Omar al-Hasan, Baladi News
The fall of the Artillery College in Aleppo was considered a severe blow to the regime that turned it from the offensive position in besieging Aleppo to the defensive one on the brink of being besieged. The thing that was considered as a shock to the regime as a whole and its military system along with its supporting militias, as they helped the regime in besieging Aleppo and shared the happiness of the first victory, but later they experienced the bitterness of the defeat and losses suffered by regime forces.
Sudden Shift
The swift change of the field situation in Aleppo, that can even be described as shocking, was very surprising to the regime forces because it came when they had full confidence that they are about to control Aleppo and had already started planning to the stage beyond Aleppo. This attack came to break the siege changing the balances of power and threatening to keep on till the liberation of the full city of Aleppo. This battle is actually a real threat to the regime's presence in the northern part of Syria and even its own existence and ability to continue the fight in case it lost Aleppo.
Unexpected Attack
The power used by Jaish al-Fatah while attacking the Artillery College , whether the arm or human power, is actually insufficient to control the College or break the siege, but the sophisticated tactics used by Jaish al-Fatah gave it the ability to make a real change in the balances of power in the city.
One of the most important thoughts in the latest battle of Aleppo is that the regime didn't expect the attack to be on the Artillery compound as it is the strongest stronghold of the regime in Aleppo; it rather expected it to aim at restoring al-Castello road and opening it before civilians, which made the blow double on both military and psychological levels.
Total Collapse
What happened at the Artillery College is not a real destruction operation to the regime forces in it as much as it is a state of collapse and dispersion to the defense forces that fled after being inflicted with huge losses and losing control over the College , not to mention the fleeing of regime officers leaving their soldiers with no command and the successful breaking operation on more than one axis.
Great amount of material were left in the open air which indicate that they were ready to use, but were not used due to the state of fleeing by thugs, regime forces and militias to the extent that made the regime execute a number of them in order to force the others to fight. The regime even abandoned the civilians in the regions that it used to control who suddenly turned from pro-regime members to be targets for the warplanes of Assad and Russia.
Will the Scenario of the "Artillery College " be Repeated?
What is special about the fall of the Artillery College during the first stage of the attack is the destruction of the most important center of power in the city which made it easier to control the rest of the regions and points in it, especially after the arm support which this Artillery used to supply the regime with is gone. This means that regime forces are now suffering a serious problem with having no sufficient arm source to repel the storming of Jaish al-Fatah in case the latter decided to repeat the attack on the Faculty of Military Engineering using the same method. This will force the regime to depend more on the Russian warplanes along with its own which will make controlling the Faculty followed by the fall of the western neighborhoods of Aleppo indisputable if those warplanes were properly distracted using different methods of camouflage, especially burning tyres.
Another helping factor is the miserable morale of regime forces and its supporters who were fleeing Aleppo towards other regime-held areas on a large scale, not to mention the state of mutual accusations of betrayal and fleeing the battle between regime forces and the members of different Shiite militias.
This all means that a new collapse among regime forces similar to the scenario of the Artillery College is strongly expected; it is rather the closest possibility to happen in the Military Academy and the rest of the regime-held regions in Aleppo, especially with the aforementioned desperate morale of regime members and officers.