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What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

reuters.com

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Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#161

Post by BoxOfRain »

blippage wrote: post #108
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…

> convivial weapon I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.

What does that make nuclear warfare, a comprehensive spam campaign?

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#162

Post by dymk »

gamblor956 wrote: post #151
blast wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is the case, why would officials and experts be "stumped"? This seems like the obvious explanation.

The "stumped" is not actually in the article. FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties. And that's what has the experts confused: t…

It's not really fair to say it's not in the article - it's the title of the article.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#163

Post by aix1 »

ukraineally wrote: post #84

No air force, because cost-benefit isnt there. Too many things to take them out. Not enough things to drop bombs on. Dont worry, they did airstrike the Navy doing navy things? aka floating there threatening civilians. Army is in terrible disarray losing tons of equipment to mud. Losing even more equipment to combat. Their MREs expired 7 years ago. Their army sure is looking pathetic. Is this Putin's last hurrah?

It's hard to be sure, but he is now surrounded by (ex?) multibillionnaires who have all of a sudden lost much of the ability to enjoy their airplanes, yachts, houses etc, ONLY because of voices in Putin's head telling him about his historic mission (or whatever those voices are telling him).

I think his life expectancy has gone down as of about a week ago.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#164

Post by smoe »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #161
blippage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> convivial weapon I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.

What does that make nuclear warfare, a comprehensive spam campaign?

Linkedin notifications maybe

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#165

Post by butlerm »

999900000999 wrote: post #110
platinumrad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without minimizing the awfulness of this invasion and the fact that it must be condemned, it is not nearly as brutal as Russian operations in Chechnya and Syria or the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq, likely because Ukranians are not nearly as much of a racial or cultural other to Russians as Chechens or Syrians. The greater ability of Ukrainians to gain coverage in both traditional and social media may also be a f…

Thank you for articulating this better than I could. You had a CBS* commentator straight up saying this is different than Middle East wars since Kyiv is a " civilized city". That said, I think much of Russia's restraint is due to their end goal. Ukraine's Russian backed president was outted in a coup back in 2014. The new pro West leadership decided to go dancing with John McCain. This entire conflict could of been a…

Haiti would not count as a warm water port for this purpose, because it would not serve the Russian mainland at all. Russia has plenty of foreign "warm water" ports it can use already.

Other than the unfortunate Haitians, who have suffered enough already, it is hard to imagine why a vaguely democratic decision by Haiti to become a Russian ally would meet with more than a collective yawn unless Russia planned to station intermediate range nuclear missiles there or something. Russia has plenty of allies in the area already.

The idea that the U.S. wouldn't "let" Haiti or Cuba or Venezuela have their own foreign policy is ridiculous. It does and they do.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#166

Post by gamblor956 »

dymk wrote: post #162
gamblor956 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "stumped" is not actually in the article. FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties. And that's what has the experts confused: t…

It's not really fair to say it's not in the article - it's the title of the article.

The author of the article does not choose the title, the editor does, based on what they think will draw more views/clicks.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#167

Post by dymk »

smallerfish wrote: post #140
HideousKojima wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated). It definitely isn't "completely fabricated": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely i…

Could you not imagine the Proud Boys being allowed to serve as a unit if Canada seized Montana and Idaho, and the national guard needed resources? (With the assumption that the US had a GDP equivalent to Ukraine's.)

No, I cannot

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#168

Post by jefftk »

This cites but doesn't link "The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force", which is a much more thorough treatment: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

They list three possible explanations:

* Too few precision-guided munitions (PGMs)

* Risk of friendly fire from surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) due to poor coordination

* Lack of experienced Russian pilots

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#169

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Yeah, I was under the impression pre-Ukraine that Russia was an "nth generation" fighter supplier, and therefore should have air superiority almost by default.

I was corrected that nobody seems to buy Russia's offerings, and those that were made are basically for show and not in mass production.

I also realized that air superiority, as in expensive jets attacking from distance and altitude, might not matter if the enemy has cheap effective drones.

If the drone loss rate and replacement is cheaper than the flight hours cost of the ultraexpensive fighter jet, and if they can throw 100 drones at a battlefield and the best you can do is shoot down 10 of them with your ultraexpensive fighter jets... uhoh. Even if you "own" the skies, you don't have ground-air superiority.

Yes you can bomb static targets with impunity, but your ground forces are essentially unsupported, and if the enemy is infantry with portable missiles and drones with missiles... uhoh.

Re: What happened to Russias Air Force? U.S. officials, experts stumped

#170

Post by WalterBright »

lumost wrote: post #74
brimble wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern militaries that don't like taking tons of unnecessary losses on the ground are in love with controlling the air. It's not like there's a wide variety of proven strategies and countries just pick one that they're "in love" with—there's a fairly narrow set, in these circumstances, which all look pretty similar. It's definitely curious that Russia hasn't committed to establishing and leveraging air superiority, d…

A combination of 1 & 3 seems highly likely in my uninformed opinion. Economically, losing aircraft will make a war very expensive very quickly. Losing large numbers of top of the line aircraft will severely harm Russian military aircraft exports. With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft.…

I've often suspected that the F-35 was so expensive only a handful could be built, and would not be risked in combat because it was too expensive to replace.
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