The performance of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) in the Ukraine war has proved to be the opposite of original expectations. The Russian force failed to disable Kyiv’s defenses in the first few weeks due to the Ukrainian air force and its air defense units' extensive preparations when the shooting began. Ukraine has prevailed since, however, thanks to U.S. and European-provided anti-aircraft weapons and technology.
When Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, most experts assumed that Ukrainian ground forces could put up a respectable defense, but that the air war would prove inestimably lopsided. Russia had spent months deploying air power assets at several points on the border with Ukraine—in Belarus, Southern Russia, and Crimea—in preparation to demolish strategic Ukrainian facilities and destroy the nation’s ability to fight.
It did not quite turn out that way.
“Despite estimates that Russia would establish air superiority within 72 hours, Russian forces have failed to control the skies and have suffered huge aircraft losses that have hindered their air support for the ground invasion,” reads an August 2022 Atlantic Council assessment of the performance of the VKS in Ukraine.
A litany of missions that the VKS either bungled or lacked the training and organization to carry out account for its multiple failures. Critical factors the Atlantic Council’s assessment details include two major shortcomings.
“The Russian forces failed to integrate tactical or battlefield intelligence; they did not appear to know where high-value targets were, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, mobile SAMs, critical IADS nodes, and Ukrainian military command posts,” it read. “[The Russian military] appeared to have no plan for countering Ukrainian uncrewed aerial systems and drones, and those systems took a devastating toll on Russian ground forces. The air campaign appeared to have no overarching concept or unifying theme…as such, Ukrainian air defenses were operating at or near full capability, and they were able to institute huge aircraft losses from the first day of the conflict.”
Failure To Suppress
Last October during the Warsaw Security Forum, the former commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), retired USAF Gen. Philip Breedlove, outlined how few expected the VKS’s failure to take out Ukraine’s air defenses. Russian military doctrine always dictated that neutralizing the enemy’s anti-air assets was a primary goal of any military campaign.
“We assumed Russia still had the skill to perform the suppression and destruction of enemy air defense mission—to locate, track, and neutralize these Ukrainian surface-to-air installations,” he explained. “This is a skill set that air forces, particularly the USAF, practice every day. But if the Russians ever had this capability, they have forgotten entirely about how to do this.”
As the war moved into autumn 2022, Ukraine began to receive batteries of U.S. and European short-range air defense systems, including Norway’s Kongsberg NASAMS complex, followed by the IRIS-T SLM/SLS system from Diehl Aerospace and built in Germany.
They are, however, short-range platforms employing tactical-level air-to-air missiles originally designed for fighter aircraft. The missiles then undergo adaptation for ground-launched, anti-air applications. In the case of the Diehl IRIS-T, the infrared missile is also interchangeable between an aircraft or the ground launcher.
“In operation, the talk-back is between the missile and the launcher—not between the radar system used to provide target coordinates,” a Diehl representative told AIN in noting another of the system’s virtues. “This makes integrating any radar to this system far less complicated.”
Older-generation HAWK missile batteries donated from Spain and the German-made Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard self-propelled 35mm anti-aircraft gun complex have supplemented the state-of-the-art systems. The combination of those, plus the VSHORAD-range weapons like the U.S.-made FIM-92 man-portable Stinger missile, have yielded some disastrous effects on the VKS.
Unacceptable Losses
Even though Ukraine possesses only older Soviet-design air defense batteries for longer-range intercepts of Russian aircraft along with the Western shorter-ranges system, the VKS has lost some of its most advanced aircraft. Most estimates indicate that by April Russia had seen 70 fixed-wing combat aircraft downed, including 11 Sukhoi Su-30SM multirole fighters and 18 or more Su-34 strike aircraft. Only the low-flying, short-range attack platform, the Su-25, has suffered greater losses.
The Su-34 is the most expensive aircraft of all the different Sukhoi models in service with the VKS. It also is the aircraft with the lowest production rate. In the year before the Ukraine invasion, Russian industry reportedly manufactured fewer than 12 units.
Meant to replace its 1970s-era predecessor, the swing-wing Su-24, the Su-34 has been a high-priority item in the future structure of the Russian armed forces. Only 70 of the latter remain in Russian service, but the VKS might now keep them for much longer than originally planned.
Production of the aircraft has slowed—as have many other Russian weapon systems—due to sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies that bar the importation of thousands of electronic components on which Russia had become almost totally reliant for its defense production lines. The deficiency requires the Su-34 to drop unguided, short-range weapons instead of the stand-off munitions it was designed to carry, putting it in the position to be shot down in large numbers.