Numbers in this table probably do not accurately reflect combat attrition sustained during the ongoing civil war. By 2016 IISS was rather optimistic as to the remaining inventory, while FlightGlobal tended towards pessimism, and provided no totals on helicopters.

The US strike on a Syrian air base 07 April 2017 destroyed a fifth of President Bashar al-Assad's working warplanes, Pentagon chief James Mattis said 10 April 2017. "The assessment of the Department of Defense is that the strike resulted in the damage or destruction of fuel and ammunition sites, air defense capabilities, and 20 percent of Syria's operational aircraft," Mattis said in a statement. The US military's Central Command spokesman Colonel John Thomas said the US strike at Shayrat airfield near Homs in central Syria had destroyed more than 20 Syrian jets. A Russian defence ministry spokesman said only six MiG-23s, plus a number of buildings, were destroyed and that only 23 of the missiles had reached Shayrat.

Do the math. One said 20 aircraft, the other said 20 percent, converging on 100 aircraft. This numbers are presumably with reference to fixed-wing combat aircraft, the primary component of the Syrian Air Force. Previous Western open source estimates had placed the Syria's total inventory of fixed-wing combat aircraft in the ballpark of roughly 200 to 275 aircraft. Evidently, attrition due to combat losses and lack of maintenance and spare parts had been significantly worse than open source estimates.