[Kapitan]

With regards to knowing what weaponry the Ukrainians can field, this is a good reason why I have my doubts as to how effective Ukraine receiving MiG- 29 fighters would have been. If Russia maintains records and I'm sure they do, they would know the block and lot number of the MiG-29's Poland has in their possession. With that knowledge, Russia would know how those MiG's were built including the algorithms on which their radar's and fire control suites were based and operating. Russia could jam those radars and those aircraft would be essentially flying and fighting blind. The Ukrainians have been doing fine with drones and anti aircraft and anti tank missiles. What they really need are cruise missiles

While the Russian air force will know what the capability and flight envelope of the Mig 29 will be and know the block numbers etc, they cant account for the upgrades put into them by the west.

A lot of Poland's Mig 29s came from Germany, these have had avionics upgrades as well as system and engine upgrades, they very likely use different radars and sensors to the original soviet fit.
The US did a lot of upgrading of soviet equipment when former Warsaw pact countries joined NATO probably the best example was the Bulgarian Mig 21s

As for cruise missiles you would need land launched cruise missiles and realistically the only ones that can offer that is the US with the land launched tomahawk.
It would be good but it might cause Russia to go potty and target NATO countries and right now with the way Putin is in his alleged ill health do we tempt it, if it is true he is dying then do we give the man who has absolutely nothing to loose that carrot?

Again, you are very right. Traditionally, cruisers provide air support defenses within battle groups but their respective weaponry has a number of applications and the cruisers themselves can perform a number of roles

Cruisers do perform many roles, predominantly AAW but they have command and control functions the Slava was no exception, like the US cruisers they also have a ASUW ASW capability too.

Personally I do think the cruiser is at the end of its life, if you look at the modern DDGs they can do nearly everything a cruiser can do so is it worth the expense of having 2 classes of ships doing the same thing.

I noticed you mentioned a " professional " army. A professional fighting force doesn't rape, murder and pillage. I know you and I'm sure everyone else feels the same way. However, the actions taken by Russian forces may well have been sanctioned by Russia itself. This may explain why there is such dissent within the rank and file members of the Russian military forces.

Indeed which is why i put the "" around Professional with the laughing emoji because quite frankly no professional army does this sort of thing.
Unfortunately the USA and UK have engaged in some undesirable practices as well but id say they are isolated incidents and absolutely no where near the level of what were seeing.

They don't call the Russian red army the Romping Stomping red army for nothing

The U.S refers to that as phased array systems with interlocking components. Your information as usual has been informative and concise. Great breakdowns.

Yep phased array layered air and surface defense, it is incredibly effective, the only warship that currently can beat the US Aegis systems are the type 45 DDG sampson S1850 combo when it comes to detection range and tracking, problem is we don't have the missiles for the range so thats where the US has the UK.