Who lost more weapons—Russia in Syria or America in Afghanistan?

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria, punctuated by jubilant celebrations as the then rebels bloodlessly took Damascus, has several similarities to what happened to Afghanistan three years ago, says Foreign Policy.

In both cases, the disintegration of government forces was sudden and total. 

It's unclear how much of Assad's weapons stockpile—most of which is composed of Soviet- and Russian-made arms—the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels inherited, assuming the weapons survived last week's Israeli air strikes aimed at destroying large parts of that stockpile, including warships, fighter jets, and ammunition dumps.

Complicating matters still further, additional weapons may have been left behind by Russian regular troops and mercenaries fleeing their outposts outside the major Russian bases in Tartus and Latakia, from where a more orderly evacuation of soldiers and kit is now taking place. 

One thing is clear: After decades of superpower sponsorship, both regimes left behind mountains of weapons and munitions supplied by their respective patron. But which patron lost more in its client's collapse, the United States or Russia?

The Russo-Syrian arms relationship dates back to the Cold War, when the Soviet Union used its massive military-industrial complex to send aircraft, tanks, artillery, and missiles to client states around the world. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that from 1950 to 1991, Soviet weapons accounted for 94 percent of Syria's total arms imports.

Syria lost significant amounts of arms and equipment during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. However, from 1975 to 1991, the Soviets reequipped Hafez al-Assad's forces, giving or selling Syria 20 bombers, 250 fighter aircraft, 117 helicopters, 756 self-propelled guns, 2,400 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,550 tanks, at least 7,500 anti-tank missiles, and more than 13,000 surface-to-air missiles.

At the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the Syrian Air Force had about 700 fixed and rotary-wing aircraft at varying levels of readiness. Its ground forces boasted approximately 5,000 tanks, 4,000 armored vehicles, 3,400 artillery pieces, 2,600 anti-tank weapons, and 600 reconnaissance vehicles.

Many of these weapons were destroyed during intense urban combat against rebel strongholds and later against the Islamic State. Open-source researchers used photographic and videographic evidence to confirm that the Syrian Arab Army lost at least 3,380 tanks and armored vehicles between 2011 and 2020. Russian deliveries of fighter aircraft and combat helicopters, hundreds of tanks and tactical missiles, and thousands of anti-tank and air defense missiles during the conflict backfilled Assad's forces. 

As we saw this month, armaments clearly weren't enough to ensure the regime's survival.

How many tanks and armored vehicles the Assad regime left behind is unclear. Oryx, another open-source conflict monitor, documented HTS' capture of regime equipment during their rapid offensive. 

This included at least 150 tanks, more than 75 artillery pieces, 69 infantry fighting vehicles, and 64 multiple rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns. Thousands more armored vehicles, guns, and missiles are likely in their hands now, or soon will be.

However, HTS' potential arms haul might have taken a big hit even before the magnitude of the group's victory had fully sunk in. 

Last week, the Israeli military struck about 500 targets in Syria, claiming that it destroyed 70 to 80 percent of the Assad regime's military capabilities. According to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), its strikes "destroyed most of the Assad regime's stockpiles of missiles and other strategic weapons," including "scud, cruise, and surface-to-air missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack helicopters and tanks." Dozens of long-range anti-ship missiles and the vessels carrying them were destroyed in strikes against the ports of al-Bayda and Latakia. The IDF also hit Syrian military airfields, hangars, and several weapons production sites.

There is reason to be skeptical of some of the IDF's claims. Attrition from aerial bombardment is perennially overstated. The air campaigns in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, and against the Islamic State did not degrade enemy capabilities (or limit civilian casualties) as much as initial battle damage assessments claimed.

Russian weapons were also pilfered by Iranian-backed groups. Systems like Kornet anti-tank missiles have reportedly made their way to Lebanon via Syria. The Israeli military estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the Hezbollah weapons it seized in Lebanon during the first days of its invasion this fall were Russian-made.

Russia's own military force in Syria, including jets and naval vessels, has pulled back and appears to be partially evacuating, but it has not yet withdrawn from the country. A renegotiated lease that would allow Russia to retain its bases in Latakia and Tartus may still be a possibility.

How did the victorious Taliban do when compared with HTS?

US government watchdogs estimated that the Taliban captured more than $7 billion worth of US equipment after the fall of the Western-backed Afghan government three years ago. An August 2022 report from the US Department of Defense found that ground vehicles worth $4.12 billion and military aircraft worth $923.3 million remained in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. A non-public report to Congress stated that 9,524 air-to-ground munitions, 40,000 vehicles, 300,000 light arms, and 1.5 million rounds of ammunition were left behind.

The Taliban have their own air force now. A November 2022 report from a US government watchdog found that "approximately 2 weeks prior to the Taliban's takeover, DOD records indicate that the Afghan Air Force had 162 US-provided aircraft in its inventory, of which 131 were usable." However, Afghan pilots flew about one-third of these planes and helicopters to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the final days of the withdrawal. Another 80 at Kabul airport were rendered unusable by US forces. Some of these may have been repaired since the Taliban took power. In the meantime, the Taliban have relied on the remaining Soviet-era aircraft to transport troops, military and humanitarian cargo, and regime officials.

In the wake of the US withdrawal, Afghanistan became a giant arms bazaar. US weapons have reportedly been used in Kashmir, Pakistan, and Gaza, and they will inevitably appear on more battlefields in the future. Experts claim it is one of the greatest arms diversions in history.

But the raw numbers comparing Afghanistan and Syria mask a major difference between the two lost arsenals. The Russians could really use those weapons today, whereas the United States left little of its best equipment in Afghanistan. The Afghan National Army and police forces were designed for internal security and largely equipped with second- and third-tier American gear that was supposedly sufficient to handle a lightly armed insurgency. Much of the US weaponry in Afghanistan was simultaneously too costly to fly home and lacked sufficient military value to make the effort worthwhile. It was cheaper to cut many US vehicles into scrap or leave them for the Afghan security forces.

Russia, on the other hand, has been losing thousands of combat vehicles, planes, and even warships since invading Ukraine in February 2022. Since the start of the war, Russia has reportedly lost about 8,800 armored fighting vehicles, over 3,000 tanks, and close to 250 fighter aircraft and helicopters. Russia lost around 300 tanks in the five-month battle for the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka alone.

Even in a war economy, new weapons production cannot offset these losses. Russia has drawn down its enormous Soviet stores of weapons and munitions, throwing antiquated tanks and armored vehicles into action. Insufficient barrel forging machines have led to widespread cannibalization of artillery barrels, a critical component of the bloody slugfest in the Donbas. Russia is running critically low on several categories of weapons, which could begin to constrict Russia's ability to fight in 2025.

Unlike the Taliban's M-16s and Ford Ranger trucks, which are hardly conducive to overwhelming a serious adversary, Syria's arsenal could have supplied some real military capability. Many of these calculations are now hypothetical given Israel's strikes on Syrian military bases and facilities. But by the numbers and types of weapons lost to Russia and its former client in Damascus, Moscow has taken a substantially more significant blow than Washington with its much-debated equipment losses in Afghanistan.