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I doubt this was the rationale because (i) they continued to target a lot of civilian infrastructure and (ii) Ukraine continues to have enough AA to turn sortie
by jonathanstrange 4y ago
I doubt this was the rationale because (i) they continued to target a lot of civilian infrastructure and (ii) Ukraine continues to have enough AA to turn sorties deep into Ukrainian territory into suicide missions. Russia might be able to perform some real SEAD, it's a very dangerous threat to Ukraine, but this would come at substantially higher costs of losing expensive fighter jets that cannot be replaced for several years. That's the reason why they haven't tried it yet.
- pydry 4y agoSupposedly targeting the electricity network was also more about taking out AA and disrupting electric train logistics. It parallels the way that NATO took out Serbia's power grid in 1999 before executing their bombing campaign, probably for similar reasons (AA): https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/stories/belgrade052599.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans... If the above thesis is correct and these strikes are about degrading AA, the measure of success is whether the russian airforce starts actually taking a role on the front line (recently it hasn't been much used).