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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

#81

Post by jcranberry »

A foreign affairs article had this to say before the conflict began:

>Airstrikes would not go entirely uncontested. Russia’s air force lacks experience in suppressing or destroying enemy air defenses, and it rarely uses missiles that are designed to destroy radar. As a result, Ukraine’s meager air defenses could still pose a challenge. But Ukrainian air defenses are in short supply, and they would be unlikely to provide effective cover for most of the country’s ground troops. They would be quickly overwhelmed.

>The opening air campaign would probably be short. Unlike Western militaries, which concentrate firepower in their air forces, Russia puts the bulk of its firepower in its ground forces, so it would quickly proceed to a ground campaign.

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

#82

Post by oh_sigh »

whimsicalism wrote: post #39
boc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is "in love with Shock and Awe" because it worked extremely well. Russia doesn't have the air power to pull it off, which is why they are running a version of Deep War, but without a second echelon to prevent their supply lines from getting picked off. In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the in…

Russia absolutely has the air power to pull it off, you clearly haven't seen Syria. My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically. e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of r…

I downvoted you because this line of logic is deployed, I believe, by race obsessed westerners who are privately fuming that a shooting war has sidelined their culture war for a few weeks. "Don't forget about me and the things I care about!"

Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. By the way, how many news reporters didn't make the claim that people only care about this because blue eyed/blonde haired people are involved?

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

#83

Post by bestnameever »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Just because the US is in love with 'Shock and Awe' doesn't mean everyone else sees it as the appropriate methodology in all circumstances.

I don't think it is just about shock and awe. It's about controlling the airspace. Controlling the airspace has advantages during conflict outside of bombing.

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

#84

Post by ukraineally »

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?

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

#85

Post by MiroF »

coughupalung wrote: post #75
whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia absolutely has the air power to pull it off, you clearly haven't seen Syria. My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically. e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of r…

It seems like you're trying to shoe-horn in an entirely different point? How does maintaining air supremacy as a military tactic relate to mass casualties?

You can't destroy anti-aircraft guns located in civilian areas without killing civilians.

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

#86

Post by Banana699 »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #16
watwut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war is already in the indiscriminate killing phase and moving towards just destroy city phase. Should be there in few days. Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.

> Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars. Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes. Don't see why it would be any different this time around.

>Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes

Huh? when have that ever been true? European religious wars have been huge bloodsheds, communist regimes routinely genocided their own (often quite homogenous) populations, Lebanon's civil war saw neighbors shooting at each other.

The truth of the matter is : when people want to fight, they will find something that makes their enemies different and alien, because it's uncomfortable to imagine yourself in the place of the dead body that was previously a living human.

Race and Blood just so happen to be very convenient to latch on, because they're immutable (for now) genetic characteristics that make the gulf between you and your enemies look huge, a very desirable property in a dehumanization tactic. When people don't have those, they start latching on less immutable but nonetheless difficult-to-change things like religion, language and culture. And when people don't have those either, they start latching onto who their enemies voted for in the last election or their stance on , which are very mutable but also very numerous and can always be found and used as basis for dehumanization, their mutabilitiy and arbitrariness notwithstanding.

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

#87

Post by desireco42 »

It is rather simple, they didn't want to really destroy UAF, but were hoping after initial attack that a lot of them would surrender and switch side, as there is a lot of unhappiness in Ukraine over how they treat Russians, right wingers and pro-nazi groups with guns.

So they expected a lot of infrastructure will be available for them to take over. As we know, this didn't happen and now they have to destroy it. Honestly this is not good for Ukrainians as they will now suffer for real.

I found this site provides somewhat better analysis of situation, as well as The Hill and Breaking Points for example.

http://www.iswresearch.org/

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

#88

Post by notahacker »

brimble wrote: post #25
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Just because the US is in love with 'Shock and Awe' doesn't mean everyone else sees it as the appropriate methodology in all circumstances.

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…

I can imagine a considerable problem with the command structure is that if you've got a war that forces are badly prepared for and reluctant to fight in, you have to tread much more carefully with the orders you give your small number of highly trained (and relatively smart) pilots based on home soil than your large number of dispensible conscript troops you've driven into the conflict (or your gung ho special forces). Easier for them to disobey, and much more cause for alarm if they do, and no matter how dedicated they are to following orders, there are fewer pilots and planes to risk than armoured personnel carriers, artillery units and dated tanks.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

oh_sigh wrote: post #82
whimsicalism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia absolutely has the air power to pull it off, you clearly haven't seen Syria. My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically. e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of r…

I downvoted you because this line of logic is deployed, I believe, by race obsessed westerners who are privately fuming that a shooting war has sidelined their culture war for a few weeks. "Don't forget about me and the things I care about!" Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wo…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

mstipetic wrote: post #78
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…

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.

You may be exaggerating but there is some truth in it, and it applies to many areas of science. The growing specialization means your knowledge is deeper but lest vast. For many classes of problems you just use a pre-built solution as this is the easiest and most common way. But rest assured, the people who work on defense system know very well what they are doing.
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