Maybe the damage was worse than the 2-3 damaged/destroyed TU-95’s reported. Or more likely, they are dispersing them further away to avoid more losses. Fewer aircraft, longer missions, more hours on the remaining air frames. We wore out a lot of air frames in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we produce fighter/bombers at about 10X the rate of Russia.
Reports that the Tu-95 missiles were all intercepted. But there were Kalibr launches from the Black Sea. First time Kalibrs have been used in months.
Would be interesting to see what the real status of the Russian Air Force is. Joe many MC aircraft they have, what is maintenance status like, hours on airframes and engines, and qualified pilots.
You can keep aircraft flying with half measures for just so long
Between bombing missions, CAP, and losses stress on Russias Air Force would seem high
Add more capable AD and situation could get critical pretty fast. It all happens slowly till it doesn’t comes to mino
Some reports indicated that many pilots were killed, so there could be planes, but no on to fly them.