A Russian contingent of 50 planes flew about three times as many sorties in Syria as 180 USAF planes for the same time period and managed to hit seven times as many targets.
And that before you’d look into what targets USAF was hitting (empty huts, camel tents etc).
Russian air force will be just fine.
Prove it.
Worry not, The Russians are building new planes all the time, they are getting training for the coming War with NATO. How many Russian aces are they? Must be a few out there. Is it five kills to reach ace in their air force or ten? When the F-16s arrive, I am sure we will hear more from the Red Airforce.
Probably true, but that was mostly due to will. We were careful to avoid the CIA sponsored Syrian rebels, and we were somewhat annoyed at stopping any of them because our goal was that SOME group of rebels depose Assad. So our heart wasn’t in it.
Russia simply had to say Syrian government or Not Syrian Government and bomb accordingly.
So mission rates in Syria probably had just as much to do with the fact that were were allies with large swaths of the rebel wahabbists.
Yep. The Russians are second only to the US in attack aircraft with over 1500 jets. I doubt they are too stressed.