WarSclerotic

The Weapon Route from Russia to Syria: How it Works.

Ronen Solomon

6/6/2013

There have been different versions regarding the status of the transfer of S-300 missile systems from Russia to Syria, and a CNN report that US intelligence officials have been tracking three Russian vessels in recent days that loaded equipment suspected as S-300 system components and made their way to Syria’s Tartus port. Against the background of these events, a comprehensive investigation carried out in the past few days reveals that it represents a military route of Russian naval vessels departing from a Russian military base in the Black Sea.

Russian military officials admitted at the start of the year, in local interviews, that the port in Novorossiysk is being serves for a military route for transferring weapons to the port of Tartus. The suspicions are that Russia also began transferring S-300 system components from the neighboring Russian Air Defense Battalion 1537. Two portable S-300 batteries are deployed at the base, which were recently upgraded with advanced S-400 systems.

The suspected equipment was loaded in the past few days onboard two Russian large landing ships that make their way along the axis between ports of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol on a fairly regular basis – once every week or two – through the Turkish Dardanelles straits to the Mediterranean. From there they make their way to the Russian naval base in the Syrian Tartus port. The landing ships, which are used to land motorized forces, can hold cargo of up to 5,000 tons within a cargo deck at a size of 630 square meters.

In the past two weeks, the large landing ships Azov and Nikolay Filchenkov were spotted crossing the Turkish Dardanelles straits on May 19. Both ships were spotted again on May 27 as they made their way back through the straits to the Black Sea. In the past months, the large landing ships Alexander Shabalin and Kaliningrad also visited the port of Tartus.

What happened with the old battery components?
There are those who claim that Russian never planned to produced and supply the new S-300 systems to Syria, but rather existing Russian military systems, with the Russian military receiving the new S-400 systems from the company Almaz-Antei in exchange. It is possible that the only new components in the deal are the trailers and missile launcher parts produced by the Russian factory Nizhny Novgorod – which noted in its annual report for 2011 a contract for supplying these components to Syria for six S-300PMU-2 portable batteries, to be supplied between 2013-2014.

The assessment is that if Russia began moving S-300 system components, it is doing it gradually and in several configurations: shipping heavy tools such as trailers and trucks with the weapon systems on them, shipping control and fire rooms, and the shipping of radar components.

These would suffice to establish an infrastructure for deploying S-300s for training purposes while still allowing Russia to claim that it did not supply or conclude the weapon deal with Syria.

The last and central component that turns the system operational is, of course, the missiles – 144 of them according to the contract, which can be transferred by air or by sea, in a short period of time and at a timing suitable to Russia, without harming the Syrian training stages.

A senior official in the antiaircraft layout assessed that such a battery could become operational within one month from the delivery of the missile components (by air or by sea). However, work is required to prepare the site where the battery is intended to be deployed. According to the senior official, Syria requires 10 systems in order to hermetically seal its airspace. According to the contract, Syria has acquired six systems. The Russian navy has a logistic base at the port of Tartus, which also has an antiaircraft site by it that includes a large war reserve-stores unit. This is one of Syria’s most strategic antiaircraft sites, which will apparently be one out of a small number of sites that will acquire the S-300 systems, if not the first among them, in light of its close proximity to the Russian naval base in Tartus.

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