Mike Baker

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We're learning more about just how exposed Venezuela's airspace was when U.S.

helicopters swept into Caracas to capture Nicolas Maduro.

The picture that's emerging is the regime's Russian-made air defenses weren't just overwhelmed, they were barely online to begin with.

According to four current and former U.S.

officials, the Russian S-300 and BUKM-2, known as the Bukom systems, that Venezuelan leaders spent years touting as a shield against American intervention, were not fully connected to radar and in some cases had never been deployed at all when Operation Absolute Resolve began.

A report by the New York Times that reviewed satellite imagery and videos and social media footage reveals critical BUK components sitting in storage rather than positioned for combat, the result of a military unprepared for the fight that it long claimed to expect.

In short, incompetence and decay played an important role in the operation.

And this was a failure years in the making.

Venezuela's air defense network existed more on paper than reality.

As former CIA station chief Rick De La Torre, a recent guest, by the way, on the PDB Situation Report, told the New York Times, quote, after years of corruption, poor logistics, sanctions, all those things would have certainly degraded the readiness of Venezuela's air defense systems, end quote.

U.S.

officials say the breakdown went well beyond faulty equipment.

Even Venezuelan troops were not properly dispersed, detection radar was not fully activated, and basic readiness measures were absent, a chain of errors that allowed American forces to operate over Caracas with minimal resistance.

And it's not just a failure for Venezuela.

This collapse also reflects poorly on Russia.

Russian technicians were responsible for sustaining the systems, but that support appears to have faded as Moscow diverted attention and resources, of course, to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

To understand how far things fell off, it's worth going back to the beginning.