The article that I referenced suspected that we were not keeping up with their upgraded flares, but instead designed our missiles too narrowly, so as to only defeat our flares.
Hopefully we did learn something and hopefully the Neocons will permit us to spend the money needed to fix that issue, before they start WW3.
I had read both that article and other sources that indicated the same thing. We do not know if that is the truth or useful misinformation. Current Russian flares are hard to come by -- they do not sell them to us for obvious reasons.
Maybe we want the Russians to THINK their flares are very, very good, when the real problem was somewhere else. We don't even know for sure that two missiles were required. It could have been one, or it could have been six.
Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know.