Russia’s military is larger and stronger than before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the commander of the US Air Force in Europe and Africa warned on Tuesday.

“Russia is getting bigger and better than before. … It’s even bigger than it was at the beginning (of the invasion),” Air Force Gen. James Hecker told reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber ​​​​Conference.

The improvements come despite the heavy losses Ukraine has inflicted. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin estimates that more than 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since 2022.

“The casualty numbers are horrifying,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told reporters Tuesday in response to a question from VOA.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an increase in the Russian army by 180,000 active soldiers to a total of 1.5 million. This would make Russia’s army the second largest in the world after China’s.

“Russia will keep us busy for a long time, no matter how things turn out,” said Hecker.

However, William Pomeranz, a senior scholar at the Kennan Institute, told VOA: “This move suggests that Vladimir Putin is losing the war.”

“This is an open signal from Vladimir Putin that his army and military are in trouble and do not have the resources to keep troops in the field,” Pomeranz said.

Despite Russian improvements on the battlefield, Ukraine continues to pose a threat to Russia’s armaments. Since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, the country has shot down more than 100 Russian aircraft. According to General Hecker, that’s dozens more aircraft than Russia was able to shoot down on the Ukrainian side.

“So we’re seeing the planes stay on their side of the line, so to speak. And when that happens, we have a war like the one we’re having today, with enormous losses, cities destroyed and many civilian casualties,” he said.

To gain even the slightest advantage in a war where no clear side dominates the skies, Ukraine is resorting to low-cost solutions that are also attractive to the US military.

“We have to be on the right side of the cost curve. Being able to shoot down $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 disposable UAVs (drones) with $1 million missiles is something we simply cannot afford in the long term,” the general told reporters.

General Chance Saltzman, chief of the U.S. Space Force, announced Tuesday that a Space Force pilot program using commercial satellite imagery and analytics to better understand military command situations has proven to be very cost-effective compared to traditional intelligence, surveillance and intelligence gathering methods using expensive and limited U.S. MQ-9 drones.

AFRICOM was able to use the $40 million tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking program to monitor the situation during the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from two air bases in Niger in July and August. The downside, however, was that data did not reach the security team in real time, but took one to four hours.

“Not as good as real time, right? With MQ-9 it would be possible, but it’s better than nothing, right?” said Hecker.

Hecker also said the U.S. was looking for more cost-effective methods to detect threats around bases, including methods such as Ukraine’s Sky Fortress system, which uses thousands of inexpensive sensors to detect aerial threats. He said the technology has already been tested in Romania and other countries.