If you heard about Russian S-300's not working then you missed the biggest part of the story...

Chinese JY-27

I've been monitoring the conversation about how the Syrians are complaining that the Russian anti-air network just isn't working against Israeli strikes.  That's been the main focus of the conversation but in my opinion it misses the big news.  Check this out...

This is not the first speculation about the effectiveness of these air defence systems, as they date back to the Soviet era and were supplied to the then USSR’s Syrian Baathist ally from the 1960s to the 1980s. They don’t bear comparison with more recent systems that Russia has manufactured, such as the S-400.

Radars which do work, however, are reportedly those manufactured and delivered by China in recent years, such as the long-range JY-27 and JYL-1 systems as well as the LLQ120 radar which detects low-altitude targets. These, the Syrian military has said, work successfully in their detection of Israeli missiles and help the success of some Russian air defence missiles. A potential solution, according to Avia.pro, could be to import more Chinese radars to work in conjunction with the Russian missiles.

Story here. 

That's the real news boys and girls.

The Chinese are building radars that are capable of detecting Israeli stealth strike missiles and they're enabling the older Russian anti-air missiles to be more effective in defeating them.

That's huge.

Think about it.  The Chinese are selling anti-air systems like hot cakes.  We've all speculated about how effective they were and many (myself included) concluded that the Russian systems were superior.

Maybe they're not (we need more details on which version of the S-300 is being used by the Syrians before I label the system trash). But we definitely need to look at the Chinese systems in a new light.