In the last couple of weeks there's been much written about the Syrian military's latest escalation, the use of cluster bombs, but at the same time the Syrian armed opposition* appears to have been having an escalation of their own. Aside from increased sightings and the apparent use of SA-7 surface to air missiles by the armed opposition, as reported by CJ Chivers in the New York Times At War Blog, there's also been a sudden increase in videos showing two other kinds of weapons being used.
Type 63 multiple rocket launcher
In recent weeks a number of videos have been posted from locations across Syria, including Hama, Rastan, Idlib, and Lattakia, showing truck mounted Type 63 multiple rocket launchers being used by the armed opposition. Type 63s are generally towed rocket launcher, firing 107mm rockets, manufactured in China, but licensed for manufacture in a number of other countries, including Iran and Turkey. With a range of 8km it would be one of the longest range weapons in the armed opposition's armoury, and the below video from 7:20 shows an example of the launchers being captured by the armed opposition
9K115-2 Metis-M
The 9K115-2 Metis-M (NATO reporting name AT-13 Saxhorn-2) is a Russian anti-tank missile system, with a 2km and SACLOS wire guided targeting system. While the system has been spotted on very rare occasion before in Syria, notably an air base attack in March 2012, it appears in the last two weeks there's been a sudden increase in videos showing the systems, for example this video and this video from Idlib, and the below example from Hama, showing the missile being fired, and apparently hitting it's target
The Syrian Army's vehicle's wouldn't stand much of a chance against these system, especially with their range compared to the RPG rockets they are used to going up against, so if their use becomes widespread it seems likely the Syrian Army will face a great number of tank loses.
* Personally I prefer the term Syrian armed opposition as it covers all armed groups, and I feel the term "FSA" is now rather inaccurate as some armed groups in Syria aren't part of the actual Free Syrian Army, and "rebels" wouldn't accurately reflect the presence of foreign fighters, many of which are Jihadists, in Syria.
Over the last few days there's been a marked increase in the number of cluster bomb remains being filmed in Syria, and until today most were filmed around Maarrat al-Numan, along the main highway that connects central Syria (Hama, Homs, then Damascus and Daraa) to northern Syria (Idlib, Aleppo), which has recently come under opposition control. The concentration of reports from that area suggested at first that the use of cluster bombs was related to attempts to regain an important supply route to Aleppo. The following video shows four examples of cluster bombs used in the area, some of which were covered in my earlier post on the topic
However, in the last 24 hours multiple videos have been posted online showing cluster bomb remains in locations across Syria. In all of the examples they appear to show RBK-250 cluster bombs with PTAB 2.5m bomblets with removed fuzes. These first two videos show bomb casing and cluster bomblets in Tell Rifaat, north of Aleppo
From the coastal region of Latakkia we have this video that shows a complete casing along with a number of unexploded bomblets
To the east of Damascus we have this remarkable collection of casing and bomblets from 5 separate cluster bombs from Deir Al-Assafeer, East Ghouta
These videos were posted online in the last 24 hours, and demonstrates that cluster bombs now appear to be used across Syria. In the last 4 days I've seen videos of between 17-20 separate cluster bombs, compared to 3 videos in the prior 18 months, clearly pointing to an escalation in their use. It should be noted that unlike normal bombs cluster bombs generally always leave behind bomb casings, as they open up to scatter bomblets rather than exploding.
Cluster bomblets leave a deadly legacy for decades after conflicts have ended, as well as being extremely dangerous to handle, something that unfortunately is happening in a great number of these videos. Earlier videos of cluster bombs dropped in Syria can be found here.
This video recently uploaded from al-'Ido in the Latakkia governorate shows a wide variety of weapons, ammunition, and equipment captured by the FSA from the Syrian military.
While this isn't an uncommon sight one of the captured weapons caught my eye. At around 0:56 we spot the ammo for the weapon, then the weapon itself
What this appears to be is a Soviet AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, designed to fire 30mm grenades at a rate of up to 400 rounds/min. The video shows only one or two 29 round belts, and it's unclear if the FSA have captured any more, but this is the first time I'm aware of that the FSA have managed to get their hands on a weapon like this, making it a rather unusual find.
