Why has the Russian air force been a non-factor in the war in Ukraine?

Why has the Russian air force been a non-factor in the war in Ukraine? On paper they have one of the largest air forces in the world, but they've done almost no offensive operations since the first few months of the war. Their refusal to be a part of the war has made it impossible to conduct maneuver warfare and resulted in WWI style fighting.

Why has the russian air force embarrassed itself so much?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Limited SEAD capabilities. That's it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      S300/400 presence makes air operations an utter pain for both sides of the war at this point.

      These, together with having lost some experienced pilots early in the conflict.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >some
        That's a funny way to spell 'nearly all'

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    S300/400 presence makes air operations an utter pain for both sides of the war at this point.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Limited SEAD capabilities. That's it.

      russian SEAD munitions quite literally cannot see russian made air defense systems by design, so their SEAD is non existant. it's why even antique agm-88bs that were made in the mid 80s are having success in ukraine

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This is a commonly repeated myth, seemingly based on Wikipedia which provides no real source. KH-58. Patriot and S-300 use C band radars, you aren't going to just "filter out" one, that's not how FFTs work

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >This is a commonly repeated myth, seemingly based on Wikipedia which provides no real source
          >muh wikipedia
          It's not a myth, it's a direct result of how they're manufactured. Perhaps you should be the one not getting your info from wikipedia?

          >filter out
          That's the difficult and costly way of doing it, they don't get filtered out they just don't have the antenna to see them. Each package is designed to go after specific radar bands.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This is a commonly repeated myth, seemingly based on Wikipedia which provides no real source. KH-58. Patriot and S-300 use C band radars, you aren't going to just "filter out" one, that's not how FFTs work

        It's part myth and part true. Their older stocks have seeker heads that can target only specific frequencies used by NATO radars, but they have newer missiles that can target anything, too. Like all Russian PGMs, the problem is extremely limited supply - it's not enough to have a handful in storage, you actually have to practice using them, and the VVS doesn't have any kind of institutional knowledge on how to run SEAD missions, nor dedicated airframes for it.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    turns out not having stealth plane to take out you enemy's air defense is a bad strategy in the 21st century

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      b-but 10 big gun brrt ?
      muh heckin military anal-ists said it was the best plane ?

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They don't control the airspace and can't SEAD, so flying high and dropping "precision" stuff would result in losses from long-range AA or even Ukie fighters.
    They can't fly low because they don't have the training or equipment to hit shit, and there's too many random MANPADS and even AA guns there now.
    Even if those weren't true, they don't seem to have the organization or comms to coordinate anything properly.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Why has the Russian air force been a non-factor in the war in Ukraine?
    Because there's no such thing, it has always been a paper tiger, good only to impress moronic aviation enthusiasts with pointless airshow maneuvers

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >pointless
      ask me how i know you'll never be a woman

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Triggered, immediately brings up /misc/cel buzzwords
        Back to your containment board

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Buzzwords
          >Triggered
          Plebbitnigget

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Based man, may I ask what is your views on Nazis especially the ones in Ukraine?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        how many planes have been shot down by cobra manoeuvres ?
        even in DCS that shit is useless

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          useless? more like use less drugs my man

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Don't see over-hyped show maneuvers saving Su planes.
            Vatnik fairy tales of them dodging missiles with them cobras endned as like everything vatnik: fairy tales.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Surely the cobra would help dodge western BVR missiles

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Of course comrade, the NAFO trannies don't realise that our pilots need to do is perform a very, very, very long cobra. Surely Major Vasilyev (aged 58, currently being treated for liver cirrhosis) is capable of carrying out such a skilled maneuver.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >aged 58
              That's the pinnacle of life expectancy for women in Russia, men are around 48

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Missiles low energy targets displaying themselves in full profile.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Soviets / Russia kind of suck at plane design but focus heavily on ground-based anti-air
    >meanwhile West has better planes, but ground-based AA has been mostly iffy
    It’s not hard to see why 2 post-Soviet countries duking it off leads to very static air warfare situation, as both of them have far better anti-air capabilities than SEAD or stealth capability.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because the planes are essentially archeotech - they can’t replace any of them, and after a hysterically inept opening air campaign (I can’t SEAD!) they’ve taken to the safest methods possible in order to keep what remaining tech they have functioning

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    in addition to normal attrition in a high intensity war and a battlefield riddle with SAMs... many people ignore the major problem of russian airplanes being shitty russian airplanes. They already have a very low operability in time of peace, now imagine those crap airframes and engines having to stack up the flying hours. A lot of those that are left just can’t fly. Hence the many jets just crashing in Russia without even reaching combat. An intense air conflict is exhausting for the planes.
    So, between the losses, the very small pool of experienced ground attack pilots, the SAMs, Nato radars, crap tech and exhaustion, the fighters that need to stay behind to protect russian airspace, etc, the Russian AF just show the best it can do. And it’s this.

    Now keep in mind if it was france or germany, and i would like to say the RAF too but there’s just too many anglos here to waste time trying to discuss reality with those western vatniks, they would show worse, way worse. French air force has 96 rafales and 93 mirage 2k, and more than half of german planes can’t fly.
    Now you can add the amount of losses sustained by russia to the french air force, remove at least a third needing repairs, a good chunk kept over france to control their air space... and i doubt they could do much more than this.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This, conventional warfare is a thing of the past. The leadership know all this, our existential threats are ecological, not economic or political/strategic. We've fricked around with toys in the dessert about as long as we could since the crusades and time is up.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The degradation of the world's militaries is really a sight to behold. I know cost, complexity, whatever, but it's almost staggering to contemplate that (barely) within living memory, Germany could field 30,000 fighters and Russia had a quarter of a million tanks and Britain had twenty fricking aircraft carriers, and France could mobilize five million infantrymen and still lose in six weeks

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >The degradation

        Not really accurate though. The modern military just exist on a different scale as compared to back then and the overwhelming number is far less important than the overall quality. In the modern war less importance is on overwhelming with sheer numbers and more is placed on disruption and efficient usage of high tech capabilities. I mean sure you could field 1000 tanks in a battle but whats the point if the enemy can just blast your supplies with a cruise missile then wait for you to run out? Having huge stockpiles wasnt a detriment way back when because they were hard to find hit and deal with. Nowadays you cant hide shit anywhere so you transition to a mobilized force and try to keep large stockpiles to a minimum unless you can GUARANTEE you will have air superiority and can negate an enemies long range strike capability.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        If you’d want to keep a scale like that, you’d need to go the way of Reformers, and it’s not a way that would lead to victory.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I wish they were more active, I want to see Starstreak split another vatnik helicopter in two at mach 3

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The Russian Air Force/Aerospace Defense Force is largely not intended for offensive operations. It's largely intended for defensive TacAir in coordination with the Russian IADS, with limited SEAD and missile strike capability. It lacks the electronic warfare, SEAD, and ISTAR capabilities that make the USAF so effective as an offensive force. Doctrinely, it's accomplished all that it's meant to accomplish; which is protect the Russian principally to protect Russian army from air attack, the Russian army has just totally failed at its part of the job.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If your air force cannot assist your ground forces in taking land then it fails the basic function of an air force

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >On paper

    And there are the key words. Russia is strong on paper and nothing else. Numbers get thrown around all the time about how they have so many tanks or planes or ships or whatever but it all fails to take into account how many of those are rusting out in a field or so incredibly under maintained they barely float. Its easy to have 100k tanks when all but a few of them are actually functional and there is no real logistical system to get those that arent running in a reasonable time.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    just imagine if the image was reversed and those were USAF F-15As with Zuni rocket pods

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Russian air force and ground based air defence are so poorly organised that they can't deconflict their operations. early in the war there were blue on blue incidents which resulted in the air forces basically refusing to fly.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Also their training / fly hours are like 50% compared to western airforce pilots. So worse pilots on non existant or already baldy maintained planes.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you ask me The Powers That Be are gearing up for a long war, a World War. Things like jets will be hard to replace soon and not easily wasted.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The RUSI report went into this a bunch. For one, Russia started the war with very few combat jet pilots (less than 100) and at best they're still at that level after losing a lot of the initial ones and calling up everybody they could scrounge up, from instructors and cadets to ex-mil airline pilots.
    Once the war started they made a major blunder by counting on cruise missile strikes to eliminate Ukrainian air defenses, when in fact much of Ukraine's AD was mobile and had been moved since the last reports, so while something like 90% of static installations were knocked out the mobile ones were almost unscathed and immediately got back into action and the Russians flew right into it expecting no resistance. This was compounded by the Ukrainians having tons of MANPADS and employing them well, and often in direct coordination with larger SAMs.
    Finally, a major issue is that Russian air operations have been subordinated to ground commanders who have little understanding of how to employ it effectively and largely tried to use the remaining force for CAS while neglecting air dominance, leading to the situation we're in now where both sides are just taking potshots at each other from standoff range and denying each other's ability to use the airspace for tactical or strategic purposes.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They can’t SNEAD and the country is so shat up with long-medium-short range SAM’s that I think other c**ts would have big problems too.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I think other c**ts would have big problems too.
      The US could probably handle it, but I think our SEAD force is bigger than the entire combat side of the RuAF and we've got stealths and better SEAD munitions too.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        AFAIK there's only 3 militaries in the entire world that field dedicated SEAD - USA, Chian and Australia, for some reason

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Probably because they also fought in 'Nam and that was really the war that spawned the whole concept. They've always emulated US doctrine more than most other countries as well.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          +15 dollarydoos

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ukraine like Russia has a shit ton of air defences inherited from the Soviet Union. The Soviets always knew they couldn't match western airpower so focused heavily on anti-air. As a result Russia and Ukraine both have significant air defences both lack the ability to suppress and destroy enemy air defences so there's a stalemate.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Lack of PGM stockpiles, lack of SEAD experience, lack of flight hours for training, avionics largely not up to par with western equivalents.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    supposedly their pilots get around if not under 100 hours of flight time a year

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