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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

#451

Post by jacquesm »

drran wrote: post #184
caeril wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's one thing Russia is very good at, it's surface to air defense. They've screwed so much of this operation thus far, but I bet you that good chunks of that column consist of Tunguskas and Tors, and the Ukrainians know it.

I see no Tunguska in remains of convoy: https://www.facebook.com/serega.misura/posts/702155627791475... .

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Maybe not, but there are definitely those in service, one damaged and abandoned, one disabled and one captured.

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

#452

Post by oneoff786 »

UltraViolence wrote: post #192
tus666 wrote: post #131

I think this misses the point entirely. It's their entire strategy, or lack of strategy that is in question. Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...are then promptly destroyed by irregular Ukrainian forces often with improvised weapons. Seemingly trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas. Lack of attempts to destroy strategic infras…

It's not a lack of strategy, merely an expression of that a soldier's life isn't worth sh*t in Russia. These young enlisted conscripts are nothing but cannon fodder with their superiors hoping they can get off a shot or two before they're killed. Pilots, being officers, are another matter entirely. I remember this Kamov Ka-40 helicopter had the ability to blow off its blades to enable the pilot to bail out with an ej…

Yeah but those hundreds of paratroopers being shot down in unsupported skies are important too.

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

#453

Post by littlestymaar »

danenania wrote: post #352
jl6 wrote: post #261

I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not? Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way... It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local…

I don't even see how (b) is going to work at this point--with the massive flow of weapons and money that is coming from the West, and NATO safe havens on the borders, Russia will be playing whack-a-mole against insurgency forever no matter how much force they use. Imagine if the Iraq or Afghanistan insurgencies had had access to an endless supply of top-of-the-line weapons, orders of magnitude more funding, and 'safe…

Russia doesn't have a big track military track record in recent years, but there's one thing that they have proven to do really well: leveling a city to the ground while slaughtering the civilians who didn't flee.

Having the Ukrainian legitimate government agree to surrender to save Kiev (or “just” Khariv) from such a fate isn't completely impossible to imagine. And giving infantry weapons isn't going to be enough to stop Putin from doing so if he wanted. I don't know how many FОАВ[1] the Russian air force has at its disposal, but Javelin aren't gonna help against that…

And after this hypothetical surrender from the Ukrainian government, setting up a bloody dictatorship with a special police arresting, torturing and executing whoever is suspected to belong to the insurgency, relying on pro-russian locals to provide intelligence is not an impossible feat unfortunately…

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs

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

#454

Post by [deleted] »

jnwatson wrote: post #445
lmohseni wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have footage of cluster bombs striking civilian apartment buildings in Kharkiv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZuKEwuZznw

It is important to distinguish between strategic and tactical decisions. Russia has made a strategic decision to avoid heavy bombers due to the high likelihood of civilian casualties. Some platoon commander launched a rocket barrage for whatever reason. Command discipline isn’t perfect, especially among new recruits, so individual deviations are to be expected.

[deleted]

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

#455

Post by ashwagary »

AlexandrB wrote: post #287
yks wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a war of hatred towards Ukrainians from Putin. Therefore he's both 1) not expecting resistance because enemies are dehumanized and weak according to his worldview, 2) probably ready to start genocide if enemies resist too much, after all, Holodomor happened less than a century ago.

My pet theory is that, in addition to (1), Putin believed his own propaganda and thought that the Ukrainian people (and even parts of the Ukrainian military) would welcome Russia with open arms. This is somewhat backed up by Putin urging the Ukrainian military to perform a coup on the second day of the war[1]. [1] https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/putin-urges-ukraine-military-to-o...

According to reports on French news channels, Zelenskyy is considered a puppet by a large % of the population in eastern Ukraine and they are welcoming a Russian invasion.

Years ago, I was also suprised to hear people in Crimea celebrating post-Russian take over. This topic was never covered (at least I had seen no mention) in American media during the Crimean invasion.

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

#456

Post by csee »

bryananderson wrote: post #424

From what I can gather from a week of obsessively following military experts’ explanations of the conflict, there seem to be two main factors at play. One is the Russian choice of overall military tactics, which is derived from their political goals. While we can’t know exactly what it is, we can assume that Russia plans to impose some sort of political settlement on Ukraine (could be anything from puppet government…

Do you think Putin wants to find a negotiated solution right now, or he's still all-in on the outcome?

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

#457

Post by tablespoon »

UltraViolence wrote: post #199
ceejayoz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Not necessarily. That's likely to be a target-rich, but well-defended area. As long as it's not moving - especially given rumors of fuel troubles - there may be better things for the Ukranian air force to tackle, like helicopters moving troops around.

No, this convoy would be an obvious strafing target. I'm disappointed that the Ukrainians didn't even attempt it. Or we haven't heard about it.

> No, this convoy would be an obvious strafing target. I'm disappointed that the Ukrainians didn't even attempt it. Or we haven't heard about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the convoy had the equivalent of a 1000 US Stinger AA missiles or more. It's not with strafing if there's too high a chance the jet would get shot down.

As a layman, I'm guessing the only things worth the risk might be some operation that could potentially trap the convoy (e.g. between two knocked-out bridges).

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

#458

Post by oneoff786 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #262
standardUser wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lack of experienced Russian pilot" This one is so hard for me to imagine, given Russia's long history of aerospace pride and massive military budget. The article attributes it to limited flying time compared to US/UK pilots and unfamiliarity with their latest and most advanced jets. Truly hard to comprehend how a military like Russia's could be suffering from lack of training despite a multi-year lead-up to a massiv…

Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption. On all levels, including the very top and going all the way to the lowest soldier. Heck, they were selling gas to Belarus civilians from their own machines while waiting just across the border during February. And then they ran out of it in Ukraine. Can you imagine US or western Europe soldiers doing something similar en masse? And its not just that - heavy drinking,…

Soldiers stealing fuel to sell is a decades old Russian soldier tradition

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

#459

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jl6 wrote: post #261

I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not? Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way... It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local…

> the order to avoid targeting civilians implies restraint on use of indiscriminate bombing

This doesn't explain Russia's lack of air superiority as well as the hypothesis proposed by the paper on which this article is based [1]: a lack of precision munitions, the risk of Ground Force SAMs causing friendly fire due to bad coordination between the branches and a lack of pilot training leading to those planes not being battle ready.

[1] https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

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

#460

Post by UltraViolence »

PaulHoule wrote: post #125
mstipetic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.

Surface-to-air missiles were long a priority of the Soviets. They caused our fliers no end of trouble in Vietnam: this guy got shot down by a SAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war The Russian military is organized around a land defense of their homeland since they don't have the natural barriers the U.S. has (e.g. they last got invaded in 1941, we last got invaded in 1812.) You might think the…

I'm puzzled why we haven't created something that can compete with S-300 / S-400 / S-500.

At the very least the Patriot SAM should be redesigned to allow for vertical launching to allow shooting in all directions. If you point Patriot one way and you get ambushed from behind you're basically caught with your pants down.

At the very least you'd need four Patriot missile launchers pointing in all directions to prevent this scenario.

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