— What are the most important lessons our military forces learned in Syria?
President Putin: Those aren't lessons but rather experience... the highly valuable experience I mentioned earlier, which includes the use of armed forces and application of the latest weapon systems. Please note that when I'm talking about the use of the latest weapon systems, I'm not calling Syria a testing ground for Russian weapons. But we do employ our new weapons there. And it has helped us improve our strike systems, including our missiles.
Mere possession of a weapon is different than seeing it in action as part of a combat operation. I've mentioned this before, but let me repeat that when we first started using our modern weapon systems, including the missiles, our defense plants sent entire teams to Syria, where they configured the weapons on site. It was extremely important to us because we needed to know what we could expect from employing our arms in a combat operation. That was my first point. My second point is about our commanders. A lot of our officers and generals took part in the Syrian operation. Now they know what armed conflicts in the modern world are like, how important communication, intelligence, and cooperation between various military units are, and how critical it is to effectively coordinate the actions of space forces, aircraft, the army, and special operation forces.
The combination of those experiences has helped us make an important step towards improving our weapon systems.
