The first months of 2026 have been nothing short of disastrous for Russia’s air defense.
The idea that even when an air defense asset is actually replaced by russia after it was destroyed that russia mans the replacement with a trained crew is nearly unbelievable to me. Of course they aren't trained, russia is bullshitting this all, there is not a snowball's chance in hell russian air defense training and production is keeping up with these losses.
I don't think russia's air defense capability will ever really recover at this rate, they have lost a massive amount of institutional knowledge from lazy and stupid deployment strategies and now they are left with machines that requite a college degree to figure out being manned by people who have NO IDEA what they are doing.
The collapse of russia's air defense will be studied by military historians long into the future as an example of why bullshitting air defense is not a viable strategy.
This many years in, I’m sure the replacement crews are as well trained as the crews they replaced on the equipment they couldn’t protect.
I am sure there exists very highly trained russian air defense crews, I just think russia's whole air defense strategy relies on them being technically real cryptids that one could encounter but probably won't in a sea of barely trained crews on questionably working equipment.