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

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

#511

Post by edrxty »

stefan_ wrote: post #494
thereddaikon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buk isn't a "cheap and cheerful" alternative to S-300. Soviet air defense doctrine was a multilayered approach featuring systems at almost every organizational level from infantry squad up to theater. Buk and S-300 serve at different organizational levels. Both are competent systems and ironically are probably more effective against Soviet derived air forces than western ones. Starting in WW2 and moving forward each…

It's wild how many anti-air systems they have deployed, for an almost non-existent enemy air force. At this point they must be effectively supplying the enemy their SAM systems. Very expensive, too - saw a $15M system ditched in a field because the shitty KAMAZ truck carrying it broke its axle.

It's partly doctrine, that's just what they do. Highly mobile AA traveling with the armor is their thing and why change up your process right in the middle of a big deployment (rhetorically, obviously).

The other reason is if things go south and the US/EU decides Putin is bluffing on the nukes, they'll for sure wish they had it because NATO aircraft would color the sky gray.

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

#512

Post by brabel »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #302
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 mean all I see when I look online is Russia attacking Civilians and not caring who they attack. Yes there is a degree of restraint because they are trying to take the country over, they cannot burn it to the ground, but they don’t really seem to care about civilians and keep committing war crimes, just now they directly bombed near a hotel and train station, people trying to flee the country. Saying they are ‘pro-c…

> just now they directly bombed near a hotel and train station, people trying to flee the country.

I've just read that the explosion near Kiev's train station (if that's what you're talking about) was due to a Russian missile that got intercepted by Ukrainian defense.

It would make zero sense for Russians to be using their weapons against anything non-military at this point given that, if reports are true, there's still plenty of Ukrainian military resistance to be dealt with.

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

#513

Post by oblio »

littlestymaar wrote: post #453
danenania wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is, once they do that, they'll cross another one of those imaginary lines.

And the sanctions Russia is under will be nothing like the ones that will be heaped on top.

Europe is highly sensitive about local conflicts, especially after what happened to Srebrenica. Grozny didn't really count since it was:

a) an internal war

b) at the end of Europe

If Putin flattens a major European city (for Europe any city above ~2m or so is major), the outrage in Europe will be huge. Even bigger than it is now.

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

#514

Post by jopsen »

hutzlibu wrote: post #473
LAC-Tech wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russias military budget is only slightly higher than that of the UK (61.7 billion vs 59.2 billion), even though Russia has a bit more than twice the UK population. France and Germany aren't far behind - 52.8 billion and 52.7 billion respectively. I believe Germany recently pledged to raise it's military spending to 100 billion (a lot of flashy headlines but couldn't find details), so soon it will far outspend Russia.

Russia has way lower wages on the other hand, meaning for domestic military spending, they get much further with that budget.

> they get much further with that budget.

Not when you pay for corruption :)

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

#515

Post by tapas73 »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #440
maratc wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH we don’t have any evidence of Russia having any beef with either Georgia or Ukraine, up to 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, where NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would be accepted as members. Georgia was wrecked in half a year after that, and Ukraine since 2014, since the Orange Revolution. The annexation argument came after the fact.

The Orange Revolution was in 2004. The one in 2013-2014 started with Russia pushing their semi-friendly semi-puppet Ukrainian president to abandon an association agreement with the EU. He pursued that agreement quite vigorously until mid 2013, when derailing it could have been quite easy (stop a few laws from passing, or don't sign them, or put poison pills into them that won't be acceptable to the EU and wrangle ove…

see also: Belarus (russia stopped quite pro russian, but democratic opposition)

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

#516

Post by Animats »

Cd00d wrote: post #353
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…

suzerainty You can't just lob a hundred dollar word out like that! I spent several moments trying to figure out what your typo was before allowing the possibility that you didn't have one. a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy

Empires, puppet states, colonies, and territories are mostly pre 20th century relics today, and we've lost the vocabulary for talking about them. Pundits still throw those words around, but mostly as exaggerations.

This is a 19th century war with 21st century weapons. It's from the bad old days when various European states built empires - the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the British Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Imperial State of Germany. For most of the 18th and 19th century, and up to WWI, there were wars around the fringes of those empires. Not hugely destructive ones, because nobody had enough firepower.

Putin seems to want to go back to that era. Not, as some people think, to the USSR era. Read that accidentally posted Russian victory press release.[1]

It's a good time to look at 19th century European history and the runup to WWI. What's happening is all too similar.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

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

#517

Post by baq »

PaulHoule wrote: post #176
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…

I think it's like this. Russia eventually wants to bombard Kiev with heavy weapons like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9A52-4_Tornado which can use ammunition at an absolutely insane rate. It takes time to move this stuff into place and more time to take the ammunition in, set up resupply paths, etc. So Russia attacks Kiev with a small force with light weapons, some Spetsnaz, mostly to keep the fight away from the mai…

The problem with this take is Kyiv is more or less Russian Jerusalem. That’s one important difference from all other… special operations performed by Putin.

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

#518

Post by gitfan86 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #453
danenania wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Russia has claimed that the mission is to liberate Ukraine from Nazis, which is why you see videos of unarmed civilians not being immediately run over by trucks.

If the mission changes to kill as many civilians as possible, the army is going to have an even worse morale problem and the international community will come up with a creative solution like giving part of Poland to Ukraine, giving Ukrainian citizenship to anyone within that part of Poland and then launching attacks with all the military resources that just happen to now be in Ukraine.

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

#519

Post by TimTheTinker »

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…

> It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly.

That doesn't apply to apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. The shelling is very intense in multiple cities.

So yes, most Russians aren't directly firing on people in the street, but in larger cities they're destroying their homes and local infrastructure.

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

#520

Post by Skunkleton »

mNovak wrote: post #268
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…

Destroying bridges, rail, etc would be a huge mistake (beside maybe those leading west to NATO), as the current logistic challenges underscore. The initial blitz did target radars and airports (strategic infrastructure) to try to get air superiority, after which many more options become available. But that didn't play out. We're seeing now a transition to siege tactics; surround and generally make life miserable.

Of course now Russia is itself under economic siege. This doesn't seem like a winning approach for Russia.
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