The Free Syrian Army (, , FSA) is a group of defected Syrian Armed Forces officers and soldiers, founded during the Syrian Civil War on 29 July 2011 by seven or eight defected Syrian officers. The group defined "all [Syrian] security forces attacking civilians" as their enemies, and said its goal was "to bring down the system" or "to bring this regime down". By January 2016, the FSA consists of "about 27 larger factions, each an average of 1,000 fighters as well as some smaller units or localized militias", with there being "thousands" of the latter kinds of brigades of various sizes.