and using various internationally prohibited weapons such chemical weapons
