What did Russia gain from the missiles the US launched at Syria?

Sergey Rudskoy, head of the Russian General Staff's Operations Directorate, said last week that two misfired cruise missiles belonging to the US-led coalition had been seized by the Syrian army and handed over to Russia for inspection.

According to experts, dissecting these relatively intact projectiles will give Russia the opportunity to study their capabilities and operating methods, in order to counter future attacks by the US and its allies.Popular Mechanics.

In theory, cruise missiles are disposable weapons, designed to be discreet if they fail and crash. However, major powers can still extract significant intelligence and technical data from unexploded ordnance from their adversaries.

The process involves dissecting enemy missiles for study and redesigning them into one's own weapons.This tactic has been used by many countries. The Soviet Union once developed the K-13 short-range air-to-air missile based on an AIM-9 Sidewinder projectile that struck the tail of a Chinese fighter jet without exploding.

During the 1998 US Tomahawk cruise missile attack on a Taliban base in Afghanistan, six missiles strayed into Pakistan. Pakistani and Chinese scientists appear to have thoroughly studied these Tomahawk missiles and applied the research findings to their domestic weapons programs.

However, the value derived from today's missiles lies not in their design for replication, but in the weaknesses that can be exploited to counter them in the future. This may well be the outcome for the two coalition missiles that Damascus transferred to Moscow.

Initially, the missile is placed in a clean room where engineers can study its guidance system and control fins. This allows them to understand the missile's target tracking methods. Any new guidance and flight path correction techniques of the enemy missile will be discovered during this electronic dissection process.

The missile's "brain" is then continuously tested for aiming and trajectory towards the target. Thousands of hours of simulation allow the research team to adjust every parameter, testing every minute detail in the electronics and control software. The British company BAE Systems once tested a missile brain continuously for over seven years.

Antennas can be dissected to identify weaknesses against jamming methods, while engines can help determine the infrared signature of a projectile. Positioning data is also used to design future defense radars.

The captured missiles are also used to assess their electronic countermeasures capabilities. Engineers can shine lasers directly onto the infrared seeker to determine its resistance threshold, thereby developing more effective countermeasures and building a database for more realistic simulation scenarios.

Analyzing the cruise missiles captured by the coalition forces from Syria will help Russia improve its air defense system in Syria, supporting Damascus and other countries in developing countermeasures against large-scale cruise missile attacks by the US and its allies in the future, analyst Joe Pappalardo noted.