2y ago

Russia's air force is barely able to leave its own airspace because Ukraine's defenses are so strong, UK intel says

www.businessinsider.com

While Russian pilots were managing to support land operations in the south of Ukraine, they were doing so "without decisive operational effect," the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence update on Monday.

To compensate, Russia was sending adapted free-fall bombs into Ukrainian territory. However, these had "yet to demonstrate consistent accuracy," it added.

"Over the summer, Russian tactical combat aircraft have typically carried out over 100 sorties a day, but these are almost always restricted to operating over Russian-controlled territory due to the threat from Ukrainian air defenses," the update said.

...

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been able to gain air superiority in the war so far despite Russia's vastly larger air force. But a military expert previously told Insider that the "advantage is with defense."

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Honestly I was expecting the headline to go in a totally different direction, something like "Russia's air force is barely able to leave its own airspace because of poor maintenence, parts and munitions shortages, and widespread alcoholism among flight crews".
Considering they've resorted to lobbing glide-modified free fall bombs, I wouldn't be surprised if some of this actually was due to stockpiles getting so low that they can't use guided munitions for anything but very high value targets (such as maternity hospitals and residential buildings)
- Actually, it's cheaper to use empty old aircraft to bomb places than it is to shoot down said aircraft. It's a tactic to waste the anti air defence.
  
  Ah yes, the Russian master strategists who are already running into serious issues with their airframe lifetimes and lack of experienced pilots are now flying sorties with unguided munitions because they want to get shot down.
  No, a plane - including wear and tear on the airframe & power plant if it doesn't get itself tactically shot down to "waste enemy AD resources" - and a pilot are absolutely not worth less than a few air defense missiles. And no, they're not using "empty" planes
  
  a pilot is more valuable than any AA missile
  
  I'm open to the general idea that maybe it's hard to put an exact price tag on aircraft in Russia's specific situation -- I mean, maybe nobody is in the market for Russian military aircraft these days or something and if Russia doesn't intend to use them for something else, maybe you could make some kind of argument that the value is much-lower than one might expect.
  But in general, I think that it's generally pretty hard to argue that a manned fighter jet is a good trade for a surface-to-air-missile.
soviet union was preparing for war against NATO. as such, they have seen how important air assets were in vietnam war and especially later in desert storm, so they made sure they have loads of SAMs to negate this advantage. both Ukraine and russia draw from these stockpiles making air dominance impossible for either side, airspace is simply denied in all important sectors
It’s funny since I always remember the Russian military always being presented like something to be scared at, but apparently it’s not the case, at all.
- On paper they're well equipped. But Russia is a country that basically operates on corruption, everyone is on the take, so by the time the resources finally get to the military personnel they've gone through several thieving hands and pretty much everything of value has disappeared. And you could say that many Western democracies are equally as corrupt, but they're not, they may skim a little off the top but they're not stupid enough to steal from their own military.
  No one tells Putin this of course because they're terrified of him, so he starts operating on the assumption that the military have certain resources that are simply not present.
  
  People really don't appreciate the depth of the corruption and grift in Russia. In the military (and not just there, mind you) every level participates in it: they sell the gear they're assigned if they ever get it in the first place, lie about the number of people in command so they'll get a higher budget which will get embezzled, lie about training their unit because training is hard work and they might not actually have the personnel for it, steal from either the others in their unit or from the ones under their command, and so on and so on. Add to that the absolutely insane violence they subject each other to that kills and drives to suicide hundreds per year (dedovshchina) and it paints an extremely Russian picture. It's a great and developed country on paper, but there's a reason why so many countries surrounding them hate their guts and thinks they're generally untrustworthy and violent
  
  Yeah even in my country which is corrupt as fuck they chased the stolen material until it got recovered. The defence minister got fired and is under investigation.
Let's get that "can barely" down to "can't at all"!
{generic propaganda} side A says. side B denies all claims and says {propaganda}.
- Except this is UK intelligence, not side A or B
  
  Lol, UK is 105% on certain side to which it provides all kind of support.

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