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Ideas


THE OVERLOOKED REASON RUSSIA’S INVASION IS FLOUNDERING

Russia has failed to understand the importance of airpower.

By Phillips Payson O’Brien and Edward Stringer

Diego Herrera / Europa Press / Getty
May 9, 2022
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About the authors: Phillips Payson O’Brien is a professor of strategic studies
at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of How the War
Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II. Edward Stringer is a
retired Royal Air Force air marshal and a senior fellow at Policy Exchange.

Airpower should have been one of Russia’s greatest advantages over Ukraine. With
almost 4,000 combat aircraft and extensive experience bombing targets in Syria,
Georgia, and Chechnya, Russia’s air force was expected to play a vital role in
the invasion, allowing the Russian army to plunge deep into Ukraine, seize Kyiv,
and destroy the Ukrainian military. But more than two months into the war,
Vladimir Putin’s air force is still fighting for control of the skies.

The Russian air force’s failure is perhaps the most important, but least
discussed, story of the military conflict so far. Ukrainian forces showed
surprising strength in the air war, and adapted as the fighting progressed. But
either side of this war could still gain air supremacy—and fundamentally change
the course of the conflict.

Phillips Payson O’Brien: Why Ukraine is winning

Airpower is potentially decisive in any war, but difficult to wield effectively.
Air forces are dependent on an array of technologies that require highly trained
personnel who can quickly set up what amounts to an airborne military ecosystem:
airborne radar stations to provide command and control, fighters to protect and
police the skies, refueling aircraft to keep everyone full of gas,
electronic-warfare planes to keep enemy defenses suppressed, and a range of
intelligence-gatherers and attack aircraft to locate and destroy enemy forces.
These sorts of combined operations involve hundreds of aircraft and thousands of
people in a tightly choreographed dance that takes a lifetime to master. But
when managed correctly, these overlapping operations allow a military to
dominate the skies, making life much easier for the ground or naval forces
below.

Unfortunately for the Russians, the recent modernization of the Russian air
force, although intended to enable it to conduct modern combined operations, was
mostly for show. The Russians wasted money and effort on corruption and
inefficiency. Though much was made of the flashy new equipment, such as the
much-hyped SU-34 strike aircraft, the Russian air force continues to suffer from
flawed logistics operations and the lack of regular, realistic training. Above
all, the autocratic Russian kleptocracy does not trust low-ranking and
middle-ranking officers, and so cannot allow the imaginative, flexible decision
making that NATO air forces rely upon.

All this meant that when the invasion started, the Russian air force was
incapable of running a well-thought-out, complex campaign. Instead of working to
control the skies, Russia’s air force has mostly provided air support to ground
troops or bombed Ukrainian cities. In this it has followed the traditional
tactics of a continental power that privileges land forces. Focusing on ground
troops can work if you have almost endless numbers of soldiers and are prepared
to lose them. But so wedded is Russia to its history of successes on the ground
that it fails to understand the importance of airpower.

“Russia has never fully appreciated the use of airpower beyond support to ground
forces,” David A. Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general, told
us.  “As a result, Russia, in all its wars, has never conceived of or run a
strategic air campaign.”

Phillips Payson O’Brien: How the West got Russia’s military so, so wrong


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Russian aircraft are instead left flying their straightforward missions, many of
which use single aircraft without the mutual support from combined air
operations that would be expected in an advanced NATO air force. The pilots are
given a target; fly in quickly to attack it, in many cases relying on unguided
munitions to try to hit their target; and then fly out and try to not get shot
down. They are not allowed to act flexibly within their commanders’ intent to
achieve a mission. They have task orders and they execute them, come what may.
Even Russia’s vaunted intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
capabilities seem surprisingly weak. Rarely do Russian forces seem capable of
identifying possible Ukrainian targets and deploying air assets to attack them
swiftly enough to make a difference.

Of course, the most important reason for the failure of Russian airpower, and
the evident caution of Russian pilots, has been Ukrainian opposition. Unlike
their enemy, the Ukrainians have developed a coherent concept of air operations,
one that has allowed them to block what looked like an easy path to Russian air
dominance.

The Ukrainians have integrated a range of air and anti-air capabilities to
stymie the much larger Russian air force. Starting with cheap, handheld,
portable surface-to-air missiles, the Ukrainians have been able to restrict
Russian airpower to a few eastern and southern areas, greatly limiting Russian
freedom of maneuver. The addition of much more potent, and longer-range, S-300
missile systems from Slovakia makes the Russians even more vulnerable. The
threat of the S-300s forces individual Russian aircraft, which generally lack
refueling, electronic-warfare, and command-and-control support, to fly low to
the ground to screen themselves from attack. This, in turn, makes them more
vulnerable to the handheld surface-to-air missiles. Ukraine cannot target every
Russian aircraft, but it has cleverly used what it has to ensure that Russian
pilots worry they might be targeted anywhere, forcing them to behave more
defensively and reducing their effectiveness.

Ukraine’s ability to contest its airspace has not only provided protection to
its own forces but also allowed it to occasionally go on the offensive. Early in
the war, the Ukrainians were able to use Turkish-made Bayraktar drones to attack
some high-value targets. The Ukrainians have also used drones to identify and
destroy Russian ground-to-air missiles, making Russian ground forces more
vulnerable to attack from above.

Elliot Ackerman: Ukraine’s lifeline

The Ukrainians have also shown a far greater ability than the Russians to use
their limited airpower resources creatively. The sinking of the Russian Black
Sea flagship Moskva, which stunned the world, seems to have come about through a
clever double punch. Ukrainian officials have claimed that they used an unmanned
aerial vehicle to distract the Moskva’s anti-air capabilities, then launched
their homegrown Neptune anti-ship missiles before the confused Russian crew
could react.

This inventive use of airpower reveals that the Ukrainians might even have a
more sophisticated understanding of air operations than even many NATO
countries, which take their dominance of the air for granted. What the
Ukrainians have done—contesting the skies against a richer, more powerful enemy
on the cheap—is extremely difficult. The West has much to learn from Ukraine’s
successes, Deptula told us. “We have become so dominant in the air that we have
never had to think through how we would use airpower if we were the inferior
force,” he said. “Ukraine is posing us some very interesting questions that we
should seriously consider, if only to understand how a clever opponent would
take us on.”

The coming weeks will reveal whether the Russians have the capability to learn
from their mistakes and take better advantage of their still-massive numerical
superiority in aircraft. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, will soon see their
offensive air capabilities grow. Their newest drones may be enabling better
long-range artillery targeting. On April 30, Ukrainian artillery fire seemed to
come close to hitting General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of the general
staff, while he was visiting the front. The Ukrainians are receiving even more
advanced systems, including new Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost drones, which have
the capability of lingering over enemy positions for some time before being used
to destroy vehicles.

As long as the airspace over the field of battle remains contested, the
Ukrainians will be able to improve and expand their use of airpower. They may
not win the war outright. But they’ve already revolutionized how the next ones
will be fought.





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