this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Can someone ELI5 why Russia isn't able to send 10 jets for every 1 that Ukraine has? (I mean it's good they haven't, it's just that we're led to believe countries like the US, Russia and China have ginormous armed forces and when it's actually come down to it it's been a 2 year long war instead of what was supposedly going to be an immediate annihilation with overwhelming forces flattening out ukraine)
Because modern air war has little if anything to do with dogfighting (planes fighting planes with guns). It is all about using missiles to hit targets. Both on the ground and in the air. And those missiles can also be fired from the ground. SAMs (surface-to-air-missile) are used to hit planes, drones, other missiles. Also MANPADs (portable shoulder fired missiles) pose a threat to aviation.
In an air superiority battle overwhelming air power is used to take out the SAM batteries. This is difficult and costly. Something neither Russia nor Ukraine are currently able to do. So both are using jets in a minimal capacity.
Recently Russia has ramped up the usage of jets to hit entrenched targets on the front line. Which has predictably resulted greater losses. And relatively meager gains.
Russia has a limited supply of working jets, and limited supply of good pilots. Which they need elsewhere across their very large country and in other places (Syria).
In addition, Russia pulled back its air operations not because of Ukraine jets, but because of ground based air defense (missile that shoot down planes). Trading pilot/plane for pilot/plane is good for Russia, but trading a pilot/plane for a missile is a bad trade for anyone.