Militants on the territory of Syria, from the initial period of the war (winter 2012 - summer 2013), in the conditions of urban battles, tried to use the tactics tested in the Chechen campaign.
In accordance with it, teams of "tank hunters" are created, consisting of grenade launchers, machine gunners and a sniper pair. Ambush sites were chosen in narrow urban areas, where there is no possibility of a quick withdrawal or turn of equipment. In the ambush sector, to destroy the armored vehicle column, it is necessary to concentrate several groups of "hunters" on different floors of buildings and in basements. The classic scenario is the destruction of the leading and trailing vehicles with the entire armored column trapped in a city trap. The next step is to knock out all equipment that has cannon armament with a large elevation angle. These are BMP-2 and Shilki. And only from that moment on, a full-fledged shooting of tanks, sandwiched in a stone sack, begins. Moreover, one vehicle requires about 5-6 launches of anti-tank grenades (usually RPG-7), which will first sweep away the entire DZ from the armor, and then hit the armor through and through. It was important to strike the tank in any projection, but not in the frontal one - it was practically useless and perfectly unmasked the grenade launcher crew. But such tactics were used by poorly organized and untrained militants in Syria only partially - especially the grenade launchers who did not undergo appropriate practical training let down. Over time, professional mercenaries and instructors were able to organize the training of groups of "hunters for armored vehicles", but the tankers of the SAR have already been taught by the bitter experience of the beginning of hostilities. Sometimes in the initial period of the war, tanks went into battle without attachment protection, remote sensing and infantry cover. Armored vehicles could single-handedly approach an enemy armed with PTS at a distance of up to 100 meters, which entailed an almost inevitable defeat by RPG crews. As a result, Kontakt-1 protection kits began to cover all tanks going into battle, including the morally and technically outdated T-55, and in the event of a shortage of DZ, sandbags, remote metal frames filled with reinforced concrete blocks were used. By the summer of 2013, the Syrian military is adopting the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, when the tank is surrounded by external anti-cumulative lattice screens. This became a forced measure associated with the depletion of RS stocks in warehouses.
In the initial period of hostilities in Syria, the T-72 tanks of export modification, considered morally obsolete, were the most combat-ready, especially with regard to resistance to modern anti-tank equipment. It is worth remembering that for export the USSR and Russia supplies vehicles with deteriorated armor protection parameters, which cannot but affect the effectiveness in combat conditions. There was a small program of Italian modernization of a series of tanks, but it did not bring much.
An important drawback of the Syrian tanks was the location of NSVT machine guns on the tower without remote control - snipers quickly knocked out the shooters, so the machine guns were often removed from the armor altogether. In combat conditions, the tankers showed ingenuity and stuffed the system for launching smoke grenades 902B "Tucha" with homemade cartridges equipped with steel balls. This became a kind of means of engaging enemy infantry, which did not differ in either accuracy or range of a shot. The relatively low rate of fire of the T-72, associated with the feature of the automatic loader, also became a problem: 7 seconds + time for aiming. In some conditions, this was quite enough for the enemy grenade launchers to aim and release a grenade in the intervals between tank shots.
To compensate for the deficiency, the Syrians used heavy fire from small arms (as an option: BMP-2 or "Shilka") at the target just during the period of reloading the tank. And when a group of tanks is working, shots are simply carried out sequentially, not allowing the enemy to raise his head. In the conditions of active urban battles, the lack of tank ammunition of 39 shells affected. Before leaving for ammunition replenishment, tankers should always have a reserve of 4-5 rounds in case of a counterattack, that is, only 32 shells were allocated for battle. But he was often limited to only 18 shots from the automatic loader (there are only 22 in it). The weak protection of the tank's ammunition also had a negative effect. In the event of damage to the vehicle's armor space, usually after a few seconds, the charges ignited, which killed the crew, and later the BC detonated, destroying the tank.
With all this in mind, the Syrian tank crews developed the following tactics.
The city includes a group of three or four T-72, one or two infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Support is provided by an infantry unit of 25-40 fighters, in which snipers are required to defeat RPG and ATGM crews of militants. Urban combat with the use of mobile armored groups usually develops according to the following scenario: tanks either in a column or on a ledge (if possible) move to the contact line, followed by 2-3 BMPs or, as an option, ZSU-23-4 "Shilka". When insurgents are detected, tanks work at their firing points, and light armored vehicles fire at the upper floors of buildings due to the large angle of elevation of the guns. Obviously, the outdated BMP-1 is poorly suited for this purpose.
It is possible to strengthen the strike group of 152-mm self-propelled guns "Akatsia", which has an elevation angle of up to 60 degrees. The extensive range of Akatsiya shells (concrete-piercing, high-explosive, cluster, smoke, lighting) allows you to effectively destroy buildings, smoke the enemy out of fortifications, blind at night and destroy manpower. At the beginning of the conflict in Syria, there were no more than 50 ACS "Akatsia", so in assault groups it was often replaced by ACS "Carnation" (up to 400 units in the army), but its 122-mm caliber is no longer so effective in battle. Self-propelled artillery was always located in the city behind the "backs" of well-armored tanks.
The tankers of the Syrian Arab Army have developed several more tactics for fighting in the city. For example, the technique of crossfire, when tanks from several directions simultaneously fire on several floors of a building, which allows you to remove most of the "dead zones", block the maneuvers of militants, and create conditions for the imposition of shock waves from shells. In combination with the strikes of the self-propelled guns, the building after such a shelling is most often completely destroyed.
Militants in urban landscapes without heavy weapons are very mobile, which causes a lot of problems for the Syrian army. Therefore, intelligence comes to the fore here, creating command and observation posts (KNP) near the discovered places of accumulation of militants in the city. Usually, in the early stages of the war, the rebels set up ambushes near transport hubs and junctions in the hope of destroying the convoys of equipment.
If such a nest was found, a group of tanks up to a company and about 10 infantry fighting vehicles with an assault force were called up, which quickly occupied a perimeter defense in the ambush area. The tanks pierced the passageways in the walls for the infantry with main caliber fire and destroyed the enemy's manpower. The tank fire was corrected from a pre-organized KNP, and the clearing operation was assigned to the infantry units. Everything was usually given 20-30 minutes, after which the strike group collected trophies, picked up the infantry, KNP fighters and went to another sector of the front. It is interesting that the tankers in Syria adopted the technique that Soviet "colleagues" had invented during the Great Patriotic War. His idea is that the barrel of a tank gun is launched through a window or doorway and a blank charge is fired. And in modern buildings, the inner walls are often made of foam concrete, which cannot even withstand a machine-gun bullet. As a result, concussions, barotrauma and fragmentation injuries of the entrenched "bearded men" in the rooms adjacent to the window are guaranteed. You can enter the infantry!
The T-72s are also fighting on the side of the militants, only their method of use is slightly different from the army. Unable to create significant shock armored groups, the militants use tanks like giant sniper rifles, striking firing points with single shots from long distances. Often, the crews include professional tankers - deserters from the regular Syrian army. Interestingly, the tactics of the "sniper rifle" eventually adopted the SAA for the destruction of sniper nests with tank guns.
