[dabigv13]

Long and technical but interesting report on the Russian Air Force and lessons going forward for NATO. The PDF is linked at site below. 

https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/04/russ...imitations

The author of the above report, Justin Bronk, was recently on this podcast, which I also found informative

Geopolitics Decanted Podcast-  How Ukraine Can Survive the Exhaustion of Its Air Defense Stocks

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7d8W9yx...SBMvmtLaQQ


Some takeaways for me- replenishing Ukrainian air defense missiles far and away more important than getting Ukraine fighter jets. But no easy solution for replenishing Ukrainian stocks, as while Patriot is a good system, there are not nearly enough of them to replace S300 like for like. We will be better able to supply medium range systems with RIM7 for their Buks and AMRAAMs for NASAMS, but will be a different more distributed air defense system with less long range layered backup. NATO has operated with air superiority for decades and so air defense stocks are low and more focused on ballistic missile defense, so it's good that Ukraine had such a robust and deep stock of air defenses, though we are now reaching their limit.

VKS would obviously be better able to operate if there is no Ukrainian air defense system or a fragmentary one, but even then they would not be able to be as devastating as a NATO style air force. Would primarily see more dumb bomb usage from altitude, which could be a problem for cities and massed formations. But Russia has probably suffered very high casualties in their ground based air spotting forces for laser guided munitions and Russia is pretty much already doing what they can with precision guided munitions, which are in short supply anyway. And their close air support has never been good, as doctrinally they rely more on ground based fires. Even in Syria with total air superiority, they rarely flew sorties with more than one or two aircraft, usually using dumb bombs from high up or guided bombs with spotters.

[dabigv13]

Long and technical but interesting report on the Russian Air Force and lessons going forward for NATO. The PDF is linked at site below. 

https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/04/russ...imitations

The author of the above report, Justin Bronk, was recently on this podcast, which I also found informative

Geopolitics Decanted Podcast-  How Ukraine Can Survive the Exhaustion of Its Air Defense Stocks

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7d8W9yx...SBMvmtLaQQ


Some takeaways for me- replenishing Ukrainian air defense missiles far and away more important than getting Ukraine fighter jets. But no easy solution for replenishing Ukrainian stocks, as while Patriot is a good system, there are not nearly enough of them to replace S300 like for like. We will be better able to supply medium range systems with RIM7 for their Buks and AMRAAMs for NASAMS, but will be a different more distributed air defense system with less long range layered backup. NATO has operated with air superiority for decades and so air defense stocks are low and more focused on ballistic missile defense, so it's good that Ukraine had such a robust and deep stock of air defenses, though we are now reaching their limit.

VKS would obviously be better able to operate if there is no Ukrainian air defense system or a fragmentary one, but even then they would not be able to be as devastating as a NATO style air force. Would primarily see more dumb bomb usage from altitude, which could be a problem for cities and massed formations. But Russia has probably suffered very high casualties in their ground based air spotting forces for laser guided munitions and Russia is pretty much already doing what they can with precision guided munitions, which are in short supply anyway. And their close air support has never been good, as doctrinally they rely more on ground based fires. Even in Syria with total air superiority, they rarely flew sorties with more than one or two aircraft, usually using dumb bombs from high up or guided bombs with spotters.