Sure, by operating mostly from ambush, and typically fairly far from the front line. They can definitely keep their new Patriots safe the exact same way. And they will contribute to their ability to maintain air defenses, especially as they truly exhaust Soviet SAM stocks, including re-exports from various countries. But it won't stop Russian gliding bomb drops. That's the tradeoff.
The US and Germany really need to remove some more red lines. Ukraine should be allowed to hit targets deep inside Russia, not just close to the border. Long range missiles could then be used to attack Russian military installations including Russian aircraft used to launch the gliding bombs.
It would certainly be a step in the direction of trying to win that fight, it's just not clear that mere permission gets the job done.
Is there any advantage in the Meteor vs the latest AIM-120 variant? As for "allowed".... is anyone prohibiting Sweden from doing this? I'm a bit confused. It seems to me that Swerve is spot on with his response as to why that's not what's happening. F-16s are by far the most logical western jet to supply to Ukraine.
www.forbes.com
Not really that odd. Russia has only really developed the ability to strike non-static targets at 50+ km range over the past ~10 months. For most of this war that capability was absent. And even over this period of time it's been inconsistent. Russia took out ~5 Ukrainian jets and a couple of military cargo trains in September of last year, and then it was quiet for months. Couple with this is the fact that Ukraine has chosen to concentrate assets in a definite attempt to push Russia out of their inroad in Kharkov region from the north. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a political decision from the top, as forces have been pulled from other sections of the front, and Russia is currently making gains in several other areas capitalizing on this weakness (likely the intent all along). This means concentrating jets to strike Russian forces. We've seen some of the heaviest consistent Ukrainian bomb strikes against Russian targets in Volchansk. It appears to have cost Ukraine one jet downed in combat, and now 6 more hit where they're based out of. Overall Russia's ability to strike deep has gotten steadily better over the past ~10 months, and it's unlikely this is going to stop. They've also recently hit a couple of military trains, and Russian SEAD strikes against larger SAM systems have gone up in number. This is one of the big challenges Ukraine's incoming F-16s face. The totals committed to Ukraine are ~100 jets. Ukraine currently operates by my estimation less then half that number. Increasing the number of jets by that number means exposing them to more strikes. Hiding them far away and dispersing means less efficient and more complex operations, and with that many jets, you can't really go to basing no more than 2-3 jets per airfield. So 4-6 at a single airfield will be a thing.Odd that things like this (completely avoidable) still happen, almost 2.5 years into the war.
The Ukrainian Air Force Parked Six Su-27 Fighters In The Open 100 Miles From The Front Line. A Russian Missile Destroyed Two Of Them.
In nine months, the Russians have hit at least five active Ukrainian warplanes at vulnerable air bases.
It's an interesting analysis. I do think we have two strikes, and Russian sources talk about that as well, which is why they claim 2 jets destroyed, and 4 damaged. With this camera quality it's hard to be completely sure of anything so perhaps we have less damage then indicated. I do know that Ukrainian social media sources seemed pretty upset about that strike. What's interesting is that Russia carried out two other airbase strikes recently, hitting a Mi-24, and what appears to be an Su-25. In other words, Russia is trying to step up their efforts against Ukrainian air assets.
What do you mean by this? Russia has enough cruise and balistic missiles to strike whenever they want wherever they want in Ukraine. Their only limitation is intelligence.Feanor said:
You answered your own question. Russian drones seem to have gotten quite a bit more range.
The issue is that Russia didn't do much of this in '22, and only a little in '23. If Russia can do this a lot more, Ukraine will have problems. If this is another spurt, followed by months of nothing, then it's not that significant.