The last Ukraine war showed once again that the Russian Air Force is still not equal to the west.
They couldn't do an effective SEAD/DEAD against the Ukrainian Air Force, no serious CAS. There is no indication that they are performing CAP duties over Ukraine. They're still trying to do damage with long-range cruise missiles or artillery rockets.
Most importantly, they were not able to set up task packages and carry out a joint operation. Even when our Air Force weakened relatively after the coup attempt, we were able to operate with dozens of planes. The Russian Land Aviators are to be commended. They usually do both airborne personnel transfer and close air support.
The lessons and experience they have learned from Syria come to the fore here. But the Air Force hasn't learned the same lessons. They did not have experience of joint air operations in Syria either. Maybe every Russian pilot flew in Syria for a while, used live ammunition, but did not experience an operation carried out by different air elements at the same time. Of course, this is the situation in the first day or two of what I wrote, we'll see what happens after that.
