4 ms·
Planes are too valuable to risk. Modern interception occurs at 100+ miles, well before visual contact. Enemy air defenses are mapped and no one will fly a plan
by fwungy 4y ago
Planes are too valuable to risk. Modern interception occurs at 100+ miles, well before visual contact.
Enemy air defenses are mapped and no one will fly a plane in range of them. Planes are used to fling things at the enemy from safe positions. Air defenses are too cheap and good to risk valuable planes on. What Ukraine really needs is a massive donation of air defenses so Russia doesn't have free reign over most of Ukrainian airspace. Problem is those air defense systems don't presently exist in anyone's inventory to make a substantial contribution to Ukraine.
- greedo 4y agoRussia doesn't have free reign over Ukraine. They are flying very limited mission sets due to the threat from Ukrainian SAMs. Ukraine already has a decent AD setup with SA2/S300/NASAMs etc, and then an excellent inventory of MANPADs that forces the VKS to use their aircraft as glorified flying Katyusha launchers.
- The_Colonel 4y agoYes, but the Ukrainian air defense gets attrited and missiles get used up. There's no production of missiles for these systems and the western made systems like NASAMS, IRIS, Patriot come too slowly and in small numbers. Air defense is certainly a big worry in the medium term.
- greedo 4y agoNASAM uses AIM-20 (Amraam) missiles, and there are plenty of these in stock worldwide. IRIS-T and Patriot are trickling in, but the big threat currently is the lame Iranian Shaheed drones. Those are better handled by NASAM and even gun based AA then with multi-million dollar Patriot missiles.
- dragontamer 4y agoI have a feeling that the 30mm Bushmaster chaingun with air-burst rounds is being severely underutilized. Not only is it clearly an effective anti-drone weapon, I have to imagine that its an effective anti-trench weapon as well. Small enough to transport in an F150 standard pickup truck, it seems like a gun that will solve a lot of these problems in Ukraine. I know that gun exists because I like browsing weapon systems on Youtube :-). I hope we're giving it to Ukraine.
- greedo 4y agoTargeting is the main issue. At least on the Bradley there's no A2A mode as far as I know. Rheinmetall has some pretty nice kit in the Skyranger/Skyshield systems, but since they're Swiss, they're going to have trouble selling them.
- The_Colonel 4y agoUkraine currently has 2 NASAMS batteries, 1 IRIS-T and no Patriots yet. Even the promised numbers are not enough to cover the Ukrainian territory. I was talking about Soviet made AA missiles for e.g. S-300 and Buks which still represent most of Ukrainian long/medium range AA. > but the big threat currently is the lame Iranian Shaheed drones. The actual big threat is that Ukrainian long/medium range AA gets attrited too much and Russia will be able to use their bombers.
- greedo 4y agoPatriots should be there by summer, and IHAWK launchers as well from Spain (with refurbed US missiles). Italy and France are providing at least one SAMP/T system, which is comparable to the Patriot. That system should arrive this spring. I think Ukraine has been getting reloads of 9M82/9M83 from either Slovakia or Bulgaria. But the issue isn't reloads so much as TELs. Ukraine has pretty deep missile inventories, but not enough TOR/BUK/S300V launchers and radars. Eventually they'll run out of spares and need to rely completely on Western SAMs. I can't see the VKS risking any bombers over Ukraine. They'll continue to use them for launching missiles from Belgograd Oblast, but the PR damage if a Backfire or Blackjack was shot down would be unbearable to the Russians.
- fwungy 4y agoRussia knows where the Ukrainian air defenses are and avoids those areas, but can fly everywhere else, and more importantly can get in range of Ukrainian targets. Ukraine can barely even fly because Russian air defenses are so tight.
- greedo 4y agoRussia doesn't know where the Ukraine AD is. That's why they failed to disrupt them and why the initial air offensive was ineffective. Ukraine continually moves their systems around so that the VKS can't target them effectively. When Patriot comes on line, that will be largely a static deployment around Kiev, but the VKS doesn't have much that can counter Patriot.
- fwungy 4y agoRussian ISR is excellent. If Ukraine was taking out Russian aircraft they'd be screaming it from the mountain tops. UAF AD is completely mapped. They have to run their radars in pop up mode because Russia will lock and destroy them in minutes.
- greedo 4y agoRussia has lost approximately 80 aircraft. They just lost an Su-25 today in Donetsk. If Russian ISR was so excellent, they'd be able to target the launchers and other components.