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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

#601

Post by sofixa »

UltraViolence wrote: post #460
PaulHoule wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's why it was funny that Turkey was ostracized for buying Russian/Chinese SAMs ( was it S-400 last or a Chinese version). What else could they possibly buy? The Patriot system isn't even close, and doesn't seem to be working too well for the UAE ( but then again we don't know how S-300/400/500 would deal against drones and light missiles)

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

#602

Post by jopsen »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #73

I think part of why Russia looks so inept is because everyone is comparing against the US. However, the US military has the finest logistic operations in the world. Also, there is no substitute for fighting an actual enemy. Part of the reason the US (especial Air Force and Naval Aviation) is so good is that they have actually been fighting. From Libya(Reagan), Gulf War I, Serbia, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Libya (Obam…

> I think part of why Russia looks so inept is because everyone is comparing against the US.

Yeah, we would all like the narrative to be Russian army not working.

But it's also possible that they are just working slowly. And certainly possible that Putin would rather loose conscripts than risk airplanes.

(Honestly, I just hope the madness stops before more people are hurt -- ideally with the Russians going home)

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

#603

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

> It's hard to fathom any rational justification for this.

It can only be because they think that it's essential to strike now; they think that if they leave it, terminal decline is inevitable.

This is a military operation that's been planned for years; by 'now', I mean 'this decade'. I imagine they saw the European gas crisis as an opportunity, and one that would slip away quickly if they didn't seize it. That's why it's happened this spring.

That long column: that's mostly logistics for the planned long siege of Kiev. I think those guys have barely begun.

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

#604

Post by AtlasBarfed »

sokoloff wrote: post #547
Animats wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Imper…

> This is a 19th century war with 21st century weapons. Very little of the weapons involved are actually 21st century. Most are 20th century.

Depends on if MANPADS, TOW, and Drones become the dominant forces of the battlefield.

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

#605

Post by megous »

ceejayoz wrote: post #256
speeder wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions. They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine, they just don't want NATO to be able to invade them by land. I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.

> I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions. That's very reasonable. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071766987/u-s-russia-dicuss-... > Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory s…

As to the "no plans" part: https://www.facebook.com/otueast/photos/pcb.668374907921586/...

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

#606

Post by jopsen »

pydry wrote: post #579
jopsen wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That might have had more to do with the threat of nuclear war. The west isnt going to sacrifice itself to save kyiv.

> That might have had more to do with the threat of nuclear war

It's not clear we would have risked nuclear war by selling discounted cruise missiles to Ukraine.

But the Ukrainians might have used them prematurely, or surrendered without a fighting chance.

Or the US could have just deployed 50k troops to Poland and said "we might interfer in Ukraine". Then Putin might never have invaded.

Instead the US said, they would not interfere.

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

#607

Post by andjd »

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'm not sure that explains it. The article asks why the Russian air force wasn't used to destroy Ukrainian _military_ targets. If bombing an air base causes substantial civilian casualties, then it's because that country brought in civilians to the site to use a meat shield.

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

#608

Post by sofixa »

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,…

> Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.

The thing is though, is there any reason to believe the PLA would be in a much different shape? The last wars the Chinese fought in were decades ago, and the performance was pretty poor. So we don't have any real world idea of how that army would perform - it could suffer from poor morale, stupid tactics, lack of coordination, no logistics, or it could be superbly trained with great equipment.

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

#609

Post by dantyti »

gitfan86 wrote: post #518
littlestymaar wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>why you see videos of unarmed civilians not being immediately run over by trucks.

starting to see videos of explosives being lobbed at unarmed people. These do not seem like crowd-control munitions: https://twitter.com/aldin_ww/status/1499059624250646538

On a more historic note, it took the Soviets a couple of days before they ran over people with tanks during the January Events in Vilnius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)#Tim... note how they also claimed it was acting against a "nationalist" (equivalent to "nazi" in the USSR) government.

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

#610

Post by freeopinion »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #383
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…

> We need to find a variant of (a) that allows Putin to save face Recognize the annexation of Crimea and promise immediate sanctions rollbacks the moment the last Russian troop leaves Ukraine (other than Donbas and Luhansk, that ship has sailed).

So you mean to provide Russia with a more stable platform from which to invade again in say, 5 years?

You don't change any of the context that led Russia to invade in the first place. You leave intact an aggressor who has repeatedly and consistently expanded. You gave them Crimea and hoped that would appease them. You tolerated their aggressions in eastern Ukraine. Now you will just give them Donbas and Luhansk and hope once again to appease them?

That strategy might be better accepted if the world hadn't seen 1938-1939.

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