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?
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.
An interesting question.
Estimates put the current Russian airforce as a total of around 3,600 aircraft of all types;
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.
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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