Syrian Armed Forces

The Syrian Armed Forces (Arabic: القُوَّاتُ المُسَلَّحَةُ السُورِيَّةُ, romanized: al-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥah as-Sūrīyyah) are the military forces of Syria. They consist of the Syrian Army, Syrian Air Force and Syrian Navy. According to Article 32 of the Constitutional Declaration of the Syrian Arab Republic, the President of Syria serves as the commander-in-chief of the Army and the Armed Forces. After 1943, the Syrian Army played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting six military coups: two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and one each in 1951, 1954, 1963, 1966, and 1970. It fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1973 Arab-Israel War, and 1982 Lebanon War) and one with Jordan ("Black September" in Jordan, 1970). The Air Force and Navy acted more as adjuncts to the army than independent actors, apart from the Air Force/ADF's reaction to the Israeli Operation Mole Cricket 19 ahead of the 1982 Lebanon War. Syrian fighters and air defence systems took very heavy losses. An armoured division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 the Army was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and from 2011 to 2024 was heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian civil war, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army had taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s. Prior to the fall of Ba'athist Syria, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces used conscription. Males served in the military from age 18, but they were exempted from service if they did not have a brother who could take care of their parents....