Still reading and digesting the RUSI report, here talking about the VKS - the Russians air force:
Ukrainian assessments concluded that given limited flight hours and the practice of training being delivered in units, the VKS entered the conflict with fewer than 100 fully trained and current pilots.
WTF? I think I would have dismissed this out of hand before the war, but it certainly explains the complete failure to achieve air superiority which I don’t think anyone was predicting in advance.
(Also, that story isn’t just one of Russian failure. The report also covers how Ukraine invested a lot into building up its air defences pre-war, kept most of its assets alive through the initial strikes, and reconstituted them into a properly integrated air defence network that has made Ukrainian airspace too dangerous for the VKS, and while doing that can also shoot down two thirds of incoming cruise missiles.)
Combined with a military culture that assigns the most dangerous missions to the most experienced crews, attrition in the VKS has fallen disproportionately on this cadre, reducing the overall effectiveness of the force and its ability to train new pilots. In negotiations over prisoner exchanges, the AFRF have been eager for the return of experienced pilots. The mobilisation of trainers from their flying schools to frontline formations has also hampered the ability to generate new pilots.
Does nobody read history??
The Ukrainian military has noted a rise in both very young and very old pilots in the VKS, with ageing pilots returned to frontline service. This has corresponded with a significant reduction in the scale and complexity of VKS air operations over Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. It is also a problem that has affected ground crews, for example with the discovery of left-on covers on the sensors of Russian aviation operating over Ukraine [ouch], an easily avoided mistake which has a severe impact on effectiveness and should be considered negligence. This suggests challenges in discipline and junior leadership among maintenance crews in the VKS. Another demonstration of this poor discipline in the VKS is the routine stacking of munitions next to aircraft on Russian air bases.
There has been a bunch of reporting, including from RUSI, that Russia’s long term investment in electronic warfare systems has mostly not paid off, because they’ve never really worked out how to avoid messing up their own systems.
fratricide is a systemic issue between Russian systems. For example, the Khibiny EW pod, mounted to a number of Russian aircraft, automatically detects radars and disrupts them. Unfortunately for the Russians, it tends to also do this to other Russian aircraft. Pairs of Russian strike aircraft mounting this system have therefore had to choose between having a functional radar or EW protection. They have often been ordered to prioritise their radar.
