On Thursday, January 13, a Russian army officer estimated that the Syrian experience of the Russian Air Force had helped modernize the combat experience of Russian fighter jets and strategic bombers.

Russian Strategic Aviation Force Commander Sergei Kobilash stressed that work is constantly being done to improve and develop new technologies and ways to use strategic aviation, taking into account the available opportunities, noting that all specific and future missions will be better, faster and more accurate.

The modernization program, according to the Russian officer, includes many innovations designed to increase the combat capability of the aircraft and the efficiency of use of battle groups in general, in addition to a complete replacement of equipment and systems with newer, advanced weapons using new engines.

In a conversation with the newspaper, Air Force Commander Kobilash said that the landing and operation of the long-range bombers Tu-22M3 at the "Hamaiim" air force base in Syria confirmed the criteria for learning the ability of these aircraft to reach their destinations across the Mediterranean directly from Russian airspace.

He stressed that today Russian planes are flying more and more, performing landing missions at the airports of foreign countries, such as Indonesia, Venezuela, South Africa, Nicaragua and Syria, and long-haul flights are constantly working to expand Russian presence everywhere.

Russia intervened militarily in Syria in 2015, when Syrian regime forces struggled to maintain the lands they controlled in the face of Syrian opposition advance.

Airstrikes and military advisers helped Assad's forces retake more than half of the country, and in doing so, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.