Putin’s New Major Problem for Russian Military Revealed (Fighter Jets Edition)

Whichever way you assess the war in Ukraine these days, you'll probably be left wondering the same thing as everyone else. What on earth has happened to Putin's infamous air force? Fighter jets like this supersonic medium-range fighter-bomber aircraft, the Su-34, or this Su-57, a multi-role fighter capable of aerial combat as well as ground and maritime strikes, should be dominating the skies over Ukraine. But instead, they're either seen fleeing the battlefield or ungracefully falling onto the ground in flames. Try as they might, Russian combat aviators have failed to establish any kind of air superiority over the battlefield thus far. Today, we'll take a look at a few reasons why, starting with something called manpads. Don't be fooled by the name, these things have Putin's aircraft retreating left and right, and a quick dive into one of the most revolutionary periods in the history of military air power, the jet age. The coming of the jet age in the late 1940s ushered in profound changes in the field of aeronautics. Jets could fly faster, climb higher, and travel farther than their piston-powered predecessors, feats that would forever transform the commercial aviation industry. They would have major implications for military air power too. Jet propulsion was supposed to make air power king. If you could outrun the enemy in the skies, you could theoretically enjoy unfettered air superiority over the battlefield. At least that was the idea. Sound-shattering increases in aircraft speeds motivated designers to swap traditional guns for air-to-air missiles, their only hope of ever shooting a supersonic jet out of the sky. Missiles not only remain the preferred weapon for air-to-air combat, but revolutionized the very nature of air defense itself. Today, air defenses rely almost exclusively on surface-to-air missile systems, or SAMs, to prevent hostile air attacks. Impressively, technological advances in the 1970s made it possible to furnish vulnerable infantry with their own portable handheld anti-aircraft missiles too. Manned Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, are simple and cost-effective shoulder-fired rockets that lock onto aircraft using infrared homing. They can be taught to new users in a matter of a few minutes. Useful, right? Putin thought so too. Knowing Russia's numerically superior air force would play a central role in the opening phases of its invasion of Ukraine back in February of 2022, Western nations rushed thousands of MANPADS into Ukrainian hands to shore up their air defenses. These included American Stinger missiles, surplus Soviet eyeglass, and British laser-guided high-velocity Starstreak systems. The gamble paid off. Cheap MANPADS made it much harder for Russia's air force to establish aerial supremacy, imposing steep, asymmetrical costs on Russian pilots who could no longer safely approach priority targets in Ukrainian airspace. For the price of one $60,000 to $80,000 Igla, Ukrainian soldiers can down a $36 million Su-34 bomber or an $85 million Sukhoi Su-35S fighter. That's real bang for your buck. This has had real repercussions all over the battlefield. Modern combined arms warfare hinges on effective cooperation between all service branches – air, armor, artillery, and infantry. Because Russia has thus far been unable to provide active, continuous air cover for its ground units, tanks, logistic convoys, artillery, and infantry have been repeatedly caught out in the open and destroyed over the course of the war. A spectacle played out almost daily in combat footage littering social media for the entire world to see. Here's the bad news, though. Despite Putin's failure to establish air dominance in Ukraine, this does not mean that Russian aircraft are not present over the battlefield or that Ukraine enjoys its own air superiority. Far from it. In a recent interview, Ukrainian troops on the front lines around Bakhmut told reporters that Russian aircraft still fly over the battlefield almost every day, sometimes a few times each day, but MANPADS have drastically reduced the extent to which they can linger over their targets. Here's how it usually goes down. Most overflights last only a few seconds. Fighter bombers flying in pairs or groups of four ingress to a target area at low altitude, maybe 50 meters or less, and then lob rockets and bank left or right and return back to base. Rather than hover over the front, far slower helicopters tend to operate similarly as airborne artillery platforms, approaching the contact line, firing their salvos of unguided rockets, and departing as quickly as possible. This has made it even harder for Ukrainian infantry to shoot down Russian aircraft. Constant vigilance is required since little warning is given. One soldier provided insight into the process. When the infantry shouts, Incoming! and hides in the trenches, you have to run out and try to find the enemy's plane or aircraft. It doesn't matter if the enemy is shelling you or if it's calm, your response has to be highly focused. And you have to have perfect sight and hearing to find a target at a distance of 3-5 kilometers. From the moment you've heard the sound, you literally have 3-5 seconds to run up and throw the manpads on your shoulder. Since timing is everything, concealed Ukrainians tend to target slower Su-20 fighter bombers and helicopters like the Mi-8. Hefting an 18kg Igla onto your shoulder while sprinting out to the open, and get a lock while the target zips overhead, then launching the missile knowing you're in mortal danger all within a span of 15 seconds or less, can you imagine how difficult that must be? The decentralization of air defense made possible by manpads like the Stinger has helped limit the effectiveness of Russian airpower, but it hasn't blunted it altogether. According to former Staff Sergeant and Green Beret David Bramlett, a combat veteran who recently spent 11 months fighting the Russians in Ukraine, Russia could still turn things around if Western support wavers. Let's hope that doesn't happen, but even if it does, there's a chance Putin will take care of his air army's downfall all by himself. You see, lucky for Ukraine, Russia also has its own incompetence to thank in part for its lack of air superiority. Recently, accidents have taken their toll on Russian aircraft, with six crashes alone registered over the span of two months in late 2022. In September, a Russian Air Force Su-25 attack aircraft crashed just after takeoff after entering a left turn. Experts believe the crash was likely due to a technical fault or a pilot error. The pilot did not eject. A month later, an Su-25 fighter bomber, careened into the courtyard of an apartment building in Yesk, a Western port on the Sea of Azov, during a training flight after its pilot ejected. The devastating crash injured 25 and killed at least 15 civilians, three of them children. According to Russian state media, the accident was caused by an engine fire sustained during takeoff. Just a week later, another Su-30 fighter entered a vertical dive and smashed into a two-story residential home in Siberia, killing its two pilots in a fiery explosion. It was the second such fatal incident in six days, involving a Sukhoi fighter plane. No civilians were killed. But the crashes don't end there, and they are happening on a wider scale than you may know. The avalanche of accidents reflects the toll the war has had on Russian aviation writ large. Reflecting on the aerial crashes, Michael Bonnet, an engineer and analyst at Rand Corporation, noted that, what's interesting is that even aircraft not involved in the Russian invasion are crashing. In an interview with Business Insider, he said that, while mechanical failures are expected in aircraft over time, a rapid increase in fleet-wide mechanical failures may indicate that something fundamental has changed. So what has changed? The war has placed immeasurable strain on Russian aviation. Colossal losses contributed to Russia's tendency to adopt more risk-averse tactics, playing a subordinate role to Russia's ground troops, according to Guy Plopsky, an Israeli defense analyst and Russian expert. In just eight months, Russian combat aviators flew, on average, 150 sorties a day for a total of 34,000 combat sorties, but the number of sorties has greatly diminished. From an early high of 300 per day, Britain's Ministry of Defense estimates that now Russia probably conducts tens of missions per day. Very few of those sorties actually enter Ukrainian airspace. General wear and tear can be expected in any war, but the immense toll has seriously impacted Russia's pool of 7,500 relatively inexperienced pilots, who are said to receive roughly 100 hours of flight time per year, one-third less than their NATO counterparts. The lack of training limits their ability to conduct the type of massive air campaigns Western armies almost take for granted. According to Justin Bronk, an air power analyst, since Russian pilots are trained almost exclusively to fly in pairs and have little exposure to larger exercises, get relatively few flying hours compared to most NATO fighter crews, do not have support from tankers on most operations, and are not doctrinally trained for large air campaigns, it is perhaps unsurprising in retrospect that the Russian Aerospace Forces, VKS, proved incapable of conducting a Western-style war against Ukraine. Of a pool of around 300 modernized and 400 other frontline jets, Russia has sustained 72 air losses during the war, each costing tens of millions of dollars. The losses also include pilots, which are difficult to train and even more difficult to replace. Just ask Britain's RAF, itself suffering from a shortage of trained air crews, where it most recently had more F-35 Lightning II fighters than it had pilots, amid a five-year waiting list for students to reach the front line. But the lack of qualified pilots is only one part of the problem. Russia also lacks skilled mechanics or the proper tools to make and fix the parts needed to keep Russia's modernized air fleet up to snuff. The fact that its pre-war stockpiles are dilapidated and rapidly diminishing only adds to the problems as the demand for specialized parts and repair tools grows. Russia has tried to mobilize greater amounts of manpower to address the human part of the problem, which, as you can imagine, has its own issues. Just like training pilots, you have to train the repair crews to diagnose and maintain extremely complex computer avionics and technical systems. That is, if you can get them. Herein lies another problem with Russia's air force. While mobilization certainly affected the small and medium-sized companies that make aviation parts, the random crashes and accidents began happening prior to mobilization. The shortage of manufacturing tools was already going on, which means Western sanctions may have had a role to play. Russia has been left in an economic and industrial vice by the West, squeezed out of its many traditional import-export markets where it has received the critical components it needs to keep its airplanes airworthy. Modern aircraft are outfitted with a deeply complex array of electronic systems. Computer targeting, special sights, communication relays, everything relies on critical electronic components previously available to Russia only on the import market. Moscow has previously admitted that it was 15 years behind the rest of the world, producing its own semiconductors, which isn't a good look when so many of today's precision weapons heavily rely on them. Russian manufacturers are now trying to source the components they need on the black market, but in the interim, Western sanctions and embargoes have forced the Kremlin to crack open stocks of its Soviet-era dumb munitions that lack computer guidance. Cannibalizing older pieces of equipment for spare parts is one way to try and stem the tide of aircraft losses, but it's hardly a good one. The result is an ad hoc, hodgepodge approach to combat aviation, hardly a combination any pilot anywhere should ever want to try. Some cases are pretty bad. It's reported that Russian pilots have been forced to tape commercial GPS devices to their cockpits for navigation, one report claimed. There are reports of Russian aircrews being so incompetent they leave the covers on aircraft sensors before takeoff. Another outlet claims their bombing accuracy has a mere 40% success rate compared to the pinpoint precision displayed by Western coalition forces during the campaigns in Syria and Iraq. We don't know exactly how effective Western sanctions have been in dulling Russian air power, but it has certainly played a role in suffocating access to the parts it needs to operate at the top of its game. In a war, every little bit of help goes a long way. There's no out-and-out answer as to why Putin has failed to establish air superiority. It is likely that a combination of factors, wear and tear, stress on older airframes, a lack of pilots and trained aircrews, and Western sanctions have each played a significant role. What we do know is that thanks in part to their own outstanding courage, adaptability and resilience coupled with the material support they've received from the West, Ukraine has managed to do a lot with a little in terms of its own air defence. Talks are still ongoing over the feasibility of supplying Ukrainian aviators with Western fighter aircraft. If this were to happen, we shouldn't expect much to change anytime soon. Much like the implementation of Western main battle tanks, it will take months, if not years, to furnish Ukrainian aviators with the tools they need to become truly proficient on unfamiliar systems like the F-16, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Assault Mirage and other planes. That said, we should never again underestimate the pluck of Ukrainian service members who have a penchant for proving us wrong. Why do you think Russian airpower is failing? Let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe for more military analysis from military experts.