What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

The US was shouting from the rooftops that they expected an attack, in a manner putting real credibility at risk. While laypeople, & left footsoldiers, may have completely discounted the possibility, Germany & others in NATO are close enough allies they'd have seen more of the tangible reasons why the US was saying that.

Note that feigned surprise can also be a conscious tactic, to help shepherd-along any alliance stragglers, or domestic opinion. Or, excuse inaction. "No one could have known", say the official mouthpieces for those who ignored the alarms from those who did know. "We are blameless!"

Further, if there was actual confidence in policymakers that an attack was unlikely, & that Putin was deterrable, then pre-announcing the severity of the response would have been very cheap! You won't have to do it, in the expected case. And pre-announcing makes the expected case even more likely.

The risk of coordinating with a leaky/corrupt regime isn't necessarily disqualifyng. There may be portions of the Ukraine government/military in which there was very high trust - such as close contacts in special forces, & those who have repeatedly proven themselves in the last ~8y of lower-grade hostilities. Or, people whose comms have been completely pierced – so NATO knows exactly how much corruption, or mixed-loyalties, they'll express.

Weaponry could also have been pre-positioned just outside Ukraine, or kept in the custody/knowledge of trusted contractors or deniably pre-positioned special forces. I hope you don't think Russians, like the saboteur groups repeatedly confronted in Ukrainian cities, are the only forces who can pretend to be someone else when it suits them!

As another example, no one outside of the home airbase support teams know who's really flying a fighter jet, unless enemies shoot it down & recover the pilot. I hope Ukraine has some world-class fighter pilots! But with lives and practically priceless (in the short term) military hardware at stake, if an even 10% better pilot is ready & willing from an allied counry, I suspect Ukraine can grant them a uniform & citizenship instantly. (It's been surprising how many NATO countries have said it's OK for their private citizens to go fight in Ukraine.)

This word was new to me, but looking it up I wanted to say "Yes" but have since changed to "no". Definition:

Suzerainty (American accent: soo-zer-en-tee) happens when a country X has its own government but cannot act independently because of a more powerful country Y. This more powerful country Y is called the suzerain and can usually control the foreign relations of X (how X interacts with other countries).

When it comes to foreign policy in the US, it is mostly handled at the federal level. States are more likely to strike deals with foreign companies than foreign governments. OTOH the federal government is not equivalent to a distinct country and is made up of representatives from the states.

One thing I don't like about the US system is that all our representatives spend a huge amount of time in Washington D.C., away from the people they "represent". And then the lobbyists have a single destination to convince a lot of people to support their stuff. It might be better if they all stayed in their home states and handled congressing electronically on zoom or something.

maybe the plan is: d) cut ukraine in half, let a weaker and beaten 'neutral' western Ukraine be the new NATO buffer, and eastern Ukraine is annexed?