My comments about the VKS are here...
Map according to southfront (russians)
defence.pk
If my suspicion is true that the VKS essentially used the old Soviet concept of airpower and employment of the same in Ukraine, then the VKS cannot achieve air superiority over a country as large as Ukraine, and that it is only the smaller size of the Ukrainian Air Force that the VKS have that
de facto control of Ukrainian airspace.
Boyd and Warden represent a major transition in the evolution of air power theory. Early air power theorists argued that one could defeat the enemy by paralyzing his war-making and war-sustaining capabilities—a form of economic warfare based upon industrial targeting. In contrast, Boyd and Warden contend that one should target enemy command and control—that is, control warfare based upon command targeting.
Boyd and Warden represent a shift from this economic warfare to what some term control warfare. Boyd’s version of control warfare is more process-oriented in terms of operating inside enemy OODA loops. On the other hand, Warden’s version is more form-oriented in terms of parallel, inside-out attack against the enemy’s Five Rings. That said, both espouse control warfare based upon command targeting.
We can see the progression of early airpower up to where John Boyd and John Warden advocated. Back in WW II, the US Army Air Corps bombed Germany's war-making and war-sustaining capabilities such as the Ploesti oil refineries and the Schweinfurt ball bearing factories. In Desert Storm, we attacked Iraq's command and control and associated information gathering capabilities such as early warning radars. Radars are intelligence.
Under the Soviet concept and employment of airpower as 'airborne artillery', ground commanders dictate the direction and intensity of
LOCAL airpower, and by 'local', it mean targeting enemy forces 24-48 hrs ahead. Oil refineries and ball bearing factories are weeks ahead, meaning it takes weeks to turn oil into fuel and ball bearings to install into vehicles. But if you target enemy forces that are 24-28 hrs ahead, you will be shooting at enemy ground forces that are either on the way to you or entrenched waiting for you. In this, airpower is limited to local combat, not regional or national economic and/or command and control capabilities. We never met during the Cold War and now in Ukraine we finally found out that seemingly the current VKS have not made any philosophical and conceptual progress since WW II. If you look at Figure 3 on page 25 of the above doc, the VKS pretty stopped at ring 3 'infrastructure' but concentrated at rings 4 (population) and 5 (fielded forces). The employment of the VKS in Ukraine correlates too much to the old Soviet 'airborne artillery' concept of airpower.
There is a parallel cause on why the VKS performed so poorly over Ukraine: economics. Poutine may have given the Russian military some budgetary boost from improved economy overall, but it was not enough. In Desert Storm, we hit all of the Warden Five Rings in one day. We did it because we could. The US had enough air assets to do it alone but we ended up with allies to help. The VKS did not because it could not. So the VKS had no choice but subordinate itself to ground commanders. In the end, since the VKS could not perform like Desert Storm, might as well do the most good by working for the Russian Army. Many will not like this but US/NATO air forces would have erased the VKS from the air.
For the long term, it now falls to China, specifically Chinese concept of airpower, to lead the non-West aligned air forces. Would the PLAAF adopt the Boyd-Warden ways of airpower? Maybe, but that would require a re-conceptualization of the entire PLA itself to be an expeditionary military like how the US military is. How expeditionary? Again, back to Desert Storm. Historically, expeditionary armies lived off the land. They took food and make their arms from local sources. But with DS, the US shipped everything we need from one hemisphere to the other. This is how much the PLA must change. Could is one thing, but 'can do' is another. Can the PLA become as expeditionary? China shares borders with 11 countries and not all of them friendlies. That mean a good portion of the PLA must be constantly on the alert on the home front whereas the US do not worry about Canada and Mexico.