Top US Air Force General surprised how poorly Russian Air Force has performed

[notorious_eagle]

What’s surprising to me is that the Russians still don’t understand that a 1,000lb/2,000lb guided JDAM bomb is far superior than any ground based artillery.

They are many many years behind the US Air Force.

There is a difference though. JDAM's are expensive, Artillery is cheap. Russia is not the US with an unlimited defence budget, they have to be strategic with the investments they make. On the other hand, Russian Army is an Artillery First Army. They call Artillery the 'God of War', thus its natural for the Russians to be more comfortable using their Artillery. This is how they have been trained to fight and this is how they will execute their fighting.

Back to topic: Its not only the Russian Air Force that has been disappointing but its also been the Russian Army. Russian Army was able to hide its weakness in the past conflicts by deploying a small number of brigades in Syria and Crimea which impressed everyone because they were well equipped and extremely well trained. But the war in Ukraine reveals that the Russian Army as a whole is not well equipped and not well trained, its only a few units. Corruption is rife within their institutions and that explains why their logistics have been crap.

While no doubt the Russians are now slowly turning the tide and have started winning, but that is based on absolute brute force and not superior soldierly.

 

[jhungary]

While no doubt the Russians are now slowly turning the tide and have started winning, but that is based on absolute brute force and not superior soldierly.

That is the caveat of the problem now.

Even if there are military success in the battlefield, the Russian is bleeding too many people and resource in taking advantage of the situation. Take Popansa for example, it felt on the 4th May (or 5th, I don't remember) or some date along that line. The problem is, had Russia pour enough people after they took Popansa, they can exploit the gap between Popansa toward Bakhmut and instead of fighting street by street til today (which would lose up to 10K dead or wounded) they can simply surround the Ukrainian in that area.

You can only do that in a limited fashion, on the other hand, you still have up to 45% of Donetsk you need to fight, I cannot see how the Russian can do it without another round of mobilisation, and then you need to think, how many more mobilisation Russia can take before question being asked internally?

 

[Signalian]

There is a difference though. JDAM's are expensive, Artillery is cheap. Russia is not the US with an unlimited defence budget, they have to be strategic with the investments they make. On the other hand, Russian Army is an Artillery First Army. They call Artillery the 'God of War', thus its natural for the Russians to be more comfortable using their Artillery. This is how they have been trained to fight and this is how they will execute their fighting.

Back to topic: Its not only the Russian Air Force that has been disappointing but its also been the Russian Army. Russian Army was able to hide its weakness in the past conflicts by deploying a small number of brigades in Syria and Crimea which impressed everyone because they were well equipped and extremely well trained. But the war in Ukraine reveals that the Russian Army as a whole is not well equipped and not well trained, its only a few units. Corruption is rife within their institutions and that explains why their logistics have been crap.

While no doubt the Russians are now slowly turning the tide and have started winning, but that is based on absolute brute force and not superior soldierly.

RuAF faced logistics challenges, including running low on stocks of long-range, precision-guided munitions. After starting the campaign, RuAF began to run low on precision-guided munitions, such as laser- and satellite-guided bombs, which caused the Russians to use a growing number of unguided artillery shells, rockets, and missiles from the ground forces.
Furthermore, dozens of Russian UAVs, such as the Orlan-10, Orlan-20, Orlan-30, Eleron-3, and Forpost, were shot down on the battlefield or comms jammed due to EW.

Due to Ukrainian military’s effective use of anti-armor munitions, such as anti-tank guided missiles and loitering munitions, Russian ground forces had difficulty advancing and seizing ground so Russian Army had to resort to artillery firing. Next were piling up of convoys on roads so logistics like, trucks carrying food, water, medical supplies, mobile kitchens, fuel, engineers, and spare parts became an issue. Also forward-deployed Russian vehicles broke down, and many had to be abandoned because of a lack of spare parts, mechanics, and recovery vehicles. This leaves Artillery as the choice of weapon out of compulsion.

 

[aviator_fan]

Oh my. Oh look how tough the US air force was. Got its butt kicked by rag tag Taliban. Ooh.

I think you are reading too much of the wrong material. 5000 troops in Baghram had Taliban under their thumbs with no more than 50 air assets. I don't think you can call it 'butt kicked'.

I am curious as to why if thousands of stingers were sent from US and NATO, why 100s of aircraft were not lost. Is it the fact they served as a deterrent or you need to launch dozens to down a single jet/helicopter.