Ukraine

"The vast majority [of missiles] were intercepted by tactical aviation pilots [on the night of December 23rd]. It was F-16 pilots who joined in repelling this cruise missile strike today. I want to emphasize that missiles, both air-to-air and those that our air defense systems use, are pretty scarce for us right now. Everyone emphasizes this—pilots say so in their interviews, and so does the top military leadership. The President of Ukraine, in particular, emphasized to partners the need (he spoke about this just recently) to strengthen air defense with both complexes and missiles. This is because some complexes are essentially without them. And so, thanks to the fact that missiles, both for aircraft and ground-based systems, are not arriving in the quantities we would like, of course, but are arriving nonetheless, we are able to repel such attacks today," Ihnat said.

According to the spokesman, in addition to F-16s, Mirage, MiG-29, Su-27, interceptor drones, and mobile fire groups also repelled air strikes.

...so basically Russia is putting on a massive training program for Ukrainian F-16 pilots? Not a training program in terms of the stakes, they are tragically real but in terms of what literally happens when you subject pilots to live training this consistently is inevitably they become progressively more dangerous pilots to fight against as they gain experience without being shot down (not to mention experience gained from support personnel as well).

This is just basic logic right? The only way to get equivalent training would be to build all of those target drones yourself and fly them in massive geographically extended training exercises with live munitions and that would be extremely expensive... The way I see it, this is the precise opposite of sustainable for Russia given Ukraine is so aggressively trying to grow its fighter-bomber capability. Easy for me to say not being a target of those Russian flying bombs, but I am making a point about power here not minimizing the consequences.