As experts around the world continue to wonder why Russia failed to seize air supremacy over Ukraine almost two weeks after the fighting started, stories, images, and videos of Russian planes shot down by the Ukrainian military continue to surface. Regardless of the reasons for the failure, the country’s failure to do so has allowed Ukraine to score important tactical and political victories over the past two weeks.
Stories abound of small Ukrainian drones destroying Russian armored vehicles in a 40-kilometer traffic jam of Russian vehicles bound for Kyiv. Many media outlets, including Task & Purpose, wrote about how Russia failed to achieve air supremacy, a term meaning that the enemy air force cannot resist despite the fact that the Russian air force is 15 times surpassed the Ukrainians.
Indeed, the dangerous combination of doctrine, training, and equipment failure, is partly responsible for the heavy losses that the VKS, which means the Russian Air Force, the Russian Air Force, suffered in the Ukrainian-Russian war. On paper, Russian aviation outnumbers Ukraine by more than 20 to 1, and while no one expected Russia to send all of its fighter jets to Ukraine, Russia’s inability to dominate the skies despite such a massive outnumber of S-400 Triumph air defense systems.
As the Ukraine-Russia war drags on, military aviation experts are noticing that anti-aircraft missiles like the Stinger and Igla are not the only threats Russian pilots face in the skies over Ukraine. In fact, a dangerous combination of doctrine, training, and equipment is partly to blame for the heavy losses the VKS, the acronym for Russia’s air force, have sustained in the three-week-old war.
“Russia has not modified its ground-attack tactics and is conducting many of its attacks at low altitude, which puts Russian planes in the lethal envelope” of shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems (MANPADs), wrote the Atlantic Council in an assessment on Wednesday, the same day low-flying Russian air tactics were covered by Forbes. “Reporting by taskandpurpose.com”
After the outbreak of the war on February 24, analysts expected that the Russian military would immediately try to destroy Ukrainian aviation and its air defenses. Many observers expected Russian bombers to disable Ukrainian radar installations and anti-aircraft missile batteries, leaving air superiority fighters such as the Su-35 to attack Ukrainian aircraft while Russia deployed its own air defense systems to Ukraine. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US intelligence predicted a likely violent attack by Moscow that would quickly mobilize the massive Russian air force to dominate the skies over Ukraine.
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US intelligence had predicted a likely blistering assault by Moscow that would quickly mobilize the vast Russian air power that its military assembled in order to dominate Ukraine’s skies.
But the first six days have confounded those expectations and instead seen Moscow act far more delicately with its airpower, so much so that US officials can’t exactly explain what’s driving Russia’s apparent risk-averse behavior. “Reporting by ndtv.com“
When Russia first invaded Ukraine in late February, many experts predicted that the huge Russian army would quickly outnumber and defeat the defending forces. The numbers between the two adversaries – Russia (300 theater fighters) and Ukraine (about 98) – simply did not match. Most analysts expected Russian aviation to quickly eliminate Ukrainian aviation. On the tenth day of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the command of the Ukrainian Air Force announced that it had managed to destroy even more Russian military equipment.
Many military analysts thought Russia would quickly gain air superiority during a Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Russian aerospace forces played a little role as ground forces struggled to capture major cities ahead of loyal Ukrainian fighters. One of the biggest surprises in the initial phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the inability of the fighter and fighter-bomber fleets of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) to establish air superiority or deploy significant combat power to support Russian ground forces.
Vladimir Putin has shown a weakness in his airforce to the world. The Ukrainians have shown they are one of the countries that will be known as the Country that withstood the Russian army and airforce. They have shown their will to fight as an American would. When will the US stand up against Putin very strongly? I believe a political drive is responsible for the call for help from President Zelenskyy. What’s amazing is the way they were able to stop Russia from achieving the air superiority.
The Sukhoi Su-34 was supposed to change the Russian air force. The twin-engine, twin-seat, supersonic fighter-bomber—a highly-evolved variant of the Su-27 air-superiority fighter—promised to usher in a new era of high-tech, precision bombing. Instead what it ushered in is a clear ass whipping from the Ukrainian military and its citizens.
Instead, the Su-34s have flown into Ukraine lugging the same old dumb bombs. A lack of precision-guided munitions—not to mention Russian doctrine that conceives of aircraft essentially as flying artillery—forces the $50-million warplanes to fly low through the thickest Ukrainian air defenses in order to have any chance of delivering their bombs with any degree of accuracy. “Reporting by “msn.com“
God Bless America, God Bless the Veterans
Michael @ truthseekingtruth.com
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For generations we have overrated the Russian equipment and tactics. We assign their levels to ours, which has always been incorrect. Safer, perhaps, by assuming they are better than they are, but incorrect, nonetheless
Exactly the point. Why should the US and its allies shutter at Putin’s threat of a nuclear war? He isn’t stupid(well not as much) to start a nuclear war. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Sorry, I don’t see that the military’s ineptitude is reason to doubt the devastating power of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
The military may be a paper tiger but 3,000 nuclear bombs is still something to be feared.
Something else to consider that I don’t hear much from the “analysts” is that Russia is a huge country to have to defend, so all that supposedly great and superior weaponry, that is not so great and superior, has to be spread out to guard an expanse of a border, which includes a lot of China, a supposed ally.
There is no way Russia would leave the bulk of its country open to invasion, to invade Ukraine. At least a sane analyst might include that in their summary.
That could help explain why Putin put nuclear deterrents on the table. Because he knows he is weaker than he boasts.
You make a very good point, Mark. I would have to say Putin would move to nuclear arms if he and his country were to be attacked. Other than that, I don’t believe he would use nuclear warfare just to have Ukraine. By doing so he would lose more than just Ukraine. Putin not only hates the US, he fears the US. Thanks for taking the time to give your point of view.
That’s the problem with Russia, and being attacked. NATO has never attacked Russia, but Russia maintains that NATO is their greatest threat. NATO’s charter was to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking the alliance, not the other way around, like Russian paranoia, or whatever you can call it dictates.
I think they would use whatever they had if attacked. I just think China might be their aggressor, in the end, if China survives as a world power.
Bear in mind, Russkie doctrine has always tended toward “you’re either attacking, preparing to attack, or BEING attacked.” Their idea of “buffer states” is akin to if we insisted on having puppet governments running Canada and Mexico for our benefit at the expense of the local populace.