Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

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No - the first day of the war Russia went to secure Hostomel airport as a staging ground to launch the attack on Kyiv, but UKR shot down all the helis carrying Russian Special forces causing the assault to fail. Russia quickly realised its airforce was ineffective against highly mobile MANPADS
 
Grim5 said:
I've always wondered why Russia did not use its airforce to its advantage. In the first day of the invasion they had very few aircraft in the air, when on paper Russia should be able to field hundreds or thousands of aircraft.

It took a while to work out why and the answer is they can't. They overbuilt their logistics a long time ago. Back in WW2 there was a saying the US had in the pacific - what was the point of building lots of planes if you can't get them to the fight.

Russia may have a lot of aircraft on paper and even if I take that at its face value and assume the numbers are right and the aircraft are all operational, the reason Russia couldn't use them is they don't have the logistics for it.
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I still find it a bit of a mystery - there are some factors though:

They only managed to destroy a partial amount of Ukraine's air-defences in the opening attacks.

Their training has revolved around either small scale counter-insurgency type stuff or all out war, they have relatively limited institutional knowledge and experience there to support large scale, complex multi-layered air operations supporting combined arms. While grossly simplified they have tended to utilise the air force along the lines of fly here, bomb this, return - they tend to have limited real time data on enemy movement (beyond AWACS, etc.) which limits flying more dynamic missions.

Actual combat operational aircraft is well below on paper numbers.

Probably concerns about how well they could maintain discipline - a large scale air operation is difficult to keep everyone on the same page and organised with a risk of pilots getting off-mission and say a bunch of them accidentally invading Polish air space and kicking off a big incident.

I don't think logistics is entirely a problem here - they've managed some reasonably sizeable bomber operations.

These kind of factors have apparently made the Russian airforce somewhat risk adverse, something Ukraine taking the air war to them might risk forcing them to confront, unless Ukraine has the capabilities and free hand to take that side of the war into Russia, it potentially works against them if Russia is forced to address their deficiencies.
 
rumple9 said:
No - the first day of the war Russia went to secure Hostomel airport as a staging ground to launch the attack on Kyiv, but UKR shot down all the helis carrying Russian Special forces causing the assault to fail. Russia quickly realised its airforce was ineffective against highly mobile MANPADS
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The airport was also non usable after the attack.
 
The real worry from this war for the west is how poorly positioned they are to deal with cheap FPV drones and how little we are using them in our own armies.

Was expecting that a folding wing fpv to be employed by the armies of the west, but I suppose they reckon that a western army would have complete air superiority.
 
Abraxaz1 said:
The real worry from this war for the west is how poorly positioned they are to deal with cheap FPV drones and how little we are using them in our own armies.

Was expecting that a folding wing fpv to be employed by the armies of the west, but I suppose they reckon that a western army would have complete air superiority.
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NATO are going to learn a lot from this conflict. I can see Ukraine and Ukranian veterans being highly valued for their experience after the war.

Israel are finding out now as well. They entered Gaza with anti UAV cages already installed.
 
Grim5 said:
I've always wondered why Russia did not use its airforce to its advantage. In the first day of the invasion they had very few aircraft in the air, when on paper Russia should be able to field hundreds or thousands of aircraft.

It took a while to work out why and the answer is they can't. They overbuilt their logistics a long time ago. Back in WW2 there was a saying the US had in the pacific - what was the point of building lots of planes if you can't get them to the fight.

Russia may have a lot of aircraft on paper and even if I take that at its face value and assume the numbers are right and the aircraft are all operational, the reason Russia couldn't use them is they don't have the logistics for it.
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I think it respects its own Air Defence Systems and doesn't think it could safely operate over Ukraine. I really expected a concentrated effort to destroy all of Ukraines Area Air defence systems, but it ended up just being a half hearted attempt and they now seem to lack the concentration of firepower to surpress them
 
jigger said:
It’s how the world works. Plus it is beneficial to see and understand those fringe opinions.
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There is a difference between a fringe opinion or alternative interpretation and posting things which it defies belief even that poster believes what they are saying - often posting stuff you'd have to wade through substantial material conclusively discrediting what they are saying to get to, leading to the opinion they are a bot or just repeating someone else's opinion who has an agenda or is a bot.
 
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Abraxaz1 said:
The real worry from this war for the west is how poorly positioned they are to deal with cheap FPV drones and how little we are using them in our own armies.

Was expecting that a folding wing fpv to be employed by the armies of the west, but I suppose they reckon that a western army would have complete air superiority.
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It’s a threat to most armies, the Russian military particularly. My bigger concern is the lack of munitions production capacity within NATO and the EU.
 
Rroff said:
There is a difference between a fringe opinion or alternative interpretation and posting things which it defies belief even that poster believes what they are saying - often posting stuff you'd have to wade through substantial material conclusively discrediting what they are saying to get to leading to the opinion they are a bot or just repeating someone else's opinion who has an agenda or is a bot.
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Yeah, good points. OcUK forums has been referred too as social media a few times and we are knee deep in spam.
 
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jigger said:
It’s a threat to most armies, the Russian military particularly. My bigger concern is the lack of munitions production capacity within NATO and the EU.
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The lack of willingness to ramp up munition production as would be appropriate and complacency as to preserving the skillset and tooling for production is very concerning.
 
Rroff said:
The lack of willingness to ramp up munition production as would be appropriate and complacency as to preserving the skillset and tooling for production is very concerning.
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We will see what comes of it all, you can bet even 40 years ago there would already be a dozen designs being submitted to the MOD for effective cheap strike drones, and the best one would have been produced by two guys in a shed strapping a HESH round to some ply-wood or something.
 
PermaChanged said:
I see a Ukrainian has beaten the sniping record for distance from target, impressive regardless of the luck also involved in such a shot - 3800m away!
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A few months ago I watched a CNN video who were talking to a Ukrainian sniper team and their experiences. At one point in the video they showed them practising on a field and one of the snipers muzzle brakes kept falling off, when asked the reporter was told it was worn out from all the use it had been through.
 
chaparral said:
Where would Ukraine be able to hide these F16 planes plus a runway so russian doesn't blow them up while there sitting on the ground
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Given the size of an F-16 plus how inaccurate Russia's missiles are I'd say a safe bet would be to leave them out in a field, post their GPS co-ords on Facebook and livestream the planes to YouTube, should be safe.

Joking aside, it's not like Russia haven't been desperately trying to destroy Ukraine's Scalp/Storm-Shadow capable Su-24s on the ground, I doubt smaller targets is going to make it easier.
 
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