Israel needs to take out the S-300 air defense systems
Per the article:
Moscow blamed Israel for the incident and supplied Damascus with the advanced S-300 air defense system — something it had previously refrained from doing following requests from Jerusalem.
The S-300 systems were delivered to Syria last month, but they are not yet believed to be in use, as the Syrian air defense teams still need to be trained to operate them.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018, 2:02 PM
The true threat of S-300s is not that they’re powerful, but that they’re Russian
the Syrian air defense teams still need to be trained to operate them
The only thing they'd managed to shoot down with the older system was that plane full of Russians, and that was clearly done deliberately because Russia and Turkey had reached a deal about the Afrin enclave, and hadn't bothered to consult the Assad fake regime.
They won’t take them out. They will wait until they become operational and learn how they work. Russia has an even newer, S-400 system, and clues to how that may be an improvement will be gleaned by watching how the S-300s operate.
This is especially important as we will want to know how they respond to the new JSF stealth fighters and bombers. Israel has a small squadron of them deployed and in use but so far has held them mostly back probably so as to not give away too many tells too early.