1948–1961: Harvards, Meteors and the first MiGs

The Syrian Air Force dates from 1948, two years after French and British forces left the country; its first pilot class graduated from a French-run flying school at Estabel in Lebanon. In the war of 1948 it flew North American T-6 Harvards in three squadrons and, by Wikipedia’s account, claimed a single kill on 10 July, when a rear gunner shot down an Israeli fighter, and lost one T-6 to ground fire. Fiat G.55s and G.59s came from Italy, and under a January 1950 contract with Britain came Chipmunks, Spitfire Mk 22s and Gloster Meteor F.8 and T.7 jets, all 12 Meteors in Syria by 9 March 1953. In 1955 Damascus turned east and ordered 24 MiG-15bis and four two-seaters from Czechoslovakia, but most were still in Egypt when the Suez war began, and 20 were destroyed in British attacks on Abu Suweir. On 6 November 1956 Syrian Meteors of No. 9 Squadron shot down a Royal Air Force Canberra PR.7. Sixty MiG-17s ordered that year began arriving in January 1957; from 1958 to 1961 the service was merged into the air force of the United Arab Republic with Egypt.

1961–1973: the air force that ran Syria, and two wars with Israel

The air force was re-formed in 1961 with about 40 MiG-17Fs and four Il-28s, and quickly became a political base. Hafez al-Assad, commissioned as a pilot in 1955 and trained on the MiG-17 in the Soviet Union, became its commander by the end of 1964 according to his biography (the air force article dates his command from 1965) and Minister of Defence after the February 1966 coup. In June 1967 the air force flew a few strikes on northern Israel on the first day; Israel’s Operation Focus destroyed 61 Syrian aircraft by the count in Wikipedia’s account, while the air force article stresses that much of the fleet was dispersed to remote bases. In September 1970, when Syrian armour crossed into Jordan, the air force stayed on the ground, a decision attributed to the power struggle between Assad and Salah Jadid; two months later Assad seized power. For the October 1973 war Syria received more than 100 MiG-21M/MFs, but the air force suffered heavy losses in air combat, and a Soviet airlift to Damascus and Aleppo began on 9 October. Loss figures for the Syrian front could not be confirmed for this page.

1974–2010: Soviet abundance, the Bekaa and the long grounding

Soviet aid then made the Syrian Air Force one of the largest in the region. The first MiG-23s arrived in April 1974, and a 1978 agreement brought MiG-23MFs, MiG-25 interceptors, MiG-23BN and Su-22 fighter-bombers. The force entered the 1982 Lebanon war weakened by the 1981 assassination of its commander, Mamdouh Hamdi Abaza, and a coup attempt. On 9 June 1982 Israel attacked the Syrian missile batteries in the Bekaa Valley; Israel claims 29 of 30 batteries destroyed and 82–86 Syrian aircraft shot down in the air battles of that week without losing an aircraft in air combat, while the Soviet army paper Krasnaya Zvezda reported 67 Israeli aircraft downed, a claim met with scepticism even in Moscow. In 1986 Syria ordered 24 MiG-29s and 24 Su-24s, delivered from 1987 but incomplete when Soviet aid ended in 1989. Then came the long decline: short of spares and fuel, the force was largely grounded through the 1990s and 2000s. Twenty-eight second-hand MiG-23MLDs and five MiG-23UBs came from Belarus in 2008, and the 36 Yak-130 trainers Russia announced in 2014 were never delivered.

2011–2024: an air force turned on its own towns

When the uprising of 2011 became a civil war, the air force was turned on Syrian towns. Armed helicopters opened fire from 22 March 2012 and jets from 24 July 2012, starting with L-39 trainers, then MiG-21s and MiG-23s. Transport helicopters dropped improvised barrel bombs: Human Rights Watch counted more than 650 major damage sites consistent with barrel bombs in opposition-held Aleppo in the 140 days after UN Security Council resolution 2139 of 22 February 2014 demanded an end to them. The UN Commission of Inquiry found that in eastern Ghouta in 2018 Su-22s, Su-24s and Mi-8/17 helicopters bombed civilian areas with unguided and cluster munitions, and characterised the campaign as war crimes and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts. OPCW investigators found reasonable grounds to believe the Syrian Arab Air Force used sarin at Ltamenah in March 2017 and chlorine at Saraqib and Douma in 2018; the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism attributed the sarin attack on Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017 to the Syrian air force. The Assad government denied using chemical weapons. Russia’s air campaign from Hmeimim from 30 September 2015 turned the war, and Turkey, the United States and Israel each shot down Syrian aircraft.

December 2024: collapse, and the Israeli strikes

The end came in twelve days. An opposition offensive began on 27 November 2024; the UN Commission of Inquiry records that former government forces kept up air strikes on populated areas until the very last days. On 8 December Bashar al-Assad left the country for Moscow via the coast, and the army command told its soldiers they were no longer in service. Israel then struck the abandoned arsenal. The Israel Defense Forces said they had carried out more than 480 strikes in 48 hours, about 350 of them on airfields, air defences, aircraft, missiles and weapons production, and had destroyed 70–80 per cent of Syria’s strategic weapons; the UN Commission counted more than 350 strikes on military facilities between 8 and 17 December. Israel described the strikes as preventing weapons from falling into the hands of armed groups; the UN Secretary-General, the Arab League and several governments condemned them as violations of Syrian sovereignty and the 1974 disengagement agreement. By Wikipedia’s summary of FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2026, every Syrian aircraft had been removed from that directory by December 2025.

2025–2026: a new air arm from almost nothing

The new government named Murhaf Abu Qasra Minister of Defence on 21 December 2024 and set about merging the armed factions into a single Syrian army, air force and navy. The air force it inherited is tiny: Wikipedia lists a few restored Su-22s, Mi-8/17 and Mi-24 helicopters, Gazelles, three L-39s and a Global Express VIP jet, figures no official source has confirmed. Helicopters were seen in action during the clashes in western Syria in March 2025. Israel struck Tiyas (T-4), Hama and other air bases again in March and April 2025 — reportedly to prevent Turkish forces from deploying there — and Abu al-Duhur in August 2026, according to Al Jazeera. Turkey signed a military training agreement with Damascus in August 2025, and in July 2026 the first cadets graduated at Kuweires under two L-39s and two Mi-24s, as reported by Janes. Russia, which kept Hmeimim after Assad’s fall, agreed on 9 August 2026 to reorganise its presence there into a joint training centre, according to the Syrian Foreign Ministry. And in September 2026 Syrian security forces began arresting former air force officers accused of bombing civilians.