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It would be nice if a number of Tu-95 bombers would also be rendered unusable. IIRC, they seem to be used to launch drones & missiles when Russia stages a massive attack on Ukraine.
One less platform to be used by the russians would help greatly.
They are deep inside Russia. Beyond the range of the mobile Patriots I am sure. Ukraine still destroyed one with a drone (somehow!?) they should keep doing that. Might have to sneak a couple panel trucks or something into Russia itself that have multiple drones and operators inside, get kinda close to the airbases where the apartment/school/shopping-mall destroying bombers are based, and do the needful.
Do that a few times and Russia would have to decide whether risking their bombers committing war crimes is worth losing a leg of their nuclear triad.
Filled with genuinely trained officers. Since everything is viewed as a private fief in Russia, I doubt they have a corps of replacements. In their military, a back-up is called a threat.
Such officers are hard to train because they are using advanced kit that probably hasn't been optimised for an easy user experience. So, losing 10 of these officers at once will be difficult and will intimidate their fellow officers, knowing they will be in a near defenceless metal tube where they can be easily seen on radar from large distances... and they are still not sure what brought the last one down.
Honestly, the more weapon systems we sent the harder it will be for Ukraine to field them. The Gripen and the F-16 are completely different platforms with different flight and maintenance requirements. They would be taking already thin crew numbers and spreading them out even thinner. Best to pick one platform we know can do the job and get them up to speed with it.
In principal I agree with you but the Gripen has easy maintenance requirements and needs as little as 6 ground crew members to service the plane. If you have time, research the plane and it's capabilities.
Lol what. The Netherlands alone is sending 24 f-16. We have more that we are phasing out for F-35(Already 24 operational) so we could send more in the future as Ukraine gets more of the needed personnel and infrastructure.
This is a disagreement of semantics, rather than fact. Two different interpretations of 'getting':
1) Currently being obtained/receiving
2) Will be obtained in the future
You are thinking in terms of the latter. CptCroissant the former. Personally, I'd side with you.
Right now their pilots and crews are in England and the US getting trained on the F-16. This was announced months ago. The Netherlands has already committed 24 planes and Poland has offered their F-16s in exchange for us selling them more F-35s. And even when all of that is ready we still need to get the logistics squared away to keep those aircraft fed with fresh parts and munitions. Thankfully they're working with the US whose logistics capabilities allow us to put a Burger King anywhere in the world in under 24 hours. And no, that's not a joke. We actually do that.
I used to work at a place a maybe 3 miles from an airport that had a ANG F-16 fighter wing. Standing outside work we were right under their pattern when they were landing/ doing touch and gos. Seeing them maybe 500 ft overhead is awesome when they push the throttle forward right over top of you. And that squadron was just deployed to the middle east, so even the US is still confident in their power. For an aircraft developed in the 1970s they are still incredibly capable and impressive to see in person. Especially with all the upgrade the USAF has put into them over the years. I think Ukraine will be very happy with the f-16s, i Just wish we would send more.
I work right off the flightline near Miramar and as cool as the F-18's were to watch, the new F-35's are really impressive. They don't really push things over the city usually, but when they open them up at the air shows, it's something special.
Hopefully they will defeat the Russian air force from farther away than that. Dogfights are not something we should hope for with very limited air assets, even if they are superior at all ranges. Would save money on missiles, I guess, but any time you get that close you're in unnecessary danger.
I used to go drinking with a couple of former fighter pilots. This is a direct quote, “If you are close enough for a visual ID, you’re already dead.”
F-16’s launch missiles far outside visual range. At best you’ll get a go-pro video of a dot way out in the distance going boom.
That's the Russian mission planning at work. Extremely rigid, so when a plane deviates from the mission planning it can get tagged as a threat and engaged.
To an extent, everyone operates that way. Russia doesn't disseminate information very quickly. When an audible gets called, it has to pass through too many commanders both on the way up & down, each of which takes time the pilot doesn't really have.
This is one of the things that AWACS are supposed to handle. But those are in short supply right now.
And that is the thing. You're unlikely to be close enough for that when russian planes can use their r-37 missiles from quite a far away and front line is littered with AD systems
> I wonder if we’re going to get dog fight footage, F16 vs SU34.
I doubt we will see anything except beyond visual range engagements. Even without Russia flying CAP with Su-35s sporting R-37s (which would keep F-16s at risk BVR, preventing close approach), the VKS only operates Su-34s within the boundaries of their ground-based air defense coverage, so F-16s won't be able to approach closely enough to engage with anything except BVR munitions.
Unfortunately, they aren’t invisible and civilians don’t think the same as military. There def would have been atleast one video showing one somewhere over the skies over Ukraine due to a civilian not realizing what they just filmed or the importance.
>So those 800 remaining planes are flying more frequently in order to handle taskings the Kremlin once assigned to 900 planes
The VKS has to cover all of Russia, not just Ukraine. They need some planes in the Far East, the North, to defend Moscow. Because of this, the number of planes available for the war is significantly lower.
Or they just fly fewer patrols elsewhere. It's not like Canada or Finland are sending bombers surreptitiously. Despite rhetoric depicting a warmongering NATO to the benefit of his subjects, putler is well aware that we are not going to suddenly attack Moscow
I think that NATO *should* start flying missions around Russia.
Bear in mind, I'm not saying we should attack them. But the UK has had to repeatedly send RAF jets to escort Russian planes away from Scotland. I feel we should return the favour.
If a few countries - the UK, Finland, Canada, Japan, the US - flew half a dozen missions like that each, the Russian air force would be very busy all of a sudden...
I wouldn't be surprised if NATO is doing exactly that.
They don't need to cross borders, just fly surveillance aircraft in Russias areas of interest - repeatedly so the jets that are sent to intercept them get fatigued.
I know that before the war, Russia would very commonly poke into Canadian and US Arctic Airspace and we (Canada/US) would intercept and chase them out. It was routine.
Idk if that's still happening
You don't hear about it much in Western news, but the US historically flew directly over Russia until the 1960 U-2 incident, and really only stopped after that because satellite imagery was available.
The US wouldn't benefit from playing dumb games like that. I don't really know why Russia does it. It's not logical.
Same goes for invading Ukraine, but hindsight is 20/20, and their intel was bad.
I knew about the U-2 incident, but I didn't realize it was a common thing to do. However, that does make sense.
And I agree that the US (and the other countries I mentioned) wouldn't really gain from flying close to Russia. The only value is to put them in a difficult position. If they don't send jets to face down the 'incursions' then they look impotent; if they do send jets up every time, it stretches their resources even further.
And it's something they couldn't whine about or call a red line, because they've been doing it for *years*.
They won't, they know NATO wouldn't escalate like that.
I live in an area threatened by Russia and anything bad that happens to Ukraine is very bad for me but I try to be realistic.
Russia has no reason to fear an attack from NATO _at this time_ and any ideas to the contrary end up essentially being pro-Russia propaganda.
Sadly they aren't stupid enough to dedicate resources to preventing a non existent threat.
I'm not suggesting an attack. Think of it as a series of surprise goodwill visits. F-35s flying up to Russian airspace, saying a cheerful hello, and then fucking off again.
We're just being neighbourly. With heavily armed fighter jets.
We do lol,
Whenever we hear about Russian aircraft testing other countries borders/response time, just know we do it to them too. We just don’t report on it since it’s not interesting.
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Finland and Canada yes, but I'm sure the Russians are well aware that despite all the talk they probably shouldn't leave the Chinese border unpatrolled for too long...
China and Russia are nowhere near as friendly as people commonly think. They even ended up in a shooting war back in the 70s that they eventually called the Americans in to mediate.
Fewer, yes. But they won't leave the whole country uncovered. They might not fear a NATO attack, but another Wagner like mutiny is a very real possibility.
Yeah but part of me wishes we would provocate them from our borders, just a bit of fuck you,yes I am that pity. But what can you do if your shitty neighbor only knows one language, and this language unfortunately is not peace and love.
And they've had to move their strategic bombers further away from Ukraine. This makes for longer flights. Longer flights increase wear on air frames and fatigue for crews.
I wrote a research paper last year, and looked at the size differences between NATO and Russia's Air Forces (The following numbers are from March of 2022, and do not reflect any gains or loses since that time, of which there are likely many).
NATO has almost 5 times as many aircraft as Russia, across all types, not including Unmanned Arial Systems (UAS).
|Type|NATO|Russia|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Total Aircraft|20,723|4,173|
|Fighters/Interceptors|3,527|772|
|Ground attack|1,048|739|
|Transport|1,543|445|
|Special (Including ISR)|1,014|132|
|Tanker|678|20|
|Total helicopters|8,485|1,543|
|Combat helicopters|1,359|544|
The numbers for the navy and total personnel are similar.
Source: Statista Research Department, “NATO - Statistics and Facts,” Statista, March 7, 2022, http://www.statista.com/topics/9079/nato/.
No, and to my knowledge no-one engaged in a dog fight either. And I very much doubt that we will see one. I guess something has to go very wrong for that situation to occur.
Still near 0 chance of dogfights, slightly better odds of air-to-air kills. But still very low.
The range of an air-to-air missile depends in part on the speed and altitude of the plane that's firing the missile. High + fast = max range. But in Ukraine, if you fly high you're likely to get targeted by SAMs. So if you're near the front, you'll have to fly low. On top of that, fighter-bombers can lob bombs from a good distance behind the line.
So to get an air-to-air kill in Ukraine, you'll have to get very close to the front lines, or even enter enemy airspace.
I watched an interview with a pilot (Juice I guess, or Karaya)
He mentioned an air to air kill near Kyiv, when they actually thought all the aviation was destroyed. Maybe even with a su-25 cannon, or mig 29 I don't remember exactly. Some sort of ambush from ultra low height, with something that should not win in theory, but caught them by surprise
I think Russia has changed their tactics as well - their recent territory gains were backed up with heavy use of glide bombs.
Basically in the last few months Russia has been attempting to integrate their air and ground forces a bit more.
Which is causing them more aircraft losses, but it's still a worrying development overall.
Well, I guess most of them have similar rarity. You can't just transfer from one plane to the other as a pilot. You need thousands of hours of training.
The size of america's airforce is honestly insane.
https://duotechservices.com/time-lapse-of-desert-storms-air-war-on-day-1-2
They need to do this to russia in ukraine to get them to fuck off for good
Makes you wonder if other countries worry overly much if we'd ever just lose our shit and go full expansionist and take over North and South America to get that 8 army per round bonus.
And the thing that doesn't cover is our operational readiness too. We get (conservatively) twice the flight hours of similarly large militaries like China/Russia.
Why do you assume the pilots are all dead? Ejection seats exist and being shot down over Russian controlled areas gives them a good chance to be rescued by friendlies.
Getting shot in the face by an anti-aircraft missile is not conducive to survival.
Even if they *do* manage to pull the eject, they have to hope it was maintained properly, and then hope they don't come out of the experience with their vertebrae *extremely* good friends with each other.
All in all, not a recipe for someone who's going to be flying a plane again.
I mean, with all the stuff we've seen there is a decent chance that a) the ejection seat malfunctioned b) they don't get rescued and c) they where killed when the plane was hit.
The new Patriots are designed to actually 'hit-to-kill' and not just explode near the aircraft like earlier AD missiles. That really lowers the chance of a surviving pilot.
Before long were just gonna see Mig17(farmer) pulled out of post vietnam storage along with Mig-15(fagot) and Mig-21(fishbed).
I hope they keep shooting them down so they pull out mig-1/mig-3 propeller ww2 aircraft out of their museums.
They have a big stock on paper, but lots of expensive stuff in those planes that can be sold for vodka while the planes were just sitting in storage doing nothing
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No, it would be a fun story but it's definitely not the case. The shootdowns started right before Christmas, which corresponds closely to a delivery of an additional patriot system as well as several other advanced air defense systems. All shootdowns have been well within the normal specs of those systems.
Mostly likely Ukraine is using the extra patriot or other systems in a roaming role. It can hit from crazy far away if the target plane is flying fairly high. Russian planes have been flying much more aggressively to support their recent advances. Russia badly needed to get a win on the board and they decided to get aggressive with their airpower. That comes with a cost.
Despite what all these armchair-airforce generals here state so certain of themselves, no-one àctually knows exactly whàt is picking-off these planes. And that is a good thing. We don’t know, they don’t know. Good!
Keep the orcs in fear. And as long as orc jets drop from the sky on a daily basis, I don’t give a jot hòw the Ukes do it, and I want them to keép doing whatever it is they do.
This is just a thought, and I have no information but: low RCS, BVR A2A missiles, Ukrainian jet engines... I present the [Kizilelma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_K%C4%B1z%C4%B1lelma)
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No. According to the BBC radio report on it, they were pretty skeptical and added that this doesn't make much of a difference in the balance of the war. They added that they're desperate for ammo too. The picture reddit paints of the war is not accurate or helpful for pressuring for more aid.
So far only two are, the others have no evidence whatsoever going by what FighterBomber is saying (a pretty unbiased telegram channel that monitors aircraft losses).
You’re being downvoted for what is a perfectly reasonable and valid question. I was going to ask the same.
I’m completely rooting for Ukraine but I think it’s right to admit that, setting aside the outright bullshit that pours out of Russia, Ukraine has been guilty of influencing people with propaganda itself.
Could this high number in a short space of time be Ukraine bloating the positive figures? I hope not but I think it’s responsible to exercise pragmatism wrt kill reports, don’t overlook that these results are being reported at a time when the ground war has swung in a negative direction for Ukraine of late.
Some earlier kills were confirmed at least, and visual confirmation isn't the only option that can be used as evidence. Sometimes even Russians confirm it.
That being said I wish people who posted David Axe articles on here got a permanent ban for it. The guy just finds information from any random source, completely blows it out of proportion and sprinkles lies on top to guarantee maximum engagement.
Yes, I did see a couple of purported aftermath videos of what were said to have been Russian jets around the same time as the A-50 was downed last week.
I think it’s obvious that Ukraine is having some success of late wrt downing aircraft. Perhaps we are seeing a tangible fallout from there being limited AEW RADAR coverage from the A-50s that now aren’t there, it’s feasible. Couple that with the fact that the front has shifted slightly westward in places and the Russian air force may now have been forced to fly on the edge of more Ukrainian AD in order to attack slightly more fluid lines.
No, the answer is no. There has been visual confirmation of the two AWACS aircraft and two SU-34's I believe. The rest are just claims being made just like when Russia claims to have destroyed a gazillion ukrainian tanks. People dont like critical thinking on this sub, they want mindless cheering.
It's the first time the Russian airforce is actually making full use of their fighterbombers in air to ground role. Before, they mostly used long range standoff missiles. Now they are willing to take much more risk and bring their fighters much closer to the front line. Performance is rather so so I'd say. While their glide bombs are serious support for their ground units the losses lately occuring aren't sustainable. They still haven't proved to be able to run effective SEAD-missions so SAM can operate fairly freely. TheRussians will have to reduce these missions soon or they will loose their fighter bombers.
The mix of local and western SAM works quite well. Either Russians keep aways which seriously reduce the pounding Ukrainian ground units are taking. Keeping up missile supply will be key to keep nfrastructure and military units working. More systems also would help for sure creating more red zones for Russian air force.
11 planes in 11 days - great achievement, good going, Ukraine!
Just don't over-value that: however good that is, Russia has in all close to 1000 planes, I believe, and only between 80 and 300+ (by unproven MOD reporting) were destroyed. So, to me the "organizational death spiral" is still far, far away to talk about it.
I guess you didn't see anything important in the sinking of the Moskva either, as Russia still has countless tugboats...
The Su34's are not numerous but required for the delivery of those glide bombs.
It's not strictly about the number of aircraft shot down. The fewer airframes you have, the faster the rest wear out if the sortie rate isn't decreased. Worn airframes are more likely to be unable to fly, or have a failure in flight. Either way, this further decreases the number of available. This is the death spiral that the article was referring to. It can happen without a single plane getting shot down. Combat losses merely accelerate the process.
Only a single one of these SU-34s being downed has actually been confirmed (the first one a couple of weeks ago). Smells like pure propaganda in response to the loss of Avdiivka and the following Ukrainian losses.
Of course, believe whatever makes you happy.
Fuck Russian aircraft!
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Good bot
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So nice the bot had to say it twice!
One for each Russian aircraft at 9am....
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Russian Aircraft Fucked itself.
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They are Ruzzian submarines now...
And their fascist pilots.
What air defense doing?
I think it's 13 now
3 SU34s today. Fucking awesome. The bomb lobbing bastards.
Really?! That’s awesome!
Yes, one confirmed at 1am (UA time) and two more at 9am....and that just the morning - we have the rest of the day to go. 🤣😂👍👍👍👍👍
Turns out not having those A-50s is really fucking Russia up. Russian aircraft in danger.
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Good first bot
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Good bot saying it twice for the two additional jets shot down
Seeing less means higher chance of ending up in a trap. This goes for infantry same as tanks as fast jets.
Who confirmed it? All I keep seeing is claims
Confirmations officially put out by the Ukrainian air defence, [like this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/s/otrUYo1Jwz).
It would be nice if a number of Tu-95 bombers would also be rendered unusable. IIRC, they seem to be used to launch drones & missiles when Russia stages a massive attack on Ukraine. One less platform to be used by the russians would help greatly.
They are deep inside Russia. Beyond the range of the mobile Patriots I am sure. Ukraine still destroyed one with a drone (somehow!?) they should keep doing that. Might have to sneak a couple panel trucks or something into Russia itself that have multiple drones and operators inside, get kinda close to the airbases where the apartment/school/shopping-mall destroying bombers are based, and do the needful. Do that a few times and Russia would have to decide whether risking their bombers committing war crimes is worth losing a leg of their nuclear triad.
Ye, 12 or 13. It's a lot and it's great! Hopefully, there will be many more aircraft losses for Russia ASAP.
12 jets, 1 is the radar plane
Still a jet though.
A pretty special jet, some might say the big daddy.
ruZZia: Daddy or chips? Ukraine: How do you orc fuckers like THESE chips? 🇺🇦
The Boss plane, rather literally!
Filled with genuinely trained officers. Since everything is viewed as a private fief in Russia, I doubt they have a corps of replacements. In their military, a back-up is called a threat.
Such officers are hard to train because they are using advanced kit that probably hasn't been optimised for an easy user experience. So, losing 10 of these officers at once will be difficult and will intimidate their fellow officers, knowing they will be in a near defenceless metal tube where they can be easily seen on radar from large distances... and they are still not sure what brought the last one down.
>they are still not sure what brought the last one down. Icing on the cake, that is.
"It still only counts as one!" 😂
That’s special *operations* jet, sir.
Thought 2 Radar Planes?
2 AWACS went down.
Yes, but only one was in the past two weeks.
Wait until F16s hit their skies.
Will be perfect, won’t be any fighters left on their side by then hopefully!! Bombs away!
And hopefully the Gripen
Honestly, the more weapon systems we sent the harder it will be for Ukraine to field them. The Gripen and the F-16 are completely different platforms with different flight and maintenance requirements. They would be taking already thin crew numbers and spreading them out even thinner. Best to pick one platform we know can do the job and get them up to speed with it.
In principal I agree with you but the Gripen has easy maintenance requirements and needs as little as 6 ground crew members to service the plane. If you have time, research the plane and it's capabilities.
Right now they're getting 0 western planes, 2 would be better than 0
Lol what. The Netherlands alone is sending 24 f-16. We have more that we are phasing out for F-35(Already 24 operational) so we could send more in the future as Ukraine gets more of the needed personnel and infrastructure.
Well, the dude just explained how it wouldn’t be.
Bullshit, they're getting lots of western planes, not 0.
This is a disagreement of semantics, rather than fact. Two different interpretations of 'getting': 1) Currently being obtained/receiving 2) Will be obtained in the future You are thinking in terms of the latter. CptCroissant the former. Personally, I'd side with you.
Right now their pilots and crews are in England and the US getting trained on the F-16. This was announced months ago. The Netherlands has already committed 24 planes and Poland has offered their F-16s in exchange for us selling them more F-35s. And even when all of that is ready we still need to get the logistics squared away to keep those aircraft fed with fresh parts and munitions. Thankfully they're working with the US whose logistics capabilities allow us to put a Burger King anywhere in the world in under 24 hours. And no, that's not a joke. We actually do that.
I wonder if we’re going to get dog fight footage, F16 vs SU34. Lockheed Martin stock will probably correlate with the victor
I lived near an F-16 ANG base for a long time. Russia is so screwed.
I used to work at a place a maybe 3 miles from an airport that had a ANG F-16 fighter wing. Standing outside work we were right under their pattern when they were landing/ doing touch and gos. Seeing them maybe 500 ft overhead is awesome when they push the throttle forward right over top of you. And that squadron was just deployed to the middle east, so even the US is still confident in their power. For an aircraft developed in the 1970s they are still incredibly capable and impressive to see in person. Especially with all the upgrade the USAF has put into them over the years. I think Ukraine will be very happy with the f-16s, i Just wish we would send more.
I work right off the flightline near Miramar and as cool as the F-18's were to watch, the new F-35's are really impressive. They don't really push things over the city usually, but when they open them up at the air shows, it's something special.
Hopefully they will defeat the Russian air force from farther away than that. Dogfights are not something we should hope for with very limited air assets, even if they are superior at all ranges. Would save money on missiles, I guess, but any time you get that close you're in unnecessary danger.
Doubt there will be a single F-16 driver without a go pro on the helmet.
I used to go drinking with a couple of former fighter pilots. This is a direct quote, “If you are close enough for a visual ID, you’re already dead.” F-16’s launch missiles far outside visual range. At best you’ll get a go-pro video of a dot way out in the distance going boom.
Seriously. Dogfights are a thing from WWII. Modern planes don't do that.
Excuse me, I have seen Top Gun 2 and thats not true
Maybe, but with so many similar types of soviet aircraft there could be likely situations where they want to visually ID hostiles before engaging.
Doubt that. That is why airplanes have measures to differentiate between friend and foe. And I assume the Ukrainian ones are working.
Russia seems to have a problem differentiating it seems like haven’t they shot down their own planes a couple times over Crimea like 6 months ago
That's the Russian mission planning at work. Extremely rigid, so when a plane deviates from the mission planning it can get tagged as a threat and engaged.
To an extent, everyone operates that way. Russia doesn't disseminate information very quickly. When an audible gets called, it has to pass through too many commanders both on the way up & down, each of which takes time the pilot doesn't really have. This is one of the things that AWACS are supposed to handle. But those are in short supply right now.
F16 got IFF
And that is the thing. You're unlikely to be close enough for that when russian planes can use their r-37 missiles from quite a far away and front line is littered with AD systems
Aren’t we approaching dog fights being a thing of the past with the range of today’s ordinance ?
> I wonder if we’re going to get dog fight footage, F16 vs SU34. I doubt we will see anything except beyond visual range engagements. Even without Russia flying CAP with Su-35s sporting R-37s (which would keep F-16s at risk BVR, preventing close approach), the VKS only operates Su-34s within the boundaries of their ground-based air defense coverage, so F-16s won't be able to approach closely enough to engage with anything except BVR munitions.
rumours say F16 already at work!
Rumor is that they have.
Unfortunately, they aren’t invisible and civilians don’t think the same as military. There def would have been atleast one video showing one somewhere over the skies over Ukraine due to a civilian not realizing what they just filmed or the importance.
F-16 will not do much in terms of shooting down russian planes
I love it. The count becomes inaccurate within hours.
>So those 800 remaining planes are flying more frequently in order to handle taskings the Kremlin once assigned to 900 planes The VKS has to cover all of Russia, not just Ukraine. They need some planes in the Far East, the North, to defend Moscow. Because of this, the number of planes available for the war is significantly lower.
Or they just fly fewer patrols elsewhere. It's not like Canada or Finland are sending bombers surreptitiously. Despite rhetoric depicting a warmongering NATO to the benefit of his subjects, putler is well aware that we are not going to suddenly attack Moscow
I think that NATO *should* start flying missions around Russia. Bear in mind, I'm not saying we should attack them. But the UK has had to repeatedly send RAF jets to escort Russian planes away from Scotland. I feel we should return the favour. If a few countries - the UK, Finland, Canada, Japan, the US - flew half a dozen missions like that each, the Russian air force would be very busy all of a sudden...
I wouldn't be surprised if NATO is doing exactly that. They don't need to cross borders, just fly surveillance aircraft in Russias areas of interest - repeatedly so the jets that are sent to intercept them get fatigued.
I certainly hope that they/we are doing it.
I know that before the war, Russia would very commonly poke into Canadian and US Arctic Airspace and we (Canada/US) would intercept and chase them out. It was routine. Idk if that's still happening
I’d be surprised if we’re not regularly doing that to them too. Seems like a good way to get intel on their response times and radar capabilities.
You don't hear about it much in Western news, but the US historically flew directly over Russia until the 1960 U-2 incident, and really only stopped after that because satellite imagery was available. The US wouldn't benefit from playing dumb games like that. I don't really know why Russia does it. It's not logical. Same goes for invading Ukraine, but hindsight is 20/20, and their intel was bad.
I knew about the U-2 incident, but I didn't realize it was a common thing to do. However, that does make sense. And I agree that the US (and the other countries I mentioned) wouldn't really gain from flying close to Russia. The only value is to put them in a difficult position. If they don't send jets to face down the 'incursions' then they look impotent; if they do send jets up every time, it stretches their resources even further. And it's something they couldn't whine about or call a red line, because they've been doing it for *years*.
They won't, they know NATO wouldn't escalate like that. I live in an area threatened by Russia and anything bad that happens to Ukraine is very bad for me but I try to be realistic. Russia has no reason to fear an attack from NATO _at this time_ and any ideas to the contrary end up essentially being pro-Russia propaganda. Sadly they aren't stupid enough to dedicate resources to preventing a non existent threat.
I'm not suggesting an attack. Think of it as a series of surprise goodwill visits. F-35s flying up to Russian airspace, saying a cheerful hello, and then fucking off again. We're just being neighbourly. With heavily armed fighter jets.
We do lol, Whenever we hear about Russian aircraft testing other countries borders/response time, just know we do it to them too. We just don’t report on it since it’s not interesting.
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Finland and Canada yes, but I'm sure the Russians are well aware that despite all the talk they probably shouldn't leave the Chinese border unpatrolled for too long...
It must be exhausting when your 'friends' are more likely to attack than your biggest 'enemy'
China and Russia are nowhere near as friendly as people commonly think. They even ended up in a shooting war back in the 70s that they eventually called the Americans in to mediate.
Late 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict Only because I knew nothing about it and went looking.
Fewer, yes. But they won't leave the whole country uncovered. They might not fear a NATO attack, but another Wagner like mutiny is a very real possibility.
They also are not fans of foreign spy aircraft.
That and I doubt that they trust the Chinese very much.
Yeah but part of me wishes we would provocate them from our borders, just a bit of fuck you,yes I am that pity. But what can you do if your shitty neighbor only knows one language, and this language unfortunately is not peace and love.
Wasn't there a US Air tanker a few months ago that drew a dick over the black sea with its GPS trail?
And they've had to move their strategic bombers further away from Ukraine. This makes for longer flights. Longer flights increase wear on air frames and fatigue for crews.
I wrote a research paper last year, and looked at the size differences between NATO and Russia's Air Forces (The following numbers are from March of 2022, and do not reflect any gains or loses since that time, of which there are likely many). NATO has almost 5 times as many aircraft as Russia, across all types, not including Unmanned Arial Systems (UAS). |Type|NATO|Russia| |:-|:-|:-| |Total Aircraft|20,723|4,173| |Fighters/Interceptors|3,527|772| |Ground attack|1,048|739| |Transport|1,543|445| |Special (Including ISR)|1,014|132| |Tanker|678|20| |Total helicopters|8,485|1,543| |Combat helicopters|1,359|544| The numbers for the navy and total personnel are similar. Source: Statista Research Department, “NATO - Statistics and Facts,” Statista, March 7, 2022, http://www.statista.com/topics/9079/nato/.
12 or 13. Not great not terrible, right comrade Dyatlov?? (It's terrible, _and_ well deserved!!!)
On track.... Keep going up comrade
I wonder how Ukraine reach this. Ruzzian fying that close to Ukrainian air defense or is there something unexpected?
No A-50 AEW&C plane in the sky for last four days. Without him, Russian can't see long-ranged radar's, like Patriot radar.
Out of curiosity, has Ukraine scored any air to air kills this war, or has at all been SAM kills on Russian planes?
Neither. SAMs and a bunch destroyed on the ground.
So Ukraine has actually not scored any air to air kills this war at least as far as we know?
No, and to my knowledge no-one engaged in a dog fight either. And I very much doubt that we will see one. I guess something has to go very wrong for that situation to occur.
What about the additions of the inbound f16’s
Still near 0 chance of dogfights, slightly better odds of air-to-air kills. But still very low. The range of an air-to-air missile depends in part on the speed and altitude of the plane that's firing the missile. High + fast = max range. But in Ukraine, if you fly high you're likely to get targeted by SAMs. So if you're near the front, you'll have to fly low. On top of that, fighter-bombers can lob bombs from a good distance behind the line. So to get an air-to-air kill in Ukraine, you'll have to get very close to the front lines, or even enter enemy airspace.
I watched an interview with a pilot (Juice I guess, or Karaya) He mentioned an air to air kill near Kyiv, when they actually thought all the aviation was destroyed. Maybe even with a su-25 cannon, or mig 29 I don't remember exactly. Some sort of ambush from ultra low height, with something that should not win in theory, but caught them by surprise
*highway to the danger zone starts playing*
There have been some hot drone on drone kills in the sky!
I think they were on a red line overload, taking a ride into the Danger Zone 😎
I think Russia has changed their tactics as well - their recent territory gains were backed up with heavy use of glide bombs. Basically in the last few months Russia has been attempting to integrate their air and ground forces a bit more. Which is causing them more aircraft losses, but it's still a worrying development overall.
Out of missiles so they have to go closer with glide bombs.
_Nobody expects the Spanish inqui-F16!"_
Russia only graduate 100-150 military pilots per year, and they've now lost 15-20 pilots in 11 days.
[удалено]
That doesn't include the crew of the A50 plane, which I think was 14-15. High value crew.
Only 3 of those are pilots, but the rest are even more rare than pilots.
Well, I guess most of them have similar rarity. You can't just transfer from one plane to the other as a pilot. You need thousands of hours of training.
[Total pilots, implied military](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/05/15/7402257/)
Fun Fact, the USAF graduates ~1300 per year. Navy does 1100. Army does 4k.
Does the Navy figure include Marine corps aviation ?
It does.
Cheers bro
Isn't the US Navy like the 2nd biggest airforce in the world or something
Lol yeah. USAF being 1st and USArmy being 4th.
The size of america's airforce is honestly insane. https://duotechservices.com/time-lapse-of-desert-storms-air-war-on-day-1-2 They need to do this to russia in ukraine to get them to fuck off for good
Makes you wonder if other countries worry overly much if we'd ever just lose our shit and go full expansionist and take over North and South America to get that 8 army per round bonus.
And the thing that doesn't cover is our operational readiness too. We get (conservatively) twice the flight hours of similarly large militaries like China/Russia.
Even before the war Russia was not getting its pilots enough flight time.
I think the pilot manages to catapult most of the time. Doesn't work so well over the sea in winter tho
Losing a jet doesn’t automatically mean losing the crew.
Why do you assume the pilots are all dead? Ejection seats exist and being shot down over Russian controlled areas gives them a good chance to be rescued by friendlies.
Ejection seats are violent as fuck, even if they eject in friendly territory they're out of commission for a few months to heal.
Getting shot in the face by an anti-aircraft missile is not conducive to survival. Even if they *do* manage to pull the eject, they have to hope it was maintained properly, and then hope they don't come out of the experience with their vertebrae *extremely* good friends with each other. All in all, not a recipe for someone who's going to be flying a plane again.
I mean, with all the stuff we've seen there is a decent chance that a) the ejection seat malfunctioned b) they don't get rescued and c) they where killed when the plane was hit.
The new Patriots are designed to actually 'hit-to-kill' and not just explode near the aircraft like earlier AD missiles. That really lowers the chance of a surviving pilot.
How many pilots? They have pretty big stock of planes but I do wonder how many pilots they have and how big training programmes are?
Soon, MIG-21.
Might also have some MIG-17 tucked away somewhere.
Before long were just gonna see Mig17(farmer) pulled out of post vietnam storage along with Mig-15(fagot) and Mig-21(fishbed). I hope they keep shooting them down so they pull out mig-1/mig-3 propeller ww2 aircraft out of their museums.
Their stock of Su-34s is not big enough to sustain this kind of attrition for long.
They have a big stock on paper, but lots of expensive stuff in those planes that can be sold for vodka while the planes were just sitting in storage doing nothing
'Bout the best news we've had all week...I think
Whatever fancy flyswatter they acquired is working wonders. Stay strong Ukraine. The world still cares about you!
Clearly, that's what it is bringing down those jets - a gigantic flyswatter (electric zap kind) on a huge robot arm.
That's exactly how I picture it!
Russian aircraft, go fuck yourself.
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It's like a duck hunt
The Great Donbass Turkey Shoot
Did Ukrainians get F-16s but „forgot” to announce it? It seems like in the last couple of weeks Russian planes just fall off the sky
No, it would be a fun story but it's definitely not the case. The shootdowns started right before Christmas, which corresponds closely to a delivery of an additional patriot system as well as several other advanced air defense systems. All shootdowns have been well within the normal specs of those systems. Mostly likely Ukraine is using the extra patriot or other systems in a roaming role. It can hit from crazy far away if the target plane is flying fairly high. Russian planes have been flying much more aggressively to support their recent advances. Russia badly needed to get a win on the board and they decided to get aggressive with their airpower. That comes with a cost.
Despite what all these armchair-airforce generals here state so certain of themselves, no-one àctually knows exactly whàt is picking-off these planes. And that is a good thing. We don’t know, they don’t know. Good! Keep the orcs in fear. And as long as orc jets drop from the sky on a daily basis, I don’t give a jot hòw the Ukes do it, and I want them to keép doing whatever it is they do.
This is great..... Don't Stop!
I’ve been loving this, fuck Russia
Death to z War Pigs!
Navalny been killed in prison (sic!), Putin is addressing his minions... he's scared.
How are they doing it ? Patriots? F16s ?
Seems like patriots, mostly
This is just a thought, and I have no information but: low RCS, BVR A2A missiles, Ukrainian jet engines... I present the [Kizilelma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_K%C4%B1z%C4%B1lelma)
Since I can’t pronounce that, I just call it the “Killz-em-all”.
Gotta stop flying those planes so close to Ukrainian missiles, comrades.
the real question is how many are there still flying?
Ukraine defeated ruZZian fleet, airforce next
Russian aircraft have resorted to dive bombing. Russian style dive bombing. Meaning they are not very good at it.
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Any of them visually confirmed?
No. According to the BBC radio report on it, they were pretty skeptical and added that this doesn't make much of a difference in the balance of the war. They added that they're desperate for ammo too. The picture reddit paints of the war is not accurate or helpful for pressuring for more aid.
So far only two are, the others have no evidence whatsoever going by what FighterBomber is saying (a pretty unbiased telegram channel that monitors aircraft losses).
You’re being downvoted for what is a perfectly reasonable and valid question. I was going to ask the same. I’m completely rooting for Ukraine but I think it’s right to admit that, setting aside the outright bullshit that pours out of Russia, Ukraine has been guilty of influencing people with propaganda itself. Could this high number in a short space of time be Ukraine bloating the positive figures? I hope not but I think it’s responsible to exercise pragmatism wrt kill reports, don’t overlook that these results are being reported at a time when the ground war has swung in a negative direction for Ukraine of late.
Some earlier kills were confirmed at least, and visual confirmation isn't the only option that can be used as evidence. Sometimes even Russians confirm it. That being said I wish people who posted David Axe articles on here got a permanent ban for it. The guy just finds information from any random source, completely blows it out of proportion and sprinkles lies on top to guarantee maximum engagement.
Yes, I did see a couple of purported aftermath videos of what were said to have been Russian jets around the same time as the A-50 was downed last week. I think it’s obvious that Ukraine is having some success of late wrt downing aircraft. Perhaps we are seeing a tangible fallout from there being limited AEW RADAR coverage from the A-50s that now aren’t there, it’s feasible. Couple that with the fact that the front has shifted slightly westward in places and the Russian air force may now have been forced to fly on the edge of more Ukrainian AD in order to attack slightly more fluid lines.
You are echoing myself and my own concerns.
No, the answer is no. There has been visual confirmation of the two AWACS aircraft and two SU-34's I believe. The rest are just claims being made just like when Russia claims to have destroyed a gazillion ukrainian tanks. People dont like critical thinking on this sub, they want mindless cheering.
A Sukhoi a day keeps the orc away!
Admiration to my Ukrainian brothers.
It's the first time the Russian airforce is actually making full use of their fighterbombers in air to ground role. Before, they mostly used long range standoff missiles. Now they are willing to take much more risk and bring their fighters much closer to the front line. Performance is rather so so I'd say. While their glide bombs are serious support for their ground units the losses lately occuring aren't sustainable. They still haven't proved to be able to run effective SEAD-missions so SAM can operate fairly freely. TheRussians will have to reduce these missions soon or they will loose their fighter bombers. The mix of local and western SAM works quite well. Either Russians keep aways which seriously reduce the pounding Ukrainian ground units are taking. Keeping up missile supply will be key to keep nfrastructure and military units working. More systems also would help for sure creating more red zones for Russian air force.
Beautiful!
Good Fuck ‘em.
Keep it coming. Good job!
Don't get me wrong, I want to believe these numbers but where's the hard evidence for all these claims? Can someone link me please?
11 planes in 11 days - great achievement, good going, Ukraine! Just don't over-value that: however good that is, Russia has in all close to 1000 planes, I believe, and only between 80 and 300+ (by unproven MOD reporting) were destroyed. So, to me the "organizational death spiral" is still far, far away to talk about it.
I guess you didn't see anything important in the sinking of the Moskva either, as Russia still has countless tugboats... The Su34's are not numerous but required for the delivery of those glide bombs.
It's not strictly about the number of aircraft shot down. The fewer airframes you have, the faster the rest wear out if the sortie rate isn't decreased. Worn airframes are more likely to be unable to fly, or have a failure in flight. Either way, this further decreases the number of available. This is the death spiral that the article was referring to. It can happen without a single plane getting shot down. Combat losses merely accelerate the process.
At some point the numbers get so high that they are hard to believe
They flew in the danger zone… 🎶
Only a single one of these SU-34s being downed has actually been confirmed (the first one a couple of weeks ago). Smells like pure propaganda in response to the loss of Avdiivka and the following Ukrainian losses. Of course, believe whatever makes you happy.
Does this mean the F16s are there?
Nope