Out in the wild east where Assad's presence appears to be thin on the ground, Syrian rebels are working grabbing on one of those air bases:
Free Syrian Army rebels have been laying siege to Hamadan airport in the city of Albu Kamal on the country's eastern frontier in Deir al-Zor province for the past three days.
Struggling to put down a 17-month-old uprising against his rule, President Bashar al-Assad has been increasingly relying on aircraft to attack the rebels, who are comparatively lightly armed with machineguns and rockets.
The opposition said the airport, where dozens of soldiers are still holding out, has been used by helicopters to launch bombing runs against rebel strongholds.
Aircraft have to take off from somewhere. And they have to land sometime.
UPDATE: The rebels are working on exactly that strategy, it seems:
Syria's rebels have turned to a new tactic of attacking bases, trying to stop the jets and attack helicopters that have wreaked devastation on their fighters and civilians in the battleground city of Aleppo and the nearby countryside.
The article speaks of an attack by "hundreds" of rebels against the Kuwiras base. If true, that's a big attack. In Iraq, we atomized the enemy and they had trouble operating at above platoon level. And mostly they tried to use IEDs and rockets rather than attacking us directly.
