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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

#581

Post by labster »

jihadjihad wrote: post #374
Cd00d wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's an exquisite word. I too was ignorant of its existence until I played Civilization VI, where you can become the suzerain of a city-state.

I learned “revanchist” from Europa Universalis IV and it has been a pretty useful word in the past week.

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

#582

Post by dragonwriter »

jopsen wrote: post #509
vintermann wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately. Also, assuming any of the responsible thought about this beforehand at all (which IS an assumption), they probably expected further economic sanctions of SOME sort from invading. Rebuilding costs money. Rebuilding things like high-tech fighter aircraft costs truly ridiculous amounts of money. There were plenty of reasons…

> There were plenty of reasons they would have hoped to be able to do this all on a modest budget. Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender. Which is probably why they didn't get a no-fly-zone, strategic ambiguity, or other things like that from the US and friends.

> Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender.

NATO expected (and AFAICT, still expects) Ukraine to be defeated if Putin attacked and wasn't dissuaded by the resulting sanctions from pressing the attack. I don't think they were expected to just surrender.

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

#583

Post by [deleted] »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #11
AlwaysRock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been bombing cities. I don't think they are trying to limit casualties.

There are always going to be civilian casualties in war, but it sure looks like they are trying to limit them. Would be worth comparing to other, similar conflicts. Surely a full scale air campaign would lead to more civilian casualties?

[deleted]

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

#584

Post by sofixa »

ashwagary wrote: post #455
AlexandrB wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was widely reported that Crimea was mostly Russian speaking and many there leaned pro-Russia, especially around the referendum ( in the sense that the results were obviously fake, but there was a kernel of truth).

And yes, many in Eastern Ukraine considered themselves more Russian than Ukrainian. No more: https://on.ft.com/35jWHzB

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

#585

Post by kubav »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #318
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 This is my take as well. The obvious contrast is their handling of Kiev versus how they utterly flattened Grozny. It's clear to me that in the early days Russia was hoping for a quick and decisive win. They'd decapitate the government, install a puppet regime, and then hope the public would roll over. That hasn't happened an…

Actually real attack on Kiev have not started yet. Ukrainians probably deliberately let Russian army to get close to the Kiev and than destroyed all supply convoys for Russian vehicles.

I have this info from one of the journalist who were close to Belarus border in the beginning of the invasion. First he wrote article about how hopeless situation is because he rode a few hours to Kiev before seeing first defense. But after two days all the attacks on Kiev stopped so it probably was smart strategy to make supply lines too long to defend them. Even on Monday he reported that only shelling he saw was from Ukrainian army.

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

#586

Post by stjohnswarts »

vintermann wrote: post #306
saiya-jin wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption. Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that? I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF. US corrupt…

If you had lived in a country that is corrupt at all levels of industry, government, and business you would know that the US is practically pure as driven snow. In the US there is relatively plenty money to go around and even the poor typically live better than in a lot of countries "average standard of living) (barring the poorest 5% or so). I have lived in such a country for a few years and it. is. everywhere. -Everyone- wants a bribe or kickback.

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

#587

Post by coryfklein »

My personal speculation: some other power(s) outside of Ukraine are responsible for using their soft power to handicap the Russian Air Force, whether via hacking or via a secretive-yet-direct physical intervention within Russia.

The "non-news" of Russia Air Force not showing up was not naturally getting coverage in the news, and now DoD figures are making public statements in order to point it out, raise awareness, and poke Putin in the side. Meanwhile, every delay in action from the Russian Air Force weighs heavily in favor of Ukraine.

In this way, major adversaries to Russia that are unable to get directly involved for fear of escalation are still able to place their hands on the scales via more indirect means. Even though there is not official treaty requiring Russian adversaries to intervene, it is often still in their best national defense interests to limit Russia's expansionist tendencies in whatever way they can.

It is all a continuation of major world powers fighting wars by proxy; the dominant pattern of war-fighting after nuclear proliferation became a thing.

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

#588

Post by stjohnswarts »

mardifoufs wrote: post #248
jefftk wrote: post #168

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

I disagree, they have used their airforce extensively in Syria with precision guided bombs, and I'd be very surprised if that didn't help the pilots gain a lot of experience too. All those reasons might have explained a lower intensity air presence but not the outright absence of russian planes. I think it's mostly due to public perception because air strikes, no matter how precise, cause a lot of collateral damage,…

Syrian enemies did not have nearly the level of anti-aircraft (and more incoming from NATO countries) that Ukrainians have. I think they are just trying to keep irreplaceable fighters and bombers intact at the cost of ground forces. Russia know that in a war of attrition they can outlast Ukraine although it will cost them more than they thought now. I think they gambled based on what happened in Crimea and the "contested" regions of Ukraine.

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

#589

Post by sofixa »

nomel wrote: post #431
eitland wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. Given their unencrypted radio communication they have done a fair effort to support that idea themselves.

I don't see how that's a sign of incompetence, rather than a sign of aging military equipment. Incompetence would be relaying important, uncoded, information over an unencrypted signal, in a way that would result in some disadvantage. For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption.

> For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption

Of course it would. Otherwise:

* the enemy could analyse your strategy and tactics and predict your approach; and worse:

* the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch

There's no excuse for unencrypted military communications. One would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from freaking Tannenberg a century ago, but it seems not.

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

#590

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

> Did they really launch this invasion on the assumption that the people of Ukraine would just roll over and accept foreign rule?

I don't think it's that simple.

Sure, conscripts were told to expect a welcome in streets lined with natives waving Russian flags. Maybe some in high command even thought that was a possibility. But they have backup plans; we've seen only the first click of the ratchet. Escalate, pause; escalate, pause. This happened in Chechnya too.

Putin didn't invent this approach. And Putin didn't invent the idea that Ukraine is not a separate state, but a part of Russia.

He's written history books, I gather; I might be interested in reading one, but I suspect they're hard to get hold of just now.

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