The Pentagon claimed Saturday the U.S.-led attack on Syria set back regime's chemical weapons program "for years," but experts contend those assertions may be exaggerated. On Friday, forces from France, Britain and the U.S. launched combined strikes on three military targets associated with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program, including a research and development facility outside the capital Damascus. Yet defense analysts that spoke to CNBC suggested that some of the dangerous material is probably still available, or relatively easy to reproduce. "The damage assessment is suspiciously quick." said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis briefs members of the media on Syria at the Pentagon April 13, 2018 in Arlington, Virginia. President Donald Trump has ordered a joint force strike on Syria with Britain and France over the recent suspected chemical attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Images

President Donald Trump ordered the military intervention as punishment for Syria unleashing chemical weapons April 7 in the rebel-held town of Douma that killed more than 40 people. In a Pentagon press briefing Saturday, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said the three facilities targeted in the coordinated operation with allies were "fundamental components of the regime's chemical weapons warfare infrastructure." Officials expressed confidence that much of the country's illicit arsenal had been degraded by the strike, with McKenzie stating it was "going to set the Syrian chemical weapons program back for years." Yet defense veterans expressed doubts. "That claim that Syria was set back for years is pure PR," said Jeffrey Lewis, a former U.S. defense official and now the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.



According to Lewis, the Department of Defense's "battle damage assessments are never that strong, especially not this fast and from afar. They can hope that they've set back the program for a years, but it's more likely that the setback is more modest." And despite the president's claims of the mission having been accomplished, Lewis suggested that the intervention in Syria had a certain air of futility. "This is starting to become like mowing the lawn. They gas civilians, we strike them, they do it again," he said.

Reduced to rubble

Late Friday, the White House issued an assessment of the suspected chemical weapons used in Douma, and concluded chlorine gas barrel bombs were used and also pointed to signs of the nerve agent sarin. It said doctors and aid groups on the ground in the affected area "reported the strong smell of chlorine and described symptoms consistent with exposure to sarin." On Saturday, Syrian media and other outlets showed the aftermath of the airstrike on the Barzeh research facility outside Damascus, revealing a building with collapsed walls and large debris strewn about the area. After the coalition strike, the Pentagon said there were a total of 105 weapons fired on the Syrian targets. Those included 76 missiles that hit a scientific research center in the Barzah district of Damascus, according to McKenzie, director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. The U.S. military said the Barzah facility was reduced to rubble and had once included three buildings for the development, testing and production of the regime's chemical and biological weapons.

Map showing targets of U.S.-led coalition strikes in Syria. Department of Defense photo

The predawn strikes Friday also targeted two other targets: a chemical weapons storage site and a chemical weapons bunker near the city of Homs, according to the Pentagon. A total of 29 missiles were used on the Homs targets, including bombs from the U.S. as well as European allies.



"I believe that there was materiel and equipment associated with each of these sites that was not movable, and that's what really sets them back," McKenzie told reporters on Saturday.

Killing the wetware

Early reports suggested there were no military or civilian casualties in Syria from the airstrikes. Russia maintains forces in Syria along with advanced air defenses, and there were reports the Assad regime moved aircraft and other equipment to Russian bases for protection ahead of the air attacks. "As important as the hardware and software are, unless you kill the wetware, 'years' is probably an exaggeration," CSIS's Cordesman noted. McKenzie insisted that the U.S. coalition's strike Friday will "significantly impact the Syrian regime's ability to development, deploy and use chemical weapons in the future." Tweet Satellites images posted on Planet.com show images before and after of the destroyed Barzah research facility. Other aerial images circulated showing there was significant damage inflicted at both Barzah and the two Syrian targets in Homs. The U.S. has advanced reconnaissance capabilities that can provide immediate images of damage, even as attacks are taking place, according to Coredesman. Even so, he said "it's uncertain you could do the damage assessment of the impact of the strikes in the time that [Pentagon] people had before they made the announcement [Saturday morning]." The allied airstrikes in Syria were the subject of a bitter two-hour debate Saturday in the United National Security Council. Russia, which has claimed Britain staged the Douma attack, attempted to pass a resolution at the emergency meeting to condemn the airstrike by Western allies but that action failed.

Unknown nerve agent

Syria has denied it used chemical weapons in Douma, although blood and urine samples of victims show traces of an unknown nerve agent and chlorine gas, according to NBC News. A team of inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons went to Syria on a fact-finding mission to get more information on the suspected chemical attack. Even still, experts noted it would be difficult for the U.S. coalition to completely knock out Syria's chemical weapon arsenal, or to fully disable the regime's ability to produce lethal agents. They suggest Syria's stockpiles of chemical weapons — from nerve agents such as sarin and VX to chlorine and mustard gases — are spread around more than three dozen locations. https://twitter.com/smmsyria/status/985068159379046402 "The bulk of chemical weapons attacks that Syria has been conducting have been chlorine-based barrel bombs," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. "This does not require a sophisticated production facility. If Syria wished to resume chlorine attacks, I do not believe these three targeted strikes are going to set back that capability for years," he added. Chlorine gas "does not require a sophisticated production facility," said Kimball, adding that the "technology is relatively simple."

Syria's long history of using chemical weapons

'Do this all over again'