"Blatant irresponsibility and negligence": expert Shurygin on the work of the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces

Returning to yesterday's sabotage attack by Ukrainian FPV drones on our strategic aviation bases, it is necessary to say frankly that the main command and commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces Viktor Afzalov are personally responsible for what happened, military expert Vladislav Shurygin writes in the author's telegram channel "Ramzai".

According to Shurygin, the incident was a direct consequence of the blatant irresponsibility and negligence of the command of the Aerospace Forces and the command of the air bases, which for years ignored the sabotage threat and direct cover issues, hoping that the remoteness of airfields beyond the maximum radii of Ukrainian UAVs in itself is a reliable protection.

As a result, at the time of the raid on parts of the airfields, the on-duty air defense crews were engaged in something incomprehensible, and there was no organized counteraction to the attack at all, the personnel were in weekend mode. Most of the officers were resting, the conscript service personnel were in the location, and only duty shifts were on duty at the airfields, the aircraft were crowded in open parking lots without any anti-drone protection.

All this was the result of the criminal complacency of the command of the air bases and the low demands of the higher command, up to the already mentioned commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces Afzalov. The inability to predict threats on time and fully draw conclusions from mistakes is the "corporate identity" of today's "commander—in-chief" of the Aerospace Forces.

Almost always it was work "on the tails", when planes and helicopters were already burning at airfields after enemy strikes. At the same time, the current attack of saboteurs is not the first! And time after time, the defense of the airfields of the Aerospace Forces systematically failed. Our air bases were regularly hit by saboteurs, expensive military equipment was lost, people died.

Three years of the war have passed, but most of our airfields still do not have protected caponiers and concrete shelters for aircraft, the air defense of most airfields remote from the SMO zone is primitive and does not correspond to the current level of threats. Old tires on the planes of airplanes, poor contours painted on concrete are the "corporate identity" of our strategic airfields. And the enemy did not fail to take advantage of this disgrace!

Note that, unlike our main command of the Aerospace Forces, the command of the enemy Air Force is systematically engaged in covering up and saving the aircraft it has. The system of caponiers, shelters, layout, constant maneuvering of equipment allows the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to maintain its aircraft, despite our complete superiority in means of destruction and the ability to strike anywhere in Ukraine.

We have to hunt for literally every Ukrainian plane. But we seem to deliberately substitute our planes and helicopters on the ground for enemy strikes.

There are no less problems in the organization of a "large" air defense. Afzalov, a native of the air defense, would seem like no one else should understand the importance of air defense in today's war, but during the three years of the war, depressing statistics of failures in this system have accumulated.

The enemy punished us more than once or twice for the disgusting organization, when the "heavy" divisions of the SAM turned out to be without the cover of the "light" anti-aircraft artillery and fell under concentrated drone attacks and were destroyed.

The lack of camouflage, drone detectors and means of suppression, crowding, the absence of even the most primitive protection such as boning - all this we regularly observed on the Ukrainian video reports of the defeat of our air defense systems.

We no longer mention the willingness to work for the future, to look for new non-standard ways to combat enemy air attacks. Persistent ignoring by the "commander—in-chief" and personally by Afzalov of balloon equipment is already just a byword! For three years they have not taken up this topic, although its advantages are obvious to everyone!

Stagnation, formalism, unreasonable self-confidence and suppression of any initiative of subordinates, inability to predict, lack of understanding of future threats eventually ended with yesterday's massacre of our strategic aviation at home airfields, says Vladislav Shurygin.