Before the civil war, the Syrian arsenal was built to combat the Israeli army which enjoyed air superiority, and thus did not have much in the way of close air support (e.g., air to ground bombs and missiles), but instead predominantly had ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles to harass and delay the Israeli air force.[24] The Syrian military thus soon ran out of precision weapons, had trouble obtaining more and needed a cheap and readily available supply of air to ground weapons.[24] The use of barrel bombs in the Syrian Civil War was first identified in August 2012, in particular through the video forensic work of Eliot Higgins (Brown Moses)[2][25] and Richard Lloyd.[4] Their existence was initially denied by a Russian military expert until a video surfaced in October 2012 from inside a moving helicopter showing a barrel bomb being lit and dropped onto a target by Syrian Air Force personnel.[26][27][28] The person who allegedly came up with the scheme to load barrels with explosives, nails, and metal fragments is Suheil al-Hassan, or "The Tiger", an Alawite Colonel.[29]