"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (3 Viewers)

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I wonder if the Russian aren't announcing plans for elections in order to pressure the Ukrainians into speeding up their plans.

I see this Ukrainian offense as a form of Monty's El Alamein attack, chewing into the defense until the weak-spot is found, and then unleashing the torrent.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Where is the VVS? Russia has hundreds of Sukhoi and MiG strike and fighter aircraft. Surely now is the time for them to show up?
Click to expand...
An interesting question.

Estimates put the current Russian airforce as a total of around 3,600 aircraft of all types;

Helicopters 39.2%
Fighters 25%
Trainers 13.2%
Transports 11.2%
CAS somewhere around 5%
The rest - tankers / special / bombers

At an average 70% readiness this gives 2500+ aircraft.
Below average at 50% gives around 1800.

From what we've seen so far it's is highly likely the readiness levels may well be below 50%.
Fighters if used for ground attack make up 25% or 900+ aircraft. If the readiness rate is 50% that makes 450+ planes.
Many would be in other areas for border defence etc so maybe only 50% available at best (225+) ?

Spare parts to maintain readiness ? Dwindling due to sanctions so it may be there aren't as many as first thought. Could
be a similar problem to the tank park as in most of the old Soviet tanks are 'parked' as they don't go ?
 
Russia also has aircraft deployed abroad, such as in Syria.

There was also an article published a while back, that detailed the shortcomings of the VKS in Ukraine.

Two things stood out in the article. The first was a pilot shortage both in headcount and experience.

The other was the low state of readiness of their serviceable aircraft, which was attributed to several causes which included a lack of skilled mechanics and support as well as a serious black market issue, where a broad range of equipment nessecary for the operation of aircraft has "disappeared", including complete engines!
 

Bound to happen when one's nation is built upon grift.
 

Its not just a lack of skilled mechanics, its also a lack of serious quality control. When we were in Kosovo, we would often get to fly in other nation's helicopters. We were forbidden from flying in the Russian Hinds and Hips because they had no actual documented quality control program.

I remember standing next to a Hind and thinking it looked pieced together, and that just looking at it wrong would make it fall apart.
 
GrauGeist said:
Right?

Didn't someone post an article a while back about their stored tanks being pillaged for parts that were sold on the black market?
Click to expand...

My son relayed to me last year reports of stored T-72s being unfit for service because the non-steel laminates in the armor had been pilfered while in storage. You may or may not be thinking of my posting about that, but at any rate, the idea is pretty much the same.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
Where is the VVS? Russia has hundreds of Sukhoi and MiG strike and fighter aircraft. Surely now is the time for them to show up?
Click to expand...
Some analysis:
Early war: Conclusions from the use of aviation in the first half of the first year of the Ukrainian-Russian war
War up to early 2023: Russian airpower in Ukraine - Nuisance or Menace? »
Assessment of VKS performance: https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/04/Russian-Combat-Air-Strengths-and-Limitations.pdf

From analysis I've read/watched, the Russian Air Force is conducting about 200 sorties per day, minimum. A lot of what they're doing isn't really visible over the front lines though.

As I understand it, the RuAF has broken the front in Ukraine (I believe) into four sectors. Each sector has a constant CAP in it. Usually this is a pair of MiG-31s, Su-30s or Su-35s armed with long range missiles and circling at 30,000+ feet. The MiG-31s are generally armed with a pair of R-37s and the Sukhois with either R-37s or some longer ranged R-77 variants.

Any Ukrainian aircraft that gets detected has the CAP vectored towards it and gets rewarded for being discovered by having a long range and very fast moving missile yeeted at it from outside the range of Ukraine's defensive SAM umbrella.

To maintain this constant CAP, I believe it's 16 sorties per sector per day. Could be more, could be less. I've heard figures as low as 12 and as high as 20. But 16 seems like a reasonable mid-point, which would be about 74 64 (math is hard) aerial sorties per day. That's just to keep the Ukrainian airforce operating at NoE.

Observed RuAF strike ops on the battlefield (from here: Tracking Russia's losses in Ukraine) are running at the following rate:

Since 01-Nov-2022: 28 per day
Since the start of 2023: 33 per day
Since 01-May-2023: 51 per day

Then there's all the missions in and around those strike ops and the long range aviation stuff being used to lob clusters of cruise missiles at schools, hospitals and any part of Ukraine that doesn't appear to be actively on fire.


The Center for Naval Analyses report linked above gives the following estimates for Russia at the start of the war:
400 "genuinely modern multirole fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft like the Su-35S, Su-30SM, and Su-34"
300 or so "heavily modernized legacy types like the Mig-31BM, Su-25SM(3), and Mig-29SMT".

It also gives the following:

"The confirmed VKS fixed-wing ground-attack aircraft losses as of late March 2023 include 20 Su-34s from a fleet of approximately 130 at the start of the war and 30
Su-25SM(3)s from a fleet of around 120."
 
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The question of ongoing maintenance becomes a large issue here. As pointed out, the build quality in the first place isn't the same standard as NATO
users would expect.

Given that, what is the lifetime of engines etc with the sorties already being flown as per Jabberwocky ? How reliable is the ability to replace or
repair the worn out / failed systems which must occur during use in normal flight, let alone combat ? In other words, how much of the Russian
force is being grounded each week / month just by being flown and how much can be refurbished to go back up ?

No idea of the quality of parts or actual build. Others here probably know.
 
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