Why is Russia unable to get air superiority in Ukraine despite Ukraine having pretty much the same air defense capabilities as Iraq had in the gulf war? Why don't they just send every single sortie and cruise missile they have and mimic Desert Storm?
Getting their new Iranian drones shredded by Gepards made them give up on aircraft.
Because SEAD is fucking hard unless your airforce and missile systems are dedicated to it per doctrine, and even then.
Monke: Hey air force, do you want to lose all your toys attacking Ukrainian sam sites?
Air force: Lol no.
Let’s just say Russia has 200 trained, experience pilots. Now, what you’re asking is Russia to take a significant hit in their capabilities and lose a not small chunk of trained fighter pilots.
I don’t think they’re willing nor even capable of doing what you’re asking them to do because losing those pilots at this point in time is something they no longer have the capabilities of replacing
>Let’s just say Russia has 200 trained, experience pilots
You're way too optimistic.
>less than 100 pilots
Man, I figured it was 200 but that’s even way worse than I thought
Thing also Russia still have "bombers", and "fighters". Their fighter crews would be no help when join SEAD operation against ground based AD.
Slightly off-topic here, but I still think the BTG as such wasn't a bad concept, they just didn't have the infantry they were suppsoed to have.
And none of the other things they needed, like comms, intel, maps and a coherent plan.
Callingthe BTG concept weak is step zero of the post-defeat blame game.
>BTG as such wasn't a bad concept
Of course it wasn't. It would be ridiculous to say so unless you turned around and called the USMC's MEU a shitty command structure, which it isn't. A brigadier general in charge of everything from line platoons on up to organic, in-unit F-35's is a fantastic idea. It takes the best lessons learned of small unit tactics and treats a brigade as the "small unit." It's military genius.
BTG was pretty terrible concept for the type of war russia was planning to start in Ukraine.
It's mainly its fault that russian logistics are still fucked even today, and more infantry would have exposed that weakness even quicker.
For terrorist control operations and for stuff like assisting friendly countries it works pretty well though.
It's too rigid. They were good, on paper, for one type of war, in one type of area/terrain. What if they need fuckloads more vehicles of any kind? Arty?
>then you add X to the BTG!
well then what the fuck is the point of organizing them as BTG's if you just add/subtract to them as the situation progresses
Yeah, they basically walked into Ukraine in their peacetime configuration.
In general I'd say quite a few things related to the Russian army are good in concept, terrible in execution type deal.
>but I still think the BTG as such wasn't a bad concept
BTG is nothing but cope unit.
Cope unit of cadre army whose division can only deploy reinforced battalion size force because they have number of conscriptovichs only for one battalion (they have full complement of officers but you can't make full officers units).
this tbh
BTG is shit, because it has zero resiliency, especially with how little infantry average russian infantry battallion even has, its like less than 200 riflemen. When they take some losses, you quickly have a BTG that can't really attack OR defend. All those support units will have to be reshuffled, or new infantry has to be constantly fed to the BTG, kinda defeating the self sufficient unit idea behind it. It also can only defend really small sectiosn of the front, and its ability to control or clean up captured areas is questionable, again due to how few rifle men it has.
>Bedevilled
Cool word
If the true Russian air loss is 70% of Ukrainian claims, they’ve suffered terrible attrition.
Helicopter Pilots especially are highly specialized, losing so many has definitely affected their combat abilities.
What is the tactical advantage of having ten times more aircraft than you have pilots?
And whats the point in them at all then?
"Credible Threat"
In a war for survival tactical nukes get used so even a measely fleet of airplanes can do a lot of damage.
As long as you have enough units to run a limited response at the nuclear level its enough for a dictator to sleep easy at night.
>Let’s just say Russia has 200 trained, experience pilots.
You fail right there. At best Russia has 30-50 trained fighter-bomber pilots.
Same reasons why Ukraine can’t: they don’t have the tech or the training to handle SAMs nor AD in general. Therefore they only pretend to fight (ie, ballistic throwing dumb rockets outside of AD).
They can't into SEAD, Soviet anti air systems are supposedly quite good, because they feared the NATO airforce and every Ukrainian and their dog has some sort of MANPADS lying around
>Soviet anti air systems are supposedly quite good
are they?
People actually believe Russia when it posts propaganda numbers about its IADS
Capable=BEST to a Russian.
Ukraine is using them and Russian jets all fly super low to the ground to not get hit as a result
Russia is using them and Ukrainian jets all fly super low to the ground to not get hit as a result
So let me rephrase: They're apparently good enough
good enough against russia and ukraine
how much lower can the bar be set? Somalia?
OP asked why Russia can't get air superiority in Ukraine
At least they are better than Soviet aircraft and Soviet SEAD munitions, so good enough for this war.
>the defeat was a catalyst to glasnost
No
>syria
of course the performance was shit. Even year 9000 AA would perform poorly in the hands of sandmorons. That is also the reason why russian AA is shit, while soviet was wonderful and Ukrainian is pretty good
>no trained pilots
>no dedicated SEAD/DEAD mission
>no LO aircraft
gee i fuckin wonder
>Why don't they just send every single sortie and cruise missile they have and mimic Desert Storm?
"The air campaign involved nearly every type of fixed-wing aircraft in the
U.S. inventory, flying about 40,000 air-to-ground and 50,000 support
sorties.Approximately 1,600 U.S. combat aircraft were deployed by the
end of the war. By historical standards, the intensity of the air campaign
was substantial. The U.S. bomb tonnage dropped per day was equivalent
to 85 percent of the average daily bomb tonnage dropped by the United
States on Germany and Japan during the course of World War II"
Have you seen the state of the nation known as Russia?
>By historical standards, the intensity of the air campaign
>was substantial. The U.S. bomb tonnage dropped per day was equivalent
>to 85 percent of the average daily bomb tonnage dropped by the United
>States on Germany and Japan during the course of World War II
So this stat is a little misleading, or at least not quite in the proper context. the US was dropping roughly the same amount of ordnance per day in 2 weeks ON AVERAGE as the US did in 4 years in WWII.
This was possible because of modern ultra efficient munitions, many times more potent and carried in planes moving 2x (B-52) to 5x (Bone) faster.
During WWII, however, the sheer numbers of planes put in the air was vastly higher than any other conflict since then- 500 plane sorties were flown on the regular, and tens of thousands of warplanes flew during WWII
Today air power is more efficient and deadlier by quite a bit but in terms of pure saturation its not even close. if it was WWII the US could park warplanes nose to tail across Ukraine in double file. the US had 2 million airmen by the end ofthe war.
Russia, OTOH had 10000 planes for the whole war and 4000 of them were destroyed but the Germans in the first few weeks.
I guess my point is WWII was on a scale almost impossible to imagine today, and Russia has always sucked at air power
ukr had around 300 s300 launchers plus older systems like buk, gecko and s125...
on top of that tons of manpads and other short - medium range systems.
Russia is a corrupt mafioso state. The technology, training, and planning for such a strike is simply beyond their capacity as a society.
>Why can't Russia get air superiority?
The Russian military is incompetent in every branch
Figure it out for yourself, SerGay.
[OpSec] *redacted*
They fly over Bakhmut with impunity
>despite Ukraine having pretty much the same air defense capabilities as Iraq had in the gulf war?
A good read on the topic (of OP's mom sucking unknown phallic objects with excessive pigmentation)
https://balloonstodrones.com/2022/10/19/looking-back-at-iraqi-air-defences-during-operation-desert-storm/
Iraq didn't have a single long-range AA. Of the ones they did have, none were mobile. All of the radar locations were known to coalition forces from satellite photos, because they, also, were stationary.
Despite all that, the air defense was never suppressed, and US simply opted for flying higher, because Iraq, had no long-range AA in the first place.
>There was a significantly higher daily casualty rate in the first five days of the war, during which 31 aircraft casualties occurred (36 per cent of the total and an average of 6.2 per day), compared to the following 38 days, with a total of 55 more casualties (an average of 1.45 per day). Losses to radar-guided SAMs fell to nearly zero after day five, accounting for 29 per cent (nine out of 31) of total casualties by then. They accounted for just nine per cent (five out of 55) of all aircraft casualties in the remainder of the war. It is apparent, therefore, that by the end of day five of the air campaign, radar SAMs had mainly been eliminated as an effective threat to coalition aircraft. Moreover, in the first three days of the war, some aircraft (B-52s, A-6Es, GR-1s, and F-111Fs) attacked at very low altitudes, where they were more vulnerable to low-altitude defences. After the imposition of a minimum attack level of about 12,000 feet, the losses reduced, resulting in much less accuracy with unguided weapons.
>It is apparent, therefore, that by the end of day five of the air campaign, radar SAMs had mainly been eliminated as an effective threat to coalition aircraft.
Yes. That is SEAD.
You should probably read the entire article.
You should probably read what is SEAD.
>take out all threats to your aircraft such that even strategic bombers can fly without issue
>UHH IT DOESNT COUNT AS SEAD IF THERES MANPADS AND AA GUNS STILL WORK
Cringe
>Ukraine having pretty much the same air defense capabilities as Iraq had in the gulf war?
kek, LMAO even