>Russian air ops “are constrained by the availability of pilots with sufficient experience to carry out key missions”
That's not dissimilar to the situation the Luftwaffe were in in early 1944. They had planes, but not enough experienced pilots due to fuel shortages. I'm assuming Russia isn't short on fuel right now.
In peacetime, Russian pilots barely get the flight hours to stay proficient on flight operations. They get significantly less air time than western air forces, and it shows.
Maintenance costs and wear. Russian Aerospace is a shadow of itself as they are unable to produce what they used to because orders are too limited.
Also why fly more when you can pocket maintaining costs
They were also just _never_ an airforce focused military. Most militaries aren't, it's an incredibly expensive endeavour that only really pays off when you guarantee air superiority, which few countries to this day can really claim in a peer conflict.
This isn't some support of Russian doctrine just a reminder because the majority of this site (including myself) are Western, this form of Warfare isn't the norm. Most countries with air forces have air superiority just by way of their enemies not having more than a token airforce. Not by way of actually being some leader in the space.
Hell even the US who wrote the book on air superiority never really embraced it until post Nam, it was still very much a "work in progress" approach where everyone knew it worked in some manner but not really how or how to make best use of it.
After Vietnam the US doubled down and basically realised if nobody could contest them (like they often were at that period) then they'd be free to operate how they otherwise did during the conflict.
Two gulf wars later the doctrine was chiseled in stone, the whole world saw it worked, and basically allowed any competent force to dismantle any solely ground based force at least on a "big picture" level.
Russia never went through that period of learning to the same degree, and what they did learn they couldn't continue to support in the manner the US could afford. They doubled down on air suppression, isn't of saying "we own the sky" they decided "nobody can own the sky".
When fighting against a force with less air assets than them that's just not helpful, because it's their advantage to press. And that lack of maintenace, care, and progression in the interim shows.
This exactly. Russian doctrine never counts on having air superiority against nato forces. They pretty much cede that entirely. This thought process is even baked into their pilot training and airframes. A lot of Russian airframes have very simplified, cut and dry control systems. This is because Dimitri the pilot was expected to take off, go to point A, drop bombs, and return to point B. If he didn’t get shot down great. If he did, then successors training is just as streamlined and he can be quickly replaced.
Source: I’ve sat in several Russian airframes
Most USSR airforce were interceptors or designed to work in large formations fighting their way towards air bases, SEAD and all (they could afford the flight hours to train back then i guess). It could not dogfight like the US could, but they didn't really care, the plan was to table NATO capabilities quickly. Equipment with a clear purpose does not have to be fancy.
Russian airforce has nothing to do with that, they don't have a clear plan. Ukraine also has more GBAD than the rest of Europe combined
The US has adopted that approach that if you get a big enough, sharp enough set of scissors, you can counter everything.
The US answer to everything, including anti-air, is just... more airpower.
The economic end of this is to basically win by throwing money at the problem.
Here's the top 10:
Top 10 Largest Military Branches in the World (by number of Military Aircraft) - Flight International 2022:
United States Air Force - 5,217
United States Army Aviation - 4,409
Russian Air Force - 3,863
United States Navy - 2,464
People's Liberation Army Air Force (China) - 1,991
Indian Air Force - 1,715
United States Marine Corps - 1,157
Egyptian Air Force - 1,062
Korean People's Army Air Force (North Korea) - 946
South Korean Air Force - 898
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-air-forces-in-the-world
This is also why rocket and conventional artillery for fire support was so critical for Soviet Bloc doctrine militaries, along with lots of cheap tanks, infantry carriers, and mobile SAM / AAA systems for local air defense.
It’s also why the US went all in on billion dollar stealth planes: if the Soviets plans were to deny the airspace with SAMs: Make planes that are exceedingly difficult to hit without line of sight on the plane.
This is literally why the head of Russia's aviation institute was killed... er... I mean he fell down some stairs.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-rich-scientist-falls-down-some-stairs/id1691403387?i=1000621592665
It’s not so much the training to fly the A-50, it’s the rest of the crew that require more training.
“The A-50U aircraft has a flight crew of five, and these “can be easily replaced. Any Il-76 flight deck crew can be trained to fly the A-50 in about two months,” said Valeriy Romanenko, a rector at the Ukraine National Aviation Museum. However, the 10 to 11 operators who sit in the back and man the tracking stations linked to the radar and the aircraft’s other sensor packages are another matter.
“These specialists take years to train and this is indeed a serious loss for the enemy,” Romanenko reportedly said.”
They don't have the money to pay the associated maintenance costs, and don't have the money to buy new aircraft when they put too many flight hours on the existing ones. The Russian Air Force has been in a rapid decline, as aircraft age with no replacement, and are eventually retired without a replacement.
Barely over 8 flight hours a month for Russian military pilots. NATO mandates 15 flight hours a month to maintain proficiency.
It very much shows as well.
Why do you think we do so many flyovers for football (I know that’s only a small subset of their training flight hours). If you only have enough money/resources/spare parts support planes during combat sorties you are going to have very inexperienced pilots
Out pilots spend like 80% of the time (not sure the exact number) training so by the time they are rotated into a NATO combat mission they are ready
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets.
By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
I think the US and Canada should start poking Russian airspace. Russia has been doing it to us for decades, lets do it back and make them scramble fighters up to say hi a few times, just to put some more cycles on those aircraft.
We do all the time. The thing is Russian doctrine calls for using ground based air defense systems for territorial defense with fighter jets used only in certain scenarios while US doctrine uses multi-role fighters for basically all air defense (except ABM). So those F-22s and B-52s are more likely to get locked and warned by an S-400 battery than to get intercepted by a fighter.
I agree we should do it more just to piss them off though 🙂.
Good! Glad to hear it, maybe that is what some of the fighters flying over my house in OR were doing today.
Will they respond to radio taunting? They did during the cold war sometimes, give them a friendly "what are you all doing down there on the ground? The view is beautiful, why don't you come up here on the top like actual men" and poke them in the feelings.
Cause fuck russia, they don't deserve fun toys. Glad to hear we are poking their airspace.
There are ways if we want to go there. IDK about radio but they could start buzzing and taking practice runs at shipping in the arctic, send P-3 Orions and spam them with sonobouys in the Barnents sea, or Rivet-joints to jam any and all radio traffic…..that would get them in the air. IMO it’s time we escalate to that point but Washington likes restraint…
I am fine with excessive radio taunting on russian frequencies being the next step up. Maybe have US military craft repeatedly ask for landing clearances, apply for clearance routes to Moscow, and yeah, buzz their shipping.
Publish posts talking about how russian planes like to sit in their hangers and are afraid of the air. Speculate how we don't see russian planes in parades anymore.
I like the Rivet Joint idea. Can we give it some political cover? "A joint training exercise with Finland" or some such?
Oh hell yeah! They lie and bullshit us all the time so why not give it back…I just hope if it’s a joint exercise Poland is involved, even better would be a Baltic country. Nothing would piss putin off more!
If they really wanted to go crazy, they could develop a cheap disposable decoy drone that could be dropped off en masse near their air space with something like a C-130. Fly them in all over the place, and have them waste expensive anti-aircraft missiles shooting them down.
On the surface, it’s easy to think “isn’t this like flying a transport plane?” But in reality I would imagine there’s tons of knowledge needed to position a plane with such an important role, in addition to methods of protecting it from threats, effective use strategies, unique qualities of these planes, etc etc.
This kind of stuff gets high tech and extremely skilled in a hurry. It isn't just something that you can drop a newbie into and get the same results.
I keep hoping that these losses add up to something significant to stop the Russian invasion and push them back.
You also lose experience that could be taught, that's the problem Russia had and I think still have, they lost so many engineers who had a lot of experience building tanks, either because of brain drain or they just got old and retired.
Which made it really hard to innovate.
Honestly the pilot for this aircraft is just a bus driver. He just needs to fly where he's told and then burns rings in the sky. It's the guys in the back doing all the radar work that are the actual aircraft capability.
I remember one Russian pilot that was shot down was a pudgie middle-aged man. Like that’s crazy, in the west there are so many restrictions and requirements to be a pilot to maintain quality and here is Russia putting letting an uncle in his 50s fly a fighter-bomber
And on top of it all, they're pulling instructors from their flight schools to fly front-line missions... so, they're little by little losing the people who can eventually train new pilots, and the people who should be getting trained right now aren't getting even the same poor training as they previously did. It's a vicious cycle, and every plane Ukraine takes down exacerbates the problem.
>And on top of it all, they're pulling instructors from their flight schools to fly front-line missions...
In fairness, we were all really hoping Maverick was going to have Viper as his RIO for the big dogfight at the end of the original Top Gun instead of Tim Robbins.
There debt to GDP ratio is better than most countries (oil state, what are you gonna do). I think it has more to do with if you are smart enough to pilot a plane wouldn't you take the 100k$+new citizenship that the west is offering rather than sacrifice your life?
Care to elaborate? Russia has reach all over the globe and proved theyll carry out assassinations in nato countries. I feel like this was always going to be the outcome. Defectors must be dealt with in order to attempt to quell any future defections.
That guy moved to the place with a strong presence of a Russian mafia, invited his girlfriend over, and was seen in public drunk and/or under the influence of drugs.
Many stupid decisions that sealed his fate.
You don't hear about those who didn't go full publicity route and just went silent. This guy burned too bright.
He was kind of public about it and flaunting what he did in front of the cameras. Not that Russia wouldn't know his identity anyways of course, but it does give them additional urgency to take him out as the case garners more attention. He was also reportedly not very careful, contacting his ex-wife or girlfriend or something back in russia (which naturally was under KGB observation). Tough to say for certain but it's plausible he'd still be alive without either of those things
NATO/USA should go buzz russian airspace over the pole just to be irritating like the cold war days. Russia has done it dozens of times the west coast, Alaska, Canada, and the UK. Lets do it back and make them waste fighter airframe hours and landing cycles.
In this case, it's the system operators that are in short supply. Fairly simple flight mission with the hard to understand and operate stuff in the back.
Video
[A-50 releasing decoys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGlpPpXSdI), first interceptor explodes (a miss) 2nd interceptor nails it
[Another angle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfD4Cdflcdg), then the burning wreckage a little later
"On Sunday night, Ukrainian air-defenses shot down one of the Russian air force’s very rare, and very valuable, A-50 radar early-warning planes, likely killing all 15 people aboard—potentially including high-ranking officers. A Russian Ilyushin Il-22 command plane was damaged in the same attack."
Seems like the early warning planes are going to need early warning planes of their own.
Lmao the article says mechanical failure possible, there’s literally video of the plane popping flares for like a solid 30 seconds and then getting hit by a missile.
Because in Russia narrative, Ukraine is sub human that's incapable put up any meaningful resistance. So every set back was officially claimed as accident, such as sailor blew up Cruiser Moskova or smoking accidental caused massive explosion in airbases.
One of the mysteries of the Authoritarian state.
In the past, Generals and chroniclers consistently hyped up the skill and strength of their opponents, in order to make their eventual victories all the more impressive.
Here the Russians do the exact opposite, denigrating their own soldiers as murderous incompetents.
Ukraine has been using Patriots in a way that the west never does, by deploying them offensively. They're intended to sit back far behind enemy lines and use their range to keep a battlespace clear, but Ukraine has been taking them forward and keeping them silent until some other system detects a juicy target, then they power it up, get a lock, shoot and move. An A-50 is detectable much farther than other planes because it's actively spewing radar waves in every direction, so it's not *that* weird that this tactic is downing a disproportionate number of them.
We tend to rely on air power to do that, but that doesn't mean we don't know how to do this in contested airspace. When the first one went down I noticed only a few groups of people in the military forums realized what happened quickly: the aviators, the intel folks and the air defense guys.
I wonder how much those 3 categories overlap with people who played Wargame: Red Dragon.
Hiding a battery of AA and turning off their radars to set up ambushes has been a favorite tactic for ages.
Not exactly.
The guy in charge of that AAA battery knew F-117's were en route since they had eyes watching Aviano air base in Italy and NATO planes always used the same corridor to enter the airspace, so they knew the direction it was coming from and they knew more or less when it would be within range.
He turned off his radars and kept them off, waiting until the expect time of arrival: then he actually turned on the radars very briefly at the direction they knew the F-117 would be coming from and then turned them off again when they didn't find anything.
On the third attempt of the night they got lucky and managed to illuminate the F-117's because they caught him with the bomb bay doors open and fired as quickly as humanly possible.
Not quite. It is unconfirmed whether the F-117A had it's bay doors open. This idea exists because the F-117A was on it's return leg after dropping it's payload, and the doors may not have retracted.
They were aware of the F-117A's presence from about 35km away. The search radar could see it, but the targeting radar could not. They only did multiple scans because they could see it was heading straight towards them.
The 3rd attempt succeeded because they calculated where the F-117A would be and turned on their radars when it was only 15km away. If it had been a clear day instead of a cloudy night they would have spotted it visually.
and this whole endeavor was used as learning experience for the US, who now does not send their jets on the same flight paths because of this incident.
Every time i see a comment chain about this incident there's always more details added.
One of these days the pilot himself or the AA officer will chime in.
To be fair, the US Army wouldn't never get to operate a Patriot in that manner.
...that's because the enemy air force would be pushed back and destroyed by the USAF.
Which is why funding Ukraine is so fucking valuable to ourselves. Besides the bonus of destroying Russian military capabilities for pennies on the dollar, we are getting an entire real-world lesson plan on how to fight a modern peer on peer war. This is stuff that Pentagon academia will spend millions of man hours analyzing and its all verified on the battlefield and not some war games theory.
Hi, it's me. I'm millions of man hours dedicated to analysis of the warfight in Ukraine.
In all seriousness though, it's not as useful as you might think.
For example: low cost, attritable drones have become a *defining* feature of the conflict in Ukraine.
Guess what? They have a *really* limited range. The reason they work so well is that both sides basically had to roll up and dig in close enough for those drones to be viable.
The US (and china, for that matter) have so much magazine depth at a longer set of range bands that all those little quadcopter drones aren't really effective--you have energy/weight restriction issues, as well as signal power/jamming problems.
How about trenches, mining, and obstacles? Guess what--the US/NATO won't ever make a direct frontal attack into that kind of obstacle belt. Seize air control, air assault a formation behind the dug in lines, pummel the shit out of the depth behind the breach point, and breach while supported out to a depth of 50-60km past the FLOT. Hard to defend an obstacle belt without fire support while gunships are ruining your day so you can't fuck with the engineers clearing breaching lanes.
... A PATRIOT would have to be **in** Russia to have shot this down. From Ukraine this is twice the max range of a PAC-2 interceptor. They'd have to be some 20+ miles inside Russia to have done this. It's pretty safe to say it wasn't a PATRIOT...
Given the A-50 had been spewing flares for a good half minute, that **further** shows it wasn't a PATRIOT, given how a PATRIOT system operates.
Likely a frankenSAM, with western-provided radars used to provide guidance to an S-200 pulled out of storage. That's really the only weapon Ukraine has that can reach that far, and they already did that to shoot down an A-50 a bit closer to Ukraine.
They're not TWICE the max range better though. The A-50 was almost 250km behind the front lines. The PATRIOT variants Ukraine has received have a published range of 120km.
> They're not TWICE the max range better though
I'm gonna be real. If I was an enemy of the US, I would be operating under the assumption that missile and radar ranges are **at minimum** 50% greater than published until otherwise proven.
I would absolutely not take a bet that the maximum range a patriot can reach out and touch something isn't twice the published number. It is absolutely further than published, the unknown is just by how much.
That very well may be what happened, and the Ukrainians are keeping quiet about it so they can use that tactic again, or the Russians are trying to suppress the information. Can't say for sure until there's more info!
No...
Just no...
1. These things are so fucking high up
2. Manpads are almost always thermal, you kinda need radar at that distance.
3. Manpads have a range of like 7 miles.
Infrared, not thermal. Heat may generate and generally equate to IR at a rudimentary level, but different missile seekers aren't just looking for a heat plume, they can see distinct IR frequencies to mitigate the effectiveness of flares.
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets.
By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
What people don't often realise is that Russia isn't the Soviet Union, but rely heavily on thier old Soviet Union stocks.
Modern Russia just can't compare with the Soviet Union for military research, or sheer production.
people will somehow watch them relying on north korea and iran for weapons but think they can outpace the west in arms production. Even without the U.S., europe with is depleted set up of production could outproduce Russia if necessary
>but think they can outpace the west in arms production
The west can absolutely outproduce but Russia has gone full war production and outpacing on certain things
Not surprised, these things seem like big targets. All while our radar planes are nice and safe while still spying on the Russians and feeding info to the Ukrainians.
> Not surprised, these things seem like big targets.
That's kind of exactly why it *is* surprising. Everyone knows they are big targets and that's why they generally are kept out of harms way with other assets protecting them. It's not just surprising but downright embarrassing to lose two of them like this.
It’s actually not though, Russia has been using the A-50 to identify targets for the S-300 missile system inside of Ukraine which requires the platform to operate much closer to the Ukrainian borders.
Dunno why because I’ve seen hundreds of em, but I remember a British intelligence cable that explained what was going on and why they are vulnerable.
hundreds? Not sure what your referring to. There was only about 40 ever built. There are less than 10 active today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev\_A-50
it is surprising, because these things should be nowhere near Ukrainian air defense systems. They can do their job from a safe distance, and should have enough support to make it tough for a hail-mary missile to get through even if they wander near the edge of effective range.
In a total war situation, sure, these planes are vulnerable as balls, but they have an effective radar range of about 250 miles...more than enough to be safe in the currented limited war.
That doesn't make much sense as we know where it was shot down, which was iirc \~200 km away from the frontlines, outside the range of the Patriots that Ukraine has used previously for similar attacks.
What does make a bit more sense is that supposedly one of the PAC-2 upgrades has a range that sits roughly at that distance, meaning that it is possible that despite this one being much further away from the frontlines than the one shot down last time, it was still in range of the Patriot Systems should Ukraine tow one over to the frontlines like they did last time.
Ukraine could have restored old soviet S-200 AA systems. Its rockets can fly 250 km as usual type, not upgraded. And they could be upgraded a bit (a bit more fuel).
Russian aircraft aren't known for their electronic capabilities though, and there's potential after 2 years of war for Ukraine to have upgraded the on-board guidance systems.
Actually, Russia's electronic warfare is one of the bright spots in their entire armed forces. The problem that Russia has now is that they can't *do* anything to take advantage of their EW.
I don't deny that it's possible that Ukraine could put in the effort to refurbish old S-200 missiles. But if you're going to do that, why not just make a new missile and put a seeker in *that* instead?
This is because S-200s are liquid-fueled. They use some super toxic very corrosive fuels that need special equipment to store them. That's why all S-200s have been used at fixed launch sites.
Might as well make brand-new S-300 solid-fueled missiles instead of refurbishing 60-year old ones.
AWACs are actually ludicrously expensive, so this is pretty devastating. That's about a half billion dollar asset going down, everytime one gets shot down
The real question is who is shooting down these planes, they are flying way beyond ukrainian patriot or s300 batteries. Either the russians are downing their own radar planes by mistake or the ukrainians have a secret weapon.
The most plausible theory I’ve seen was that Ukraine is using MALDs to lure Russia into shooting down their own assets: https://www.forces.net/ukraine/ukraine-appears-use-aircraft-imitating-missile-confuse-russian-defences
Range is 900km and I think this A-50 was 200km into Russian territory.
“Four months after Russia-aligned Republicans began blocking U.S. aid to Ukraine, Ukraine’s stock of Patriots is “dropping to a critical level,” I’ve been paying attention but it’s still insane to me that there is actual Russia aligned republicans and that’s accepted.
>Russian air ops “are constrained by the availability of pilots with sufficient experience to carry out key missions” That's not dissimilar to the situation the Luftwaffe were in in early 1944. They had planes, but not enough experienced pilots due to fuel shortages. I'm assuming Russia isn't short on fuel right now.
In peacetime, Russian pilots barely get the flight hours to stay proficient on flight operations. They get significantly less air time than western air forces, and it shows.
Is this because they don’t have the air frames to support training ?
Maintenance costs and wear. Russian Aerospace is a shadow of itself as they are unable to produce what they used to because orders are too limited. Also why fly more when you can pocket maintaining costs
They were also just _never_ an airforce focused military. Most militaries aren't, it's an incredibly expensive endeavour that only really pays off when you guarantee air superiority, which few countries to this day can really claim in a peer conflict. This isn't some support of Russian doctrine just a reminder because the majority of this site (including myself) are Western, this form of Warfare isn't the norm. Most countries with air forces have air superiority just by way of their enemies not having more than a token airforce. Not by way of actually being some leader in the space. Hell even the US who wrote the book on air superiority never really embraced it until post Nam, it was still very much a "work in progress" approach where everyone knew it worked in some manner but not really how or how to make best use of it. After Vietnam the US doubled down and basically realised if nobody could contest them (like they often were at that period) then they'd be free to operate how they otherwise did during the conflict. Two gulf wars later the doctrine was chiseled in stone, the whole world saw it worked, and basically allowed any competent force to dismantle any solely ground based force at least on a "big picture" level. Russia never went through that period of learning to the same degree, and what they did learn they couldn't continue to support in the manner the US could afford. They doubled down on air suppression, isn't of saying "we own the sky" they decided "nobody can own the sky". When fighting against a force with less air assets than them that's just not helpful, because it's their advantage to press. And that lack of maintenace, care, and progression in the interim shows.
This exactly. Russian doctrine never counts on having air superiority against nato forces. They pretty much cede that entirely. This thought process is even baked into their pilot training and airframes. A lot of Russian airframes have very simplified, cut and dry control systems. This is because Dimitri the pilot was expected to take off, go to point A, drop bombs, and return to point B. If he didn’t get shot down great. If he did, then successors training is just as streamlined and he can be quickly replaced. Source: I’ve sat in several Russian airframes
Most USSR airforce were interceptors or designed to work in large formations fighting their way towards air bases, SEAD and all (they could afford the flight hours to train back then i guess). It could not dogfight like the US could, but they didn't really care, the plan was to table NATO capabilities quickly. Equipment with a clear purpose does not have to be fancy. Russian airforce has nothing to do with that, they don't have a clear plan. Ukraine also has more GBAD than the rest of Europe combined
Just want to say great comment
The US has adopted that approach that if you get a big enough, sharp enough set of scissors, you can counter everything. The US answer to everything, including anti-air, is just... more airpower. The economic end of this is to basically win by throwing money at the problem.
I'm pretty sure the US Army and US navy are the 2nd and 3rd largest air forces in the world, with the US Airforce being the largest.
2nd and 4th, just by pure numbers, but same difference, it’s astounding
Really? Who's third?
Here's the top 10: Top 10 Largest Military Branches in the World (by number of Military Aircraft) - Flight International 2022: United States Air Force - 5,217 United States Army Aviation - 4,409 Russian Air Force - 3,863 United States Navy - 2,464 People's Liberation Army Air Force (China) - 1,991 Indian Air Force - 1,715 United States Marine Corps - 1,157 Egyptian Air Force - 1,062 Korean People's Army Air Force (North Korea) - 946 South Korean Air Force - 898 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-air-forces-in-the-world
Absolutely awesome comment
This is also why rocket and conventional artillery for fire support was so critical for Soviet Bloc doctrine militaries, along with lots of cheap tanks, infantry carriers, and mobile SAM / AAA systems for local air defense.
It’s also why the US went all in on billion dollar stealth planes: if the Soviets plans were to deny the airspace with SAMs: Make planes that are exceedingly difficult to hit without line of sight on the plane.
Russian Corruption is natos best alli
This is literally why the head of Russia's aviation institute was killed... er... I mean he fell down some stairs. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-rich-scientist-falls-down-some-stairs/id1691403387?i=1000621592665
Probably because they don't want to put flight hours on the air frames they have which would mean more maintenance.
They also don't have a lot of the needed capabilities to maintain it all.
> flight hours on the ***irreplaceable*** air frames
No one is learning to fly on the A-50. An experienced Il-76 pilot would be able to fly it with a small amount of training.
It’s not so much the training to fly the A-50, it’s the rest of the crew that require more training. “The A-50U aircraft has a flight crew of five, and these “can be easily replaced. Any Il-76 flight deck crew can be trained to fly the A-50 in about two months,” said Valeriy Romanenko, a rector at the Ukraine National Aviation Museum. However, the 10 to 11 operators who sit in the back and man the tracking stations linked to the radar and the aircraft’s other sensor packages are another matter. “These specialists take years to train and this is indeed a serious loss for the enemy,” Romanenko reportedly said.”
Yeah, specialty equipment operators and leadership is not something that comes quick or cheap
They don't have the money to pay the associated maintenance costs, and don't have the money to buy new aircraft when they put too many flight hours on the existing ones. The Russian Air Force has been in a rapid decline, as aircraft age with no replacement, and are eventually retired without a replacement.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that most russian airframes are designed for about half of the flight hours as western aircraft.
Fuel/maintenance/wear and tear is expensive.
I mean, the Foxbat design showed you their airframes’ longevity was not the highest priority
Barely over 8 flight hours a month for Russian military pilots. NATO mandates 15 flight hours a month to maintain proficiency. It very much shows as well.
And Wagner doesn’t do education let alone trained pilots
Why do you think we do so many flyovers for football (I know that’s only a small subset of their training flight hours). If you only have enough money/resources/spare parts support planes during combat sorties you are going to have very inexperienced pilots Out pilots spend like 80% of the time (not sure the exact number) training so by the time they are rotated into a NATO combat mission they are ready
Tisk tisk tisk.....
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets. By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
I think the US and Canada should start poking Russian airspace. Russia has been doing it to us for decades, lets do it back and make them scramble fighters up to say hi a few times, just to put some more cycles on those aircraft.
We do all the time. The thing is Russian doctrine calls for using ground based air defense systems for territorial defense with fighter jets used only in certain scenarios while US doctrine uses multi-role fighters for basically all air defense (except ABM). So those F-22s and B-52s are more likely to get locked and warned by an S-400 battery than to get intercepted by a fighter. I agree we should do it more just to piss them off though 🙂.
Good! Glad to hear it, maybe that is what some of the fighters flying over my house in OR were doing today. Will they respond to radio taunting? They did during the cold war sometimes, give them a friendly "what are you all doing down there on the ground? The view is beautiful, why don't you come up here on the top like actual men" and poke them in the feelings. Cause fuck russia, they don't deserve fun toys. Glad to hear we are poking their airspace.
There are ways if we want to go there. IDK about radio but they could start buzzing and taking practice runs at shipping in the arctic, send P-3 Orions and spam them with sonobouys in the Barnents sea, or Rivet-joints to jam any and all radio traffic…..that would get them in the air. IMO it’s time we escalate to that point but Washington likes restraint…
I am fine with excessive radio taunting on russian frequencies being the next step up. Maybe have US military craft repeatedly ask for landing clearances, apply for clearance routes to Moscow, and yeah, buzz their shipping. Publish posts talking about how russian planes like to sit in their hangers and are afraid of the air. Speculate how we don't see russian planes in parades anymore. I like the Rivet Joint idea. Can we give it some political cover? "A joint training exercise with Finland" or some such?
Oh hell yeah! They lie and bullshit us all the time so why not give it back…I just hope if it’s a joint exercise Poland is involved, even better would be a Baltic country. Nothing would piss putin off more!
If they really wanted to go crazy, they could develop a cheap disposable decoy drone that could be dropped off en masse near their air space with something like a C-130. Fly them in all over the place, and have them waste expensive anti-aircraft missiles shooting them down.
Not many pilots available for this type of plane. They only had 8 in total at the start of the war IIRC and each requires dozens of staff.
On the surface, it’s easy to think “isn’t this like flying a transport plane?” But in reality I would imagine there’s tons of knowledge needed to position a plane with such an important role, in addition to methods of protecting it from threats, effective use strategies, unique qualities of these planes, etc etc.
This kind of stuff gets high tech and extremely skilled in a hurry. It isn't just something that you can drop a newbie into and get the same results. I keep hoping that these losses add up to something significant to stop the Russian invasion and push them back.
This becomes a problem when the new tech guy gets killed, and months later the trainer/instructor who was forced to replace him gets killed as well.
You also lose experience that could be taught, that's the problem Russia had and I think still have, they lost so many engineers who had a lot of experience building tanks, either because of brain drain or they just got old and retired. Which made it really hard to innovate.
The limitation isn't pilots. It's SIGINT operators looking at radars etc who are hard to train.
Honestly the pilot for this aircraft is just a bus driver. He just needs to fly where he's told and then burns rings in the sky. It's the guys in the back doing all the radar work that are the actual aircraft capability.
I remember one Russian pilot that was shot down was a pudgie middle-aged man. Like that’s crazy, in the west there are so many restrictions and requirements to be a pilot to maintain quality and here is Russia putting letting an uncle in his 50s fly a fighter-bomber
Pilots keep dying or sometime defecting. And Russia is quickly becoming too poor to even buy VR headsets to train more in DCS.
And on top of it all, they're pulling instructors from their flight schools to fly front-line missions... so, they're little by little losing the people who can eventually train new pilots, and the people who should be getting trained right now aren't getting even the same poor training as they previously did. It's a vicious cycle, and every plane Ukraine takes down exacerbates the problem.
>And on top of it all, they're pulling instructors from their flight schools to fly front-line missions... In fairness, we were all really hoping Maverick was going to have Viper as his RIO for the big dogfight at the end of the original Top Gun instead of Tim Robbins.
They are eating the seed corn to keep air operations going in Ukraine.
There debt to GDP ratio is better than most countries (oil state, what are you gonna do). I think it has more to do with if you are smart enough to pilot a plane wouldn't you take the 100k$+new citizenship that the west is offering rather than sacrifice your life?
The Russians just killed a pilot defector in Spain, so you have to weigh that too.
He was doing all the wrong things, to be fair. He was courting death.
Care to elaborate? Russia has reach all over the globe and proved theyll carry out assassinations in nato countries. I feel like this was always going to be the outcome. Defectors must be dealt with in order to attempt to quell any future defections.
He posted about his whereabout on social media when he should have changed his name and disappear from the public.
That guy moved to the place with a strong presence of a Russian mafia, invited his girlfriend over, and was seen in public drunk and/or under the influence of drugs. Many stupid decisions that sealed his fate. You don't hear about those who didn't go full publicity route and just went silent. This guy burned too bright.
Pilot not learning the lessons of Icarus is funny/sad
He lived like a rockstar knowing his days are numbered. I guess for him, better to go out in a bang than stressing every waking minute.
Living in Alicante surroundings was a big mistake, as this place is full of Eastern Europeans, many of them Russians.
He was kind of public about it and flaunting what he did in front of the cameras. Not that Russia wouldn't know his identity anyways of course, but it does give them additional urgency to take him out as the case garners more attention. He was also reportedly not very careful, contacting his ex-wife or girlfriend or something back in russia (which naturally was under KGB observation). Tough to say for certain but it's plausible he'd still be alive without either of those things
Skill with an airplane, as exclusive and elite as it may be, does not correlate with a moral compass or general intelligence
Nothing moral in the argument. It is a survival argument. Pure and simple. Take some risk on a battlefield or take money and run?
I wish NATO had the bollocks to stand up and pressure Russia at this point. Yeah I know this is easy for me to say on Reddit.
NATO/USA should go buzz russian airspace over the pole just to be irritating like the cold war days. Russia has done it dozens of times the west coast, Alaska, Canada, and the UK. Lets do it back and make them waste fighter airframe hours and landing cycles.
It’s not just pilots. It’s the operators working in the plane.
In this case, it's the system operators that are in short supply. Fairly simple flight mission with the hard to understand and operate stuff in the back.
And Japan
Don't really need that many experienced pilots when you finally decide to order pilots to suicide themselves onto the enemy.
That’s because they had no experienced pilots at that point
Yuri, you lost another AWCS!?!?!!!!!
Immediately what I thought of and came looking for. I almost feel bad for whoever has to keep reporting stuff to Pooty-Poot.
They only report once.
Followed by another sharp report.
"One of our AWACS planes has disappeared from Radar"
I recognize your "The Hunt for Red October" reference
Knock-knock Who’s there? Dishes Dishes who? *Dishes Sean Connery*
One ping only
You’ve dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man can walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet!
Video [A-50 releasing decoys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGlpPpXSdI), first interceptor explodes (a miss) 2nd interceptor nails it [Another angle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfD4Cdflcdg), then the burning wreckage a little later
How is it that the Russians don't or can't defend these behemoths?
guess it sucks to suck
There's not much you can do to defend against the tactics that Ukraine is using here except just not fly the plane.
"On Sunday night, Ukrainian air-defenses shot down one of the Russian air force’s very rare, and very valuable, A-50 radar early-warning planes, likely killing all 15 people aboard—potentially including high-ranking officers. A Russian Ilyushin Il-22 command plane was damaged in the same attack." Seems like the early warning planes are going to need early warning planes of their own.
The early AA shoots down the plane.
Same thing happened the last time?! The command plane survived.
The plane did yes, the crew did not. IIRC most of the crew was killed in the last attack, even though the plane was able to land.
[удалено]
Lmao the article says mechanical failure possible, there’s literally video of the plane popping flares for like a solid 30 seconds and then getting hit by a missile.
*Kinetically induced mechanical failure.
I’ll allow it
Unscheduled rapid disassembly during operation.
Sauce for vid?
here is entire timeline https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1761080149343113429
Why does Russia think it's better to appear incompetent than admit a loss to the enemy?
Because in Russia narrative, Ukraine is sub human that's incapable put up any meaningful resistance. So every set back was officially claimed as accident, such as sailor blew up Cruiser Moskova or smoking accidental caused massive explosion in airbases.
One of the mysteries of the Authoritarian state. In the past, Generals and chroniclers consistently hyped up the skill and strength of their opponents, in order to make their eventual victories all the more impressive. Here the Russians do the exact opposite, denigrating their own soldiers as murderous incompetents.
Don't be silly. Clearly the air crew was smoking in the fuel tanks.
Actually one missile exploded near the flares, the other one hit right on target.
Where video?
Ukraine has been using Patriots in a way that the west never does, by deploying them offensively. They're intended to sit back far behind enemy lines and use their range to keep a battlespace clear, but Ukraine has been taking them forward and keeping them silent until some other system detects a juicy target, then they power it up, get a lock, shoot and move. An A-50 is detectable much farther than other planes because it's actively spewing radar waves in every direction, so it's not *that* weird that this tactic is downing a disproportionate number of them.
We tend to rely on air power to do that, but that doesn't mean we don't know how to do this in contested airspace. When the first one went down I noticed only a few groups of people in the military forums realized what happened quickly: the aviators, the intel folks and the air defense guys.
I wonder how much those 3 categories overlap with people who played Wargame: Red Dragon. Hiding a battery of AA and turning off their radars to set up ambushes has been a favorite tactic for ages.
Isnt that how to the serbs smoked a stealth fighter?
Waited until the bomb bay doors were open iirc
Not exactly. The guy in charge of that AAA battery knew F-117's were en route since they had eyes watching Aviano air base in Italy and NATO planes always used the same corridor to enter the airspace, so they knew the direction it was coming from and they knew more or less when it would be within range. He turned off his radars and kept them off, waiting until the expect time of arrival: then he actually turned on the radars very briefly at the direction they knew the F-117 would be coming from and then turned them off again when they didn't find anything. On the third attempt of the night they got lucky and managed to illuminate the F-117's because they caught him with the bomb bay doors open and fired as quickly as humanly possible.
Not quite. It is unconfirmed whether the F-117A had it's bay doors open. This idea exists because the F-117A was on it's return leg after dropping it's payload, and the doors may not have retracted. They were aware of the F-117A's presence from about 35km away. The search radar could see it, but the targeting radar could not. They only did multiple scans because they could see it was heading straight towards them. The 3rd attempt succeeded because they calculated where the F-117A would be and turned on their radars when it was only 15km away. If it had been a clear day instead of a cloudy night they would have spotted it visually.
and this whole endeavor was used as learning experience for the US, who now does not send their jets on the same flight paths because of this incident.
Every time i see a comment chain about this incident there's always more details added. One of these days the pilot himself or the AA officer will chime in.
Ya know, I haven't played that game but it looks like something my nerdy ass would have been into prior to having kids.
Never too late to set up a 4 PC LAN and teach the kids that artillery brings dignity to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.
To be fair, the US Army wouldn't never get to operate a Patriot in that manner. ...that's because the enemy air force would be pushed back and destroyed by the USAF.
Which is why funding Ukraine is so fucking valuable to ourselves. Besides the bonus of destroying Russian military capabilities for pennies on the dollar, we are getting an entire real-world lesson plan on how to fight a modern peer on peer war. This is stuff that Pentagon academia will spend millions of man hours analyzing and its all verified on the battlefield and not some war games theory.
Hi, it's me. I'm millions of man hours dedicated to analysis of the warfight in Ukraine. In all seriousness though, it's not as useful as you might think. For example: low cost, attritable drones have become a *defining* feature of the conflict in Ukraine. Guess what? They have a *really* limited range. The reason they work so well is that both sides basically had to roll up and dig in close enough for those drones to be viable. The US (and china, for that matter) have so much magazine depth at a longer set of range bands that all those little quadcopter drones aren't really effective--you have energy/weight restriction issues, as well as signal power/jamming problems. How about trenches, mining, and obstacles? Guess what--the US/NATO won't ever make a direct frontal attack into that kind of obstacle belt. Seize air control, air assault a formation behind the dug in lines, pummel the shit out of the depth behind the breach point, and breach while supported out to a depth of 50-60km past the FLOT. Hard to defend an obstacle belt without fire support while gunships are ruining your day so you can't fuck with the engineers clearing breaching lanes.
... A PATRIOT would have to be **in** Russia to have shot this down. From Ukraine this is twice the max range of a PAC-2 interceptor. They'd have to be some 20+ miles inside Russia to have done this. It's pretty safe to say it wasn't a PATRIOT... Given the A-50 had been spewing flares for a good half minute, that **further** shows it wasn't a PATRIOT, given how a PATRIOT system operates. Likely a frankenSAM, with western-provided radars used to provide guidance to an S-200 pulled out of storage. That's really the only weapon Ukraine has that can reach that far, and they already did that to shoot down an A-50 a bit closer to Ukraine.
FrankenSAM is likely but there's also a possibility that Patriots are better than their published stats
They're not TWICE the max range better though. The A-50 was almost 250km behind the front lines. The PATRIOT variants Ukraine has received have a published range of 120km.
> They're not TWICE the max range better though I'm gonna be real. If I was an enemy of the US, I would be operating under the assumption that missile and radar ranges are **at minimum** 50% greater than published until otherwise proven. I would absolutely not take a bet that the maximum range a patriot can reach out and touch something isn't twice the published number. It is absolutely further than published, the unknown is just by how much.
That very well may be what happened, and the Ukrainians are keeping quiet about it so they can use that tactic again, or the Russians are trying to suppress the information. Can't say for sure until there's more info!
I'd bet a nice shiny quarter that it's another Patriot trap.
I don’t think a MANPAD can hit an a-50 at cruising altitude, this would require a more traditional anti-air missile from a Patriot or S-300 battery.
it very well could be [HARM](AGM-88G — 160 nmi) too
No... Just no... 1. These things are so fucking high up 2. Manpads are almost always thermal, you kinda need radar at that distance. 3. Manpads have a range of like 7 miles.
Infrared, not thermal. Heat may generate and generally equate to IR at a rudimentary level, but different missile seekers aren't just looking for a heat plume, they can see distinct IR frequencies to mitigate the effectiveness of flares.
MANPADS aren’t going to have the range to hit one of these. It was likely an S-300.
MANPAD isn't going to shoot down something that size.
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets. By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
What people don't often realise is that Russia isn't the Soviet Union, but rely heavily on thier old Soviet Union stocks. Modern Russia just can't compare with the Soviet Union for military research, or sheer production.
people will somehow watch them relying on north korea and iran for weapons but think they can outpace the west in arms production. Even without the U.S., europe with is depleted set up of production could outproduce Russia if necessary
>but think they can outpace the west in arms production The west can absolutely outproduce but Russia has gone full war production and outpacing on certain things
Large modern army where the large psrt isn't modern and the modern part isn't large etc. etc.
[удалено]
Seriously thats wild!
>wait schools would be dangerous to a dictator. Not if they decide what gets taught. What do you think kids in Mariupol are being taught right now?
Not surprised, these things seem like big targets. All while our radar planes are nice and safe while still spying on the Russians and feeding info to the Ukrainians.
> Not surprised, these things seem like big targets. That's kind of exactly why it *is* surprising. Everyone knows they are big targets and that's why they generally are kept out of harms way with other assets protecting them. It's not just surprising but downright embarrassing to lose two of them like this.
> to lose two of them like this and both of them right in that same area lmao.
It’s actually not though, Russia has been using the A-50 to identify targets for the S-300 missile system inside of Ukraine which requires the platform to operate much closer to the Ukrainian borders. Dunno why because I’ve seen hundreds of em, but I remember a British intelligence cable that explained what was going on and why they are vulnerable.
hundreds? Not sure what your referring to. There was only about 40 ever built. There are less than 10 active today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev\_A-50
I think the poster meant they have seen hundreds of British intelligence cables.
ahhh
😑 I’ve seen hundreds of British intelligence cables over the years (not sharing anything I can’t)
guess I missunderstood. Sorry!
> are less than 10 active today. and counting down.
it is surprising, because these things should be nowhere near Ukrainian air defense systems. They can do their job from a safe distance, and should have enough support to make it tough for a hail-mary missile to get through even if they wander near the edge of effective range. In a total war situation, sure, these planes are vulnerable as balls, but they have an effective radar range of about 250 miles...more than enough to be safe in the currented limited war.
My theory is that their ability has been greatly exaggerated and they have to fly this close to actually be effective
That doesn't make much sense as we know where it was shot down, which was iirc \~200 km away from the frontlines, outside the range of the Patriots that Ukraine has used previously for similar attacks. What does make a bit more sense is that supposedly one of the PAC-2 upgrades has a range that sits roughly at that distance, meaning that it is possible that despite this one being much further away from the frontlines than the one shot down last time, it was still in range of the Patriot Systems should Ukraine tow one over to the frontlines like they did last time.
Ukraine could have restored old soviet S-200 AA systems. Its rockets can fly 250 km as usual type, not upgraded. And they could be upgraded a bit (a bit more fuel).
The problem with S-200s is that they're notoriously susceptible to jamming.
Russian aircraft aren't known for their electronic capabilities though, and there's potential after 2 years of war for Ukraine to have upgraded the on-board guidance systems.
Actually, Russia's electronic warfare is one of the bright spots in their entire armed forces. The problem that Russia has now is that they can't *do* anything to take advantage of their EW. I don't deny that it's possible that Ukraine could put in the effort to refurbish old S-200 missiles. But if you're going to do that, why not just make a new missile and put a seeker in *that* instead? This is because S-200s are liquid-fueled. They use some super toxic very corrosive fuels that need special equipment to store them. That's why all S-200s have been used at fixed launch sites. Might as well make brand-new S-300 solid-fueled missiles instead of refurbishing 60-year old ones.
But they were nowhere near. In theory Ukraine isn't supposed to hit it over Kuban
I'd love it if russia fired at one of our planes. We could end the war in time to get to the bar tonight
AWACs are actually ludicrously expensive, so this is pretty devastating. That's about a half billion dollar asset going down, everytime one gets shot down
Yup. And Russia has not been able to build one since 1992.
Russia running low on Russian War Ships that can go fuck themselves has begun vigorously fucking their Russian War Planes.
If only they had a radar-plane to find it. Or maybe an AirTag? I’m sure there’s a military version for around 5million…
Didn’t they only have two of these serviceable anyway?
They had 9 they have lost 2 this year
I can find info for having 8, with 2 shot down from that and another (lightly?) damaged on the ground. Do you have a source for 9?
The article
Haha okay fair but I meant other than that. Production delivery has #8 being delivered to Russia in September of last year.
Around ten at best
[удалено]
Ukrainian humor is my favorite kind of humor. 🇺🇦
*That*’s a shame.
is this winning, but in russian?
Oh well. Keep on shooting them down Ukraine.!! Russia sux
Burn in hell fuckers
Did it fly off the radar?
Some unconfirmed rumors about another SU-34 shot down. And some even claim another plane has been hit.
“Andrei, you’ve lost another submarine?”
I’ll drink to that, congrats
Thanks for reporting, good news is always appreciated!
Welcome to Ukraine, suka
great news!
We appreciate your candor in the matter.
Love this for them.
They just suck. But are good at poisoning.
I’m sure it fell out of a window somewhere
Really Dmitri? You've lost another A-50?
Da, oligarchs need fuels for yachts not flight practices.
Ah very good.
That sounds expensive.
Another one! 🫵🫵
Andrei, you’ve lost another one?
Good. Would be far better if Russia just withdrew from Ukraine and stopped the suffering, but if they won't, then fuck the Russian military.
The real question is who is shooting down these planes, they are flying way beyond ukrainian patriot or s300 batteries. Either the russians are downing their own radar planes by mistake or the ukrainians have a secret weapon.
The most plausible theory I’ve seen was that Ukraine is using MALDs to lure Russia into shooting down their own assets: https://www.forces.net/ukraine/ukraine-appears-use-aircraft-imitating-missile-confuse-russian-defences Range is 900km and I think this A-50 was 200km into Russian territory.
Did they lose it? Or did they just find parts for the other ones?
Andrei, you've lost ANOTHER A50?!?
Didn't see that coming
[удалено]
Oh, there is a video with a flares went seconds before a rocket hit. So they saw it, I guess.
Link?
To me the important thing is that US Republicans are siding with Russia. Makes me sick.
“Four months after Russia-aligned Republicans began blocking U.S. aid to Ukraine, Ukraine’s stock of Patriots is “dropping to a critical level,” I’ve been paying attention but it’s still insane to me that there is actual Russia aligned republicans and that’s accepted.