Syrian Army: "Cohesive & Capable of handling the threats they're dealing with!"

"... Though degraded by a war of attrition against increasingly capable guerrilla militias, the Syrian military remains a cohesive force capable of continuing its operations for the foreseeable future, according to independent military analysts.The assessment that the Syrian military remains a potent force contradicts months of suggestions by Obama administration officials that defections and the pace of the increasingly violent conflict is overstretching the military, a theme that’s been voiced repeatedly for months in official State Department briefings.

“We think that the army is increasingly overstretched. We think that the economy is under increasing strain. And we think the rebels are getting stronger,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Aug. 9 in one typical comment.

Yet despite a bombing in July that killed four of President Bashar Assad’s closest advisers – including his minister of defense – Syrian military strategy has changed little from six months ago: using the highly mechanized army – built to fight the Israeli army – to surround rebel-held areas and pound them with artillery and airstrikes before making incursions with infantry and paramilitary forces.
“They’re still capable of handling the threats that they’re dealing with, and they’ve been reaching deeper and deeper and deeper into their armory,” said Joseph Holliday, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington who specializes in the Syrian conflict.
That’s not to say that the rebels haven’t made the conflict costly for the military....
White (WINEP/ AIPAC) thinks the overall trend is downward for the army and that the rebels eventually will prevail.....
Holliday is more skeptical. “The rebels are trying to harass supply lines, but the corollary to that is that the regime is making sure it has everything it needs in place. It’s not going to lose a fight in Aleppo,” Holliday said.
The mixing of army units that Holliday described has made it difficult to track which military units are fighting where, ... ...  the army hasn’t yet deployed some of its heaviest weaponry. Despite punishing artillery and rocket strikes on rebel-held areas, a number of rocket and artillery systems haven’t yet been used....."