Early on, a lot of observers predicted that Russia, with it’s vast store of Soviet-era aircraft, would quickly achieve air-superiority over Ukraine. That hasn’t been the case.
This video from the British Imperial War Museum lists some reasons why.
Takeaways:
They failed to hit Ukrainian aircraft on the ground in the opening phases of the war.
A “great deal of mismanagement, kleptocracy, you know, favored projects over some kind of strategic effect.” Note how Putin is always announcing some sort of awesome wonderwaffen while neglecting basic needs like logistics.
“The level of corruption in Russia itself has had an impact on its ability to have a tactical or even strategic effect without support from the air. Russia’s ground forces have been largely unable to mount effective combined arms operations.”
“The key reason for Russia’s inability to effectively use its air force has been its failure to take out Ukraine’s mobile surface to air missile systems. They have been unable to suppress enemy air defenses.”
Ukraine made an early effort to obtain SAM systems from the west.
Both mobile tracked systems like S-300 and MANPADS have been used.
Failure to achieve air superiority has both sides investing in drones.
“What you do is you flood the airspace, almost like a denial of service attack, as we see on the Internet. As you attack a server, for instance, by having so many pings against it, it essentially shuts down the server. And what we see in the case of Russia is that it’s doing the same thing. It’s trying to flood the air defense systems.”
“The relatively low cost of these drones is one of the main reasons for Russia to deploy them, and in such numbers. Each drone reportedly costs around $20,000. And so losing an expensive advance guided missile to these drones is not an ideal strategy for Ukraine.”
One reason not covered: Russia seems to have used up a good portion of it’s high tech weapons in the opening phases of the war, and western sanctions mean that it can’t easily replace them. Sophisticated fighter bombers are a whole lot less effective when they’re reduced to dropping gravity bombs rather than guided munitions.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2022 at 12:56 PM and is filed under Military, video, Waste and Fraud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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11 Responses to “Russia’s Failure To Achieve Air Superiority”
The larger reality is that Russia has neither the manpower (the deathbed demographics… e.g., Russia has a smaller population than the island of Java…), the technical know-how (demographics + brain drain), nor the manufacturing capacity (demographics + brain drain + late soviet-period rot continues) to field a first-tier military. Vlad’s big mistake was trying to actually go to war with that ramshackle wreck and thus demonstrating the reality to the whole world.
[…] Perry, Gaylord’s daughter, then aged 5: “It’s a hard slider”] BattleSwarm: Russia’s Failure To Achieve Air Superiority, also, Is The Iranian Regime Starting To Crack? Behind The Black: The steep interior rim of […]
I’ve been saying for a while, Vlad’s 9MM resignation letter (If the cancer doesn’t catch him first) will be because he exposed the fact that Russia is a Paper Bear. It will be a very long time before anyone takes Russian power/superiority seriously.
The only thing they have left are the stockpiles of Nukes. And that *is* scary.
“Vlad’s big mistake was trying to actually go to war”
Stalin made that mistake in 1939. But then as now Russia enjoyed immense reserves, and the Red Army rallied. I think Putin is counting on another rally now.
My regards to the Knights Templar and the rest of the Crusaders.
This is called “Analysis”. It basically says that, hey, you’d expect the Russians to be flying around pounding ground targets w/ bombs and stuff. But you don’t see that. So why is that?
Were you looking for actual numbers of Russian planes of various types?
Seems like it would be a good time to collect all information on any significant supporters of Putin, all the corrupt rich kleptocrats, and all military leaders and then let them know if any missiles fly or atomic bombs drop they will be targeted until they are dead and their assets used to compensate those harmed.
What evidence Hugh? The fact they can’t stop Ukranian ground forces from kicking their asses for starters. The lack of air superiority is self-evident.
The larger reality is that Russia has neither the manpower (the deathbed demographics… e.g., Russia has a smaller population than the island of Java…), the technical know-how (demographics + brain drain), nor the manufacturing capacity (demographics + brain drain + late soviet-period rot continues) to field a first-tier military. Vlad’s big mistake was trying to actually go to war with that ramshackle wreck and thus demonstrating the reality to the whole world.
[…] Perry, Gaylord’s daughter, then aged 5: “It’s a hard slider”] BattleSwarm: Russia’s Failure To Achieve Air Superiority, also, Is The Iranian Regime Starting To Crack? Behind The Black: The steep interior rim of […]
I’ve been saying for a while, Vlad’s 9MM resignation letter (If the cancer doesn’t catch him first) will be because he exposed the fact that Russia is a Paper Bear. It will be a very long time before anyone takes Russian power/superiority seriously.
The only thing they have left are the stockpiles of Nukes. And that *is* scary.
Curious on what evidence you have that the Russians do not have air superiority?
@HughDePayens: The fact that Russians have not conducted any sorties over Ukrainian airspace since March is the definition contested airspace.
“Vlad’s big mistake was trying to actually go to war”
Stalin made that mistake in 1939. But then as now Russia enjoyed immense reserves, and the Red Army rallied. I think Putin is counting on another rally now.
HughP —
My regards to the Knights Templar and the rest of the Crusaders.
This is called “Analysis”. It basically says that, hey, you’d expect the Russians to be flying around pounding ground targets w/ bombs and stuff. But you don’t see that. So why is that?
Were you looking for actual numbers of Russian planes of various types?
Seems like it would be a good time to collect all information on any significant supporters of Putin, all the corrupt rich kleptocrats, and all military leaders and then let them know if any missiles fly or atomic bombs drop they will be targeted until they are dead and their assets used to compensate those harmed.
What evidence Hugh? The fact they can’t stop Ukranian ground forces from kicking their asses for starters. The lack of air superiority is self-evident.
So this analysis is evidence free…sweet. Probably why we get our asses kicked so often by goat herders.
Ah, DePayens, you haven’t kept up. The list consists of things anyone paying attention has seen.