And Yet Another Syrian Tank Going Bye-Bye...

Again at the hands of a Raytheon produced TOW missile.  Safe to say I wouldn't want to be a Syrian Army tanker at this point.  The Syrians appear to be deploying their tanks on a near individual basis while the rebels remain under little pressure, just taking easy shots at them...virtually suicide at this point to be operating a tank in a rebel contested area with no air or infantry support.

Syrian Rebels Take Out Syrian Artillery with US TOW Missile...

Now here's hoping that these are the "nice" Syrian rebels and not of the ISIS variety.  What we have here is the use of an American made (Raytheon specifically) BGM-71 TOW missile which was designed to be an anti-tank/anti-armor weapon but can also be used as an anti-structure or in this case anti-artillery weapon.  You can see that the operator of the missile has to stay with the launcher after firing as it needs to be guided in to its target--not the best of circumstances in a hot shooting environment but like the video I posted the other day of the helicopter shootdown, they do not seem to be under any pressure from an opposing force during these raids.

BGM-71 TOW in Afghanistan for comparo

On the Syrian side of the equation it has to be

especially frightening as the attacks come in what appears to be a "calm" environment when suddenly your helicopter is blown apart or your cannon is made into easily recyclable material.  Attacks are very asymmetrical in this environment.  The artillery piece in question looks to be a Russian 2S3 self propelled howitzer of the 152.4mm variety.  The Syrians bought about 100 of these from Russia in recent years.  Given their maximum armor of

 Model of 2S3 for comparo with the video

30mm and the TOWs rating for armor penetration of at least 450mm (up to a reported 900mm in some varieties) it is safe to say that this howitzer is no longer in use.

Syrian Rebels Take Out Russian Helicopter with Russian Missile

There should be a bit of irony here.  The Syrian rebels (likely to be of the extreme Islamic variety given their use of social media and apparent sophistication) here are using a  relatively modern Russian anti-tank guided missile to shoot down/blow up a Syrian government helicopter of the Russian variety.

The missile appears to be a Kornet which first came into production in the mid 90's and has been used by Iraq against American tanks in the early '00s, damaging a few but not destroying any and also against the Israeli's by Hezbollah (targets have included Isreali tanks and a child laden schoolbus).  Russia has supplied Syria with these anti-tank missiles for years and they appear to have now fallen into the hands of the Syrian rebels/ISIS.

The helicopter here appears to be an MI-2 which is more of a transport helicopter than an attack platform (though it can be outfitted with various short range offensive weaponry).  Supposedly Syria had about 20 of these at one point--make that 19 now...Produced in Poland beginning in the late 60's/70's and designed in Russia these helicopters serve in secondary regimes around the world.  Though the Kornet missile is not specifically designed to take down helicopters, given the static position this one was in during its landing and apparently unpressured position the attackers were located in, made this takedown easy.