Sure:
[Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the outgoing head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command,] agrees Moscow has taken full advantage of the situation in Syria to grow and train its military.
“It’s pretty clear to me the Russians have leveraged Syria as an opportunity to look at their capabilities and get a sense of where they’re at,” he said. “Not only from the weapon system perspective, but also with their people, rotating their forces in and out of there, frankly to get some combat time on them.
“And take not only some of those folks that may be operating on the ground, but also their aviators, and get some combat time on them to deliver weapons, or frankly to see what we were doing up there. So I think we need to be cognizant of that as a nation and recognize that they’ve leveraged that.” [emphasis added]
I mentioned exactly this not long ago:
Clearly, Russia was rotating officers through Syria to get some real world experience, which they know is a major American military advantage.
I imagine we learned more about Russia than Russia learned about us in Syria, because Russia has had ample opportunities to watch us over the decades, over Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria.
Although the chance for the Russians to watch the F-22 in action was a new opportunity.
