Civilians play a circumscribed role in financial management, but make no contribution to any other aspect of defense affairs and lack the professional training or expertise to do so. Their marginalization is partly a consequence of the premium placed by the ruling political order on controlling the military, which comes at the expense of professionalization. This compounds the adverse effects of the deficit in civilian expertise by worsening gaps in core capacities and operational capabilities of the military. Not all officers are averse to employing civilian expertise, but interactions with civilians remain informal and often consist of the exchange of favors relating to subsidized housing or duty-free imports such as cars, and to fraudulent procurement contracts.

The armed forces display continuing severe shortcomings across the full range of combat performance, equipment, logistics, command and control, and related information and technology requirements, but have not sought or developed civilian professional competence in any of these or other supporting fields. The pervasiveness of informal patronage networks is an additional obstacle.

Russia has sought to improve operational planning and battlefield management by embedding advisors in the armed forces down to battalion level since 2015, but has had limited success. Russia’s effort to foster wider systemic competences such as strategic planning appears to focus on promoting the right commanders to the general staff, but factions within the armed forces and the president’s appointment of officers loyal to him counter these efforts.

Women are permitted to enlist in the armed forces and to enroll in the Al-Assad Military Academy (also known as the Academy of Military Engineering), as well as in a dedicated Military Academy for Girls. Women are not conscripted. They mainly performed medical and administrative roles until 2013, but a significant number of the 8,000–8,500 women in service have been assigned to combat units or pro-government militias to undertake neighborhood protection, checkpoint duties, and a limited number of combat roles since then.

Training and at least some regulations have been adapted to the induction of women, but female personnel have complained of inadequate pay, food, and housing. The Military Service Law of 2003 established equal pay for male and female personnel, and addressed specific needs of female personnel, such as maternity leave. However, the armed forces do not appear to have an official policy or mechanism for dealing with sexual harassment, and the subject remains taboo despite cases being reported.

A call for female enlistment is issued annually, but there is no action plan to ensure active recruitment, nor is there a national gender policy, although some guidelines are in place relating to women in the military. These shortcomings suggest that enlistment of women is used to bolster the secular-nationalist credentials of the ruling political order, rather than to expand the pool of qualified personnel and diversify skills. There is no evidence that foreign providers of military assistance have sought to influence the gender approach of the armed forces.

The military suffers major weakness in its ability to conduct and utilize data-based analysis to inform planning at any level. This is largely because political considerations, rather than professional needs, primarily shape force development (including recruitment), structure, and doctrine. Information about social composition relates to maintaining political control in accordance with informal profiling of communal threat and loyalty, rather than to ensuring broad representation of society and necessary human resources and skills sets.

Neither the military nor other state institutions undertake surveys of public perceptions and attitudes towards it in a regular or intensive way, and one survey appeared on the Ministry of Defense website. This reflected a lack of openness towards releasing data about the military and a lack of cooperation with civilian research organizations to provide data or training in the collection and analysis of relevant data. The Scientific Studies and Research Center is the only body supporting the military in the technological domain, but it mainly focuses on computerizing administration, on specialized activities such as chemical weapons research and production, and on developing information operations when required. Military personnel are not allowed to participate or publish in external scientific or other research forums, further limiting the means of acquiring and incorporating new knowledge.