Reasons for Failure? Russian Air Force in Ukraine

well welcome everybody to military aviation history i'm chris and let's talk about the russian air force and their operations in ukraine well strictly speaking it's the russian aerospace forces the vks but you get the picture now their performance over in ukraine until this very moment has been called relatively poor by many observer or very poor indeed so i thought you know what let's break that down a little bit talk about the problems that the russian air force have maybe also talked a little bit about the ukrainian air force and what's going on there and to assist me in this i have also invited a couple of experts to give their opinion there so you get a more well-rounded picture so three important things before we start first of all we are in a developing situation things can change and that is why i have added time stamps to the interviews to let you know when they were filmed and as well as that i am filming this very episode right now on the 3rd of march at 11 a.m just so you know that's sort of where the information cut off is as well as that with the ukraine it is like i said a developing situation so there's going to be a lot of speculation that is about what is happening over there right now it's very hard to get an accurate picture in two three weeks weeks time or even in a couple of months time we will know more and partially maybe have better answers to the ones that i can provide now and then the last thing of course from the ukraine uh we're seeing an information warfare happening as well online with the information that is being transmitted from the ukraine through uh through social media also russia through social media and their channels and it's very hard to sort of find good accurate information and also to sometimes validate some of the footage that we're seeing so i'm keeping the footage used from ukraine from the confidence to an absolute minimum because i want to avoid showing something wrong as well as that i should highlight right at the start certain things like the ghost of kiev story which i understand why it happened why there's sort of the mythology that occurred around it but it has now been proven you know to be incorrect now the first moves that the russian had went more or less as expected you would assume them to knock out static radar positions to decrease the ukrainian early warning system that's what they did they used mainly cruise missiles and ballistic missiles for this an opening barrage that essentially knocked out the ukrainian's early early warning systems as well as that they targeted air defense systems like for example the s300 batteries that's a ground or service to air missile system of course and as well as that they targeted runways and and airports in order to crater the actual runways and obviously also in the aim of destroying uh planes that were parked on the airfields and they've done some of that as well although they seem to be have been a little bit less successful in that regard now the next step that we expected to see is the russian air force and the russian forces focusing specifically on the air assets that ukrainians have left namely going after the remaining bases as well as going after all the aircraft with an offensive counter-air campaign as well as of course the remaining air defense systems as well but from what we have seen really in ukraine that didn't happen and since then it appears that well the vks has shown to have a good number of problems so let's go into those first the first surprise is perhaps that the russians have not used their most modern and sophisticated platforms in that great number just yet we've seen very limited use of sukhai 44 models or suki 35 models and although there seems to be a little bit of an increase in there we really have not seen these aircraft going after the ukrainian air force in both air-to-ground and air-to-air respectively the second surprise is really the absence of the vks in general so far so we have seen of course early on strikes by sukhoi 25 models there are some recorded incidents there and they seem to have conducted some limited air-to-ground strikes as well but overall the russians seem to be mostly focused on using helicopters and gunships in their air operations and they have launched some turns out now rather foolish perhaps operations in trying to secure uh forward bases for example with the hospital airport which ended in a disaster for them the third surprise then is that between the opening barrage of missiles and then really the main activity of the russian air force we have seen them giving the ukrainian air force a breathing space of one or two days which really has allowed the ukrainians to first of all get a grip on the situation and also fly their own strikes relatively unopposed uh which has of course then caused uh some of those stories to occur like the for example the ghost of kiev story which has been disproven but the limited activity of the vks has really kept that vacuum open for the ukrainian air force than to launch their own operation and this is really a surprise because if you want to make an offensive counter air campaign work then not only do you have to carry out that opening barrage but you really have to keep the wings on the ground and destroy them there and that really has only occurred in very limited instances the next surprise and it sort of latches on to the ones previously mentioned is the limited fighter cover that the russian air force has provided has allowed ukrainians to fly their own defensive counter-air missions against helicopters even conduct some air-to-ground strikes against russian troops and really um the ukrainian air defenses have also been able to focus mainly on relatively easier targets like helicopters or helicopter gunships rather than having to sort of jostle and wrestle with with russian air force assets and that has allowed perhaps the ukrainians to pool their assets a little bit more and have more conducted or no more coordinated and more concentrated defensive counter-air measures in place against this russian assault that would otherwise have been the case if they would have come in with sort of an overwhelming air presence and then the russian ground troops next to the fact that they didn't really have fighter cover for a couple of days seem to have pushed often ahead of their own air defenses or when they had air defenses with them didn't you know activate them didn't use them didn't really employ them correctly and that has allowed again the ukrainian air force to conduct a couple of strikes that has also enabled drone strike specifically drone strikes also against uh russian air defense assets so now let's talk a little bit about sort of the reasons why these problems exist for the russian air force but before that i of course also want to say that i look forward to all your comments let me know what you think about the ongoing situation how you're analyzing this situation your opinions your feedback your additions i look forward to them in the comment section below and of course if you like these analysis videos if you want to see more also consider supporting uh over on channel memberships for example that gives you early access to videos sneak peeks as well and also we have a discord server with bi-monthly meetings where we get a chat about all things aviation related which is really cool do check that out also as well in the description below but yeah let's talk about the russian air force what are the reasons for this perceived failure this or this this perceived lack of activity that we have there down in in ukraine um i'm not sure i mean that's the thing i want to preface this again nobody is really sure but let's talk about some of the indications that we have and break it down from there because hey no no one of us has a crystal ball so one of the problems that the russians might have right now is the fact that their air force is really sort of split into two specializations you have the air-to-air specialization with you know sukhoi models uh 27 45s 30s as well and then you have the air to ground component and there of course the frog foot the su-25 plays a a strong role as well as of course more modern zukai 3d force but between those two forces which are really specialized in their specific bracket you have very little multi-role experience which now appears to show because they are wrestling with a dynamic situation that they really have not planned for and that they don't really appear to have the assets for next to this limited experience with multi-role we also have some indication that the flight hours that russian pipelines have are sometimes less than half of what western counterparts have especially over in the u.s which again seems to indicate that there is a problem they are trying to keep those pilots really experienced and really in tune with the platforms they are operating of course considering this lack of flight hours and also this lack of multi-role experience doesn't mean that the vks is just a dull sword on the country i mean against static target and since fixed targets against pre-planned targets the russian air force especially with the frog foots with the sukhoi 34 models can bring firepower to the table however in the situation that is was unfolding in the first couple of days of the russian offensive we seem to be in a situation where those targets really don't exist the ukrainians seem to be operating more flexible smaller scale units sometimes or very often well concealed they're maneuvering a lot and the russian air force is simply not equipped in a way that for example a western air force would be equipped in able to operate against that dynamic threat and being always able to sort of change their target on the fly of course when we talk about the latest sukhoi models there is also the fact that the russian air force does have a lack of targeting points of good quality targeting pods i mean they do have those retractable ones right that have sort of a forward-facing cone of vision and they don't really have that much experience with guided munitions as well so pgms except for a small core of pilots and it has been rumored that the stockpile of russian pgms is relatively small which would indicate or give further evidence the fact that both white are using unguided bombs and more on an unguided rockets as well in the majority of their strikes as well and on top of that it does look like we are we are seeing that lack of experience also with calling in air support so one of the things that that russians seem to lack is you know coordination and communication between ground assets as well as their error assets using something like a forward air controller or a jtag and that means that there are even fewer chances for air and ground to cooperate during this operation then the sort of second reason we might bring to the table is that because the planning of this operation was in such a way that a mass formation of the russian army would be marching into the ukraine that the russian air force was perhaps a little bit worried also because of that lack of coordination with ground forces that by sending in many many aircraft there aren't going to be susceptible to friendly fire from over happy trigger-happy uh air defense platforms that move alongside the advancing russian columns that is one speculation that we might have had of course it requires a lot of coordination between air defense assets as well as air assets in order to create sort of spaces where air assets operates freely or mixed or air defense assets are used uniquely and perhaps there was simply not enough time to to really uh develop that coherence system in the run-up of this uh this operation and that of course brings me to the next point and that is the limited time to plan it appears from sort of the the things we hear over from the russian preparation of this operation that it really was conducted within the preparation generally speaking was conducted within a week or maybe two weeks at maximum and that is very little time in order to get an air force actually ready to conduct such an operation it's not just about just having the planes ready on the runway it's also about building up the stockpiles for the individual air regimens to use you have to develop pre-flight plans you have to like i said integrate it into the wider operation and maybe that just wasn't there wasn't just the time for that that's possible and then one of the other things that one of the conversations i had with an expert uh richard shimouka over from the maclaurier institute in canada he actually stressed that maybe this is also indicative of more structural problems more systemic problems in not just the russian air force but also in the russian defense industry russian modernization has been a huge topic right you see you know talking about new concepts like a2ad these systems that are being developed you know which you know uh vladimir putin is very happy to kind of show off and extol right and you know they negotiate operations like in syria and whatnot you see a developing competency that kind of i would say rivals the west but certainly you know apes some of those kind of developments and you know we're developing reconnaissance concepts and all that right and then this happens air defense that doesn't seem to exist the russian air force is m.i.a you know like there's is nowhere near like what they should be able to do yeah exactly right it kind of begs the questions like well is that is that really the reality of the actual armed forces as a broader point you know in my sort of research or understanding i've never really fully understood the russian economy defense economy it just seems it just seems that there's so much they have to do yeah with solar like this is not this is 10th 11th largest kind of economy worldwide this is not like this is economy that's small in germany they have a very large submarine force and navy which they are spending more and more on they have a huge nuclear weapons arsenal right then you have this army that's extremely large you know like these all cost money these all cost resources and you have i think it's somewhere around four sorry 40 billion dollars a year something around that for their day especially since 2014 they've been under a sanctions regime right and so their ability to take things from the west or not take but certainly buy or acquire sensitive military technology isn't there whereas you know in the united states or whatnot you have a large civil sector that can provide dual use technologies like you know jet engines or whatnot right and russia's to have access to that so when you understand the scale of this right you were always kind of wondering well what is there and that doesn't even get into the other kind of the elephant in the room is what about russian corruption like this is you know transparency national i think it really this is one of the most corrupt states in the world right and there's no reason why the defense sector would not be you know uh would not be afflicted by anything it should be worse because this is a state enterprise most largely made out of state funded enterprises so you would noticeably see that there and and so now we've seen this in practice now we've actually seen you know russian um operations in practice in full relief where they can't really control the message and it's really ugly right it's you know you're looking at you're just looking at equipment that just looks dilapidated right in a lot of cases right uh and you know decisions and operations that just they just seem shoddily planned and shortly executed and i i get the point like you know this is you know they've been given a very limited amount of time and and and that but a lot of that even that can't explain some of this another reason that i've seen some people say is that russia knew that perhaps there was a risk of running into more severe opposition than they expected and that they're limiting the forces that they use in the initial strikes maybe they even expected nato to take a more hard line to be honest i'm a little bit doubtful of that whether that's really the case but perhaps it does indicate the fact that next to some other reasons why the russian air force doesn't really show up maybe they do keep certain very specific assets like the sukhai 34s and the cigar 35s more in reserve to see really what is going to happen they just expected their other platforms to be enough for this type of operation and finally and i just mentioned this for the sake of conclusion maybe they just assumed that the ukraine is going to collapse within 20 48 or 72 hours maybe that was their assumption maybe they just said well we don't really need to plan any sort of really detailed air strike package for this operation maybe that factors into it as well it's worth remembering really that the russian air force has roughly 300 aircraft in striking distance of ukraine and that is amount of firepower that the vks can theoretically depending on whether these assets are prepared can use in the coming days and perhaps weeks and there is of course to worry that now that resistance ukrainian resistance has been very strong that the vk has is going to take a more heavy-handed approach and also going to be dropping munitions not just on uh battlefield targets so in the open field but we have also seen more bombing of of course cities and that has caused the conflict to escalate even further but much of what we're going to be perhaps seeing in the coming days and weeks will depend on the preparations the russian air force does at this very point in time and that is going to define the options they have in the air as well as uh how they're going to be supporting the assets they have on the ground in order to give you another opinion of how things might evolve in the air domain between both the russian air force as well as the ukrainian air force i've also invited justin bronk from the royal united services institute to give his analysis of the situation but we're likely to see you know sort of continued drumbeat of bombing against the the encircled cities particularly kharkiv and marupo um in in the coming days and potentially kiev once the assault on that actually gets underway but it it may well be that it continues to be in kind of quite small waves with quite small numbers of aircraft dropping mostly unguided weapons from medium or higher altitude and at medium or higher altitude they are vulnerable to the remaining ukrainian surface to a missile threat which is basically some sa-8 so book and and um goa plus a few sa-15s including one that they captured whether they can use it or not i don't know and if the russians don't have the capacity to do what against that sort of threat an air force like the usf also the raf or um particularly someone like the israelis would do which is fly in large enough numbers with decent self-defense packages and with standard jamming capabilities or standoff jamming protection from something like a growler or a prowler to bait out a launch um if if there is a threat there and then when something does launch to immediately attack it with all the other aircraft in the region but if the russians aren't comfortable operating in really big strike packages that would enable them to have this sort of overlapping cover for with escorting fighters would see it you know in effect capability um even if it's with unguided weapons then they may not be able to do that and um either they'll continually take a low level of losses or they might have to do what they're doing currently just at a larger scale which is operate at low level but you're right in the in the the threat range for all of the man pads so the shoulder fired stingers and igglers um which not only the ukrainians have quite a few of already but have been being supplied actively over the last few days by western countries if they can't actually pull themselves together and do a proper sea ad suppression of enemy air defenses campaign to hunt you find isolate hunt down those remaining medium range threats then yeah we might see a fairly uncoordinated vks action equally it may be that i i'm wrong and perhaps they are just holding back because they were so unprepared that it's taken them a week to spin things up and they may come into operation in larger numbers and do something more like what we expected uh the ukrainian air force uh has you know put up a magnificent uh defensive show in the sense that they they're continuing to fly although they've taken very heavy losses their fast jets have been restricted to flying very very low altitude sorties um because the russian long-range air defense threat and initially presumed fighter threat meant that basically to be survivable they had to fly very low um and they're continuing to do that what that means is that their their kind of situational awareness pictures is pretty limited um especially given that they've lost their um ground-based radars although they may well be getting some measure of early warning from nato they've had success with the tb2s the biracial tb2 uavs um this is is more evidence of a really really poor level of coordination for between russian ground-based air defense troops and the rest of the army than it is any particularly notable kind of attributes of the tb2 but they've managed to um in the first few days in particular managed to surprise russian sam units couple of sa 11s which were just apparently inactive in traffic jams or in kind of holding points in forests which again points to very very poor morale and organization on the part of the russians because you know if you're stuck in a column with potential air attacks coming in even it's just uavs and you're operating a sam system why on earth wouldn't you have your radar going um and so they seem to have been totally unaware of most these videos that the tb2 was there but in the last few days we're seeing the russians move a lot more air defense forward kind of sort themselves out a lot in that sense um so for example the large columns going towards kiev are now a very very difficult target for the ukrainian air force because there's a lot of air defense along that column and also because it's relatively near within the sort of coverage at medium altitudes of the the s 400 systems along the belarusian ukrainian border um any conventional you know fast jet attacks with say sukhoi 25s which they have a few left or 24s or their theirs you know for example cannon or bomb attacks with their mig-29s or sukhoi 27s would have to come in at very low level conduct you know really very old-school kind of visual weapon drops and the amount of um concentrated anti-aircraft fire and man pads and air defense that they would encounter probably means that that's now a closed kind of option for them so the tb2s that they have left will no doubt continue to operate in parts the country where the air defense picture kind of gives them gaps but i think we'll see them increasingly less effective um going forward than we saw kind of in those initial few days when the russians really just didn't have their didn't have their act together so usually at this point i say i hope you enjoyed this episode but you know and given the current light i mean this is a conflict we could all have done without but i do hope that you got something from this video and if you did let me know in the comment section below if you want to add anything let me know down there talk amongst yourself how do you perceive the situation currently what is going to happen what has happened and what's your take on all of this i mean hopefully the there is going to be a resolution to this conflict sooner rather than later although honestly i wouldn't know what the resolution could be at this point in time but yeah i hope that you got something from that remember there's another episode coming out this month on most likely this month on the messerschmitt bf110 i also have a video started up on the f45 as well as on the greatest or the largest airborne operation during world war ii so look forward to those and if you do want to support these kind of videos you can do so for example via channel memberships where you get certain perks it is up to you of course completely voluntary

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 593,688

Keywords:

Id: _WGcfkqzUI4

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Cytrus01]

Did you see that combat video from inside one of these piece of shit helicopters? Crew of three in like a 1960’s movie. Two more guys in the back with AK47’s clipped on a rack as air to ground weapon. Fucking Joke.

[u/greywar777]

I dont think the Russian air force feels like they have good communication with their own ground forces. Including having any faith in their own air defense systems not shooting them.

And there are obviously some horrific supply issues. If those supply issues also extend to their airforce this will rapidly get ugly.

[u/ekidak]

"The pride of our nation our hybrid air force that mostly stays on the ground!"

[u/Cytrus01]

Reason for failure:,RUSSIAN AIRFORCE SUCKS

[u/BigSilverOrb]

My butt and back hurt thinking about that landing.

[u/XniL]

It's simple, theres a reason thousands of anti tank and anti air shoulder fired weapons are consistently being flooded into Ukraine. They're cheap and SUPER effective.

[u/Mercutio999]

Are those helicopters Army or Air Force?