Syrian opposition fighter sits on disused Syrian fighter jet following the capture of an airbase during the lightning offensive that ousted former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. (Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Recent displays and sightings of Syria’s remaining flyable fighter jets and helicopters are a reminder of how antiquated and battered the air force the country inherited from the Assad regime is. While Damascus is unlikely to prioritize rebuilding its air power anytime soon, it’s still worth evaluating what its future air force could ultimately look like. After all, it’s already clear it will look nothing like its overwhelmingly Soviet-supplied predecessor, which is most definitely on its last legs, if not all but dead.
In mid-August, Syrian Army helicopters flew over a crowd gathered for the Summer Syria festival at the Damascus Citadel. Rather than scattering destructive and inherently indiscriminate barrel bombs on helpless civilians below, as they had routinely done under the rule of former President Bashar al-Assad, they dropped roses. Shortly thereafter, the director of the Accountability and Oversight Department at Syria’s National Commission for Transitional Justice, Radif Mustafa, said Syrian authorities have arrested 70 percent of pilots who bombed civilians during the civil war on Assad’s orders.
Much has changed in Syria since Assad fled in December 2024 ahead of a rebel advance, simultaneously ending almost 14 years of civil war and half a century of Assad family rule. The air force was integral to enforcing the brutal Assad regime since its inception all those decades ago. Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, was commander of the air force before seizing power in 1970. Aside from dropping barrel bombs and even nerve gas on Syrian civilians throughout the civil war, the Air Force Intelligence Directorate ran one of the most infamous detention facilities in the entire country at Mezzeh Military Airport near the presidential palace.
The former regime left its successors few functional fighter jets. Years of civil war had taken its toll on an already antiquated Soviet-made fleet of fighters and helicopters. While Assad did not order the remaining fighters buried as the rebels advanced, as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did ahead of the 2003 invasion, Israel did rapidly launch a large-scale air campaign. Those unrelenting airstrikes destroyed much of what was left, including the fourth-generation MiG-29 Fulcrums Damascus received in the 1980s, to this day the most advanced jets it’s ever flown.
Still, those Israeli airstrikes didn’t destroy absolutely everything. Syria still has flyable helicopters, as that ceremonious flyby over Damascus this August again demonstrated. It also has a small number of flyable jets. Syria’s first graduation ceremony for air force cadets since Assad took place on July 24 and featured a flyover of two subsonic Czech-made Aero L-39 Albatros jet trainers and light attack aircraft and two Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships. Video released in August purported to show two Su-22 Fitter jets flying over Syria’s northwestern Idlib province.
All of these aircraft date back to deliveries in the 1980s, the peak of Syrian Air Force acquisitions. They are incredibly antiquated and certainly near the end of their service lives.
Still, their sightings are a reminder of how reliant Syria always was on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc countries for its combat aircraft and helicopters. With the notable exception of some sizable orders of SA-342 Gazelle light helicopters from France in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Syria remained almost entirely reliant on the Soviets for its military aircraft. Even Baathist Iraq diversified its fighter fleet by ordering from both the Soviet Union and France. Damascus never did so and unlike its oil-rich neighbor could never afford to.
Today’s Syria is shrewdly retaining a more equal partnership with Russia. However, it’s highly unlikely that Moscow would or even could do much to help Damascus rebuild its shattered air force.
Before the L-39 and Su-22 sightings and video, another earlier video released in May, and even published on one Middle Eastern news outlet, purported to show Syrian MiG-29s spotted over the country for the first time since 2024. It was artificial intelligence. Russia previously claimed to deliver modernized MiG-29s to Syria in 2020, but that was undoubtedly a diversion for deploying unmarked MiG-29s to eastern Libya, which passed through Hmeimim airbase in Syria.
More recently, an Iranian lawmaker claimed in 2025 that Tehran received MiG-29s from Russia ahead of its long-expected delivery of Su-35 Flankers. Again, no evidence of any delivery emerged. Even if Russia wanted to restore Syria’s MiG-29 fleet from scratch or augment Iran’s aged Fulcrums at this stage, it has fewer than 90 left itself.
So, while Russia will likely help Syria service and maintain its legacy Soviet-era hardware, Russian weapons, or at least aircraft, are unlikely to make up the majority of any future Syrian air force arsenal.
Who remains undetermined. Post-2003 Iraq ended up acquiring American F-16s, the same fighter type that previously bombed the country repeatedly in the pre-2003 wars. However, as noted above, Iraq already had a history of diversifying its air force acquisitions, which looks set to continue with negotiations for Dassault Rafales from France and possibly Sino-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder jets.
While Israel remains highly distrustful of the current Syrian government and has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to preempt any Turkish military buildup in the country, Syria probably won’t have the money required either way to buy modern fighter jets for the foreseeable future. Therefore, presuming Syria can build some trust with its southern neighbor in the coming months and years, an interim solution bridging the air force of its future and the little that’s left of its largely decimated Soviet-era arsenal is conceivable.
Turkey seems the most likely candidate to provide that bridge. Libya similarly had most of its air force destroyed in the wars since 2011. Ankara has provided relatively cheap drones, primarily the Bayraktar TB2, to help the government in Tripoli retain some airpower capabilities that proved decisive in the 2020 civil war. Ankara may offer similar solutions to Damascus in the future.
While drones could provide a partial stopgap, Turkey’s state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries has also developed some homegrown aircraft. These could help Syria retain some piloted planes after those remaining L-39s and Su-22s make their last flights and until something else takes their place and the place of those destroyed MiG-29s.
The turboprop TAI Hurkus serves as a trainer and ground-attack aircraft and could have utility as an interim solution, especially for training new pilots and retaining current ones. The more advanced TAI Hurjet is both a jet trainer and a light combat aircraft, making it a suitable modern replacement for those L-39s.
So, while the future of Syria’s air force remains very uncertain, it’s not inconceivable that, in the coming years, a modest, transitional Turkish-supplied fleet of Bayraktar drones and crewed TAI aircraft could emerge as an entirely new post-Assad air force gradually takes shape.