Article with similar title, different content ( but published earlier ):<p>"The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force"<p><a href="https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/mysterious-case-missing-russian-air-force" rel="nofollow">https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...</a><p>and follow up under the same subject:<p>"Is the Russian Air Force actually incapable of complex operations?"<p><a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/is-the-russian-air-force-actually-incapable-of-complex-operations" rel="nofollow">https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/is-the-russian-air-...</a><p>"Russian and Chinese Combat Air Trends - [PDF]"<p><a href="https://static.rusi.org/russian_and_chinese_combat_air_trends_whr_final_web_version.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://static.rusi.org/russian_and_chinese_combat_air_trend...</a><p>It looks like the Oligarchs stole most of the money that should
go for effective logistics. The Russian Air Force probably cannot supply enough spare parts. Military jets need hours of maintenance for each hour of flight.
> There may be a lesson for nato. Russia’s initial failure to gain air superiority could be explained away by the Kremlin’s secrecy over the decision to go to war and a lack of planning time, says Mr Bronk. But in his view, the air force’s passivity could also reflect inexperience or incompetence.<p>Where is the line between "objectively assessing an enemy's weaknesses" and "blatant wishfull thinking" ?<p>While we're discussing how bad the russian air force is doing, cities are being bombed constantly, and the ukrainian governement is imploring for a no-fly zone that no one will enforce given it would mean engaging with, guess what, the air force. Oh, and starting a nuclear war at the same time.<p>Maybe it's an operationnal failure on Russian's side - but if so, they carved themselves a situation where they can't really _lose_, even if they can't win quickly.<p>Hopefully something will change the game - but I doubt "hoping for the other side to secretly be stupid" will cut it.
There are several main factors in my opinion:<p>- The Ukrainian ground forces are saturated with MANPADs after 8 years of continuous pumping (to the point of untrained personnel getting them), which has significantly accelerated at the end of the last year. So the Russian Air Force can not operate easily on low-mid altitude far from their ground forces.<p>- The remaining Ukrainian anti-air missile systems (like S-300, but there are also older ones) are heavily supported by NATO radar infrastructure in Poland, so it's risky for Russian planes to stay long on high altitudes.<p>- The Kalibr missile is quite sufficient for striking stationary objects, so you don't need planes for those. It's hard to strike mobile forces, because they quickly get intelligence from NATO about planes in the area and thus able to hide in cities, thus making it hard for RAF to strike them (the Russian forces have enough firepower to level cities to the ground, but they have orders to minimize damage if possible).<p>- Air supremacy is already achieved (almost all Ukrainian war planes and strike drones have been shot down), so it does not make much sense to patrol the air space too much, since operating a plane is far from being cheap.
Michael Kofman, an expert in Russian mil., claims that one of the reasons for this is that Russia's military doctrine accounts for cases where air supremacy or superiority cannot be achieved.<p>Shelling a city with Grad and artillery is far cheaper.
the article reads like too much wishful thinking. I am from Ukraine originally and like most sane people I want this war to end ASAP with Russia's failure and Ukraine emerging stronger.<p>But I do hope Western militaries are not counting on Russia's "incompetence and inexperience".
Or maybe the lesson to learn is that modern military aircraft are simply not particularly useful weapons. Fighters are way too expensive relative to the cost of ground-based AA systems, while a combination of missile and shell-based artillery can do most bombing jobs way cheaper.<p>In general modern military seems to be focused on delivering as much power as possible in a single unit, never bothering to ask if multiple lesser units could do a better job combined. And so we get destroyers and cruisers that look mighty, but can nevertheless be rendered inoperable, if not outright sunk, by a single torpedo.
My theory is that originally they decided not to do a fast, comprehensive bombing/missile shock-and-awe campaign because even if it was aimed at military targets, it would be very easy to perceive (or describe) a comprehensive deployment like that as "carpet bombing", "brutal", etc.<p>In other words, they were trying to avoid bad press and having the population immediately perceive them as being indiscriminate or blowing up their entire country etc. There would just be so many videos on TV and the internet of so many bombs and missiles.<p>Its actually kind of like the discussion about LIDAR on Teslas. People always come up with these supposed scientific reasons that they decided not to use it. But the biggest reason was, it doesn't look good, or fit in at all with the sleek design of Teslas. Teslas would go from the sexiest car to the dorkiest overnight.<p>Anyway, pretty rough analogy, but similarly, the Russians probably decided not to operate in the most effective way, deliberately, due to "optics".
In other news:<p>>Pentagon says some Russian jets are avoiding Ukraine's airspace during sorties to avoid being shot down<p>>The Pentagon believes Russia is flying about 200 sorties every day, although many never enter Ukrainian air space.<p><a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pentagon-says-russian-jets-avoiding-224243670.html" rel="nofollow">https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pentagon-says-russian-jets-avoidin...</a><p>Can't say I blame them really.
I keep seeing all these "experts are perplexed" type of articles pop up everywhere on the internet, the West fails to understand that Russians are just incompetent, they have only few capable pilots and those are afraid of fly missions in the skies that are saturated with Stingers and various USSR era SAM batteries.