Spoiler
Some know me as ‘confrontational’ and ‘undiplomatic’. Thus, a sort of ‘warning’, up front: this is definitely going to (re)inforce such an impression.
I grew up at the times the motto ‘know your enemy’ was in high esteem in numerous armed forces, no matter where. At the time when, for example, the discipline of researching the Soviet Armed Forces was taken very seriously, and people involved knew what were they talking about: so much so, they could literally ‘read the minds’ of decision-makers in Moscow and few other places.
Now, my point of view was that a World War III is unlikely to ever happen, because there was enough rationale in the East and the West, and thus nobody would risk the ‘ultimate option’. So, ‘why waste time’ studying, for example, the Soviets? Still, I was fascinated by ‘know your enemy’ kind of works, and thus ‘spent’ much of my professional career studying what some consider ‘obscure’ or ‘small’ air forces; and others for ‘enemy’ – especially so in the Middle East and Africa. It’s only more recently – say: 7-8 years – that I’ve ‘added’ the modern-day Russian armed forces to what’s interesting for me, and then primarily because of the Russian military intervention in Syria.
What surprised me when ‘returning’ to something I ceased studying around the time people like Benjamin Lamberth, Bill Sweetman and few others have ceased publishing their books (‘back in the 1990s or so’) was that it seems that over the last 30 years, the skill of ‘know your enemy’ has been misdeclared into ‘support for jihadism’, while understanding of the Russian armed forces appears to have degenerated into oblivion. This became obvious not only ‘already’ during the first two years of the Russian military intervention in Syria (2015-2017), but even more so since the Russian (re)invasion of Ukraine, on 24 February 22. Ever since, most of notable think-tanks and their experts seem to be falling over each other in an entirely new Olympic discipline: how to mis-understand and mis-explain the Russian Armed Forces, and the Russian Air-Space Force in particular.
What is particularly astonishing in this regards: back in 2016, the Foreign Military Studies Office of the US Army, published the book ‘The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernisation of the Russian Ground Forces’, by Lester W. Grau and Charles K. Bartles.
The book is available as a free download (as PDF) for years already. I.e. everybody can have it. Just go to this link: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/.../2017-07-the-russian... – download, read, and inform yourself.
Sure, Grau and Bartles concentrated on the ground forces. But, they explained so much and so well about the structure, thinking, practices, doctrine, strategy and tactics of the entire Russian armed forces that I simply can’t believe anybody is still coming to the idea to write anything about the ‘Russian military’ – without, first, reading their book and, second, keeping it in mind all the time.
And still: this is the case – and so we get to hear how the Russian Air-Space Force (VKS) is a ‘non-appearance’ in this war, how it ‘can’t own the skies’ over Ukraine, indeed, that it is ‘incapable of running complex operations’.
Those who follow me since longer than 3-4 days should know better: should know that the VKS is no ‘USAF East’. As explained earlier, the VKS is simply never meant to fight the way Western air forces do.
As nicely explained by Grau and Bartles, and confirmed in reality only some 17-18 zillion of times, in Russia, there is only one authority that’s thinking what are future wars going to look like, and – therefore – how should it organise, equip, and train the Russian armed forces. This authority is the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Short: GenStab. Because of its task, the GenStab is also the sole military procurement authority in Russia: it is responsible for the purchase of everything, from screws, via fighter jets, to intercontinental ballstic missiles and their nuclear warheads.
To keep it compressed, the GenStab considers the VKS for something like ‘extended range artillery’: a branch meant to cover tasks from provision of close air support, to interdiction strikes up to around 100, perhaps 150km behind the frontline. For this reason, the VKS has a purely supportive role, through and through: it is meant to – and equipped to - establish air superiority only over the frontlines, and then support ground or naval forces. Strikes deep into the enemy-controlled territory are a business of missile forces, and forces equipped with cruise missiles. Search and destroy enemy air defences (SEAD)? Yes, but along the frontline only. Therefore, and even if operating such ‘powerful, super-turbo-Wunderwaffen’ like Su-27SM, Su-30SM, Su-34 and Su-35s, the VKS is simply not equipped to ‘go places’, ‘rule the skies’, ‘dominate’ etc. into the depth of the enemy territory. Not away from the frontline.
When somebody not knowing about this now tries to monitor the VKS operations in Ukraine from the Western standpoint, plenty of things are incomprehensible and wrong conclusions simply unavoidable. What the Russians are doing there is contrary to the very essence of the Western – and especially: US – thinking, where the air power is dominating: much to disgust of its own ground forces, it is frequently fighting ‘its own war’. It first seeks to establish air superiority over the enemy, destroy its air power and the capability to defend itself from air power, and only then supports own ground troops or naval forces.
If the VKS then does not behave that way, ‘logical conclusion’ is ‘it failed’ and ‘can’t’.
Actually, the VKS is doing its job very well. It rules the skies – above the frontline. As the sustained losses of the Ukrainian Air Force over the last 13 days have shown: whenever Ukrainian Su-25s try to hit the Russian ground forces, they are shot down. Whether by VKS interceptors, or by ground-based air defences. Presence of ‘heavy’ Ukrainian air defences near the frontline is minimal. In turn, the VKS is all the time flying – ‘BUT’ over the battlefield. Between seven and eight of its aircraft are airborne over the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol areas all the time during the daylight, every single day ever since 24 February. As predicted, the sky there is really ‘black’ of all the VKS aircraft. This is a co-reason why are they suffering losses to the Ukrainian ground-based air defences, too: they are present so much and so often, that the Ukrainians can recognise patterns in operational behaviour of Russian pilots and ‘ambush’ them.
(The other co-reason is that the Ukrainians have got so many MANPADs from the West, they’re firing them by dozens, every day. There are several videos showing them firing 6-8 missiles at one target: we only get such scenes much too rarely to see, and even less so would the Ukrainians brag how often they miss.)
Contrary to the claims of the Ukrainian politicians, the VKS pilots also do not refuse to fly: they go as far as to do things Western pilots would rarely do. Like such a dumb idea to descend below the cloud cover in order to acquire a target and bomb it – only to get shot down by 5-6 MANPADs fired in return.
All of this means that conclusions like ‘VKS is not flying’, ‘VKS can’t run complex operations’ etc. are all wrong. By all the (meanwhile: ‘proven’) military incompetence of Putin, Shoygu, Gerasimov, even the officers of the GenStab, not to talk about numerous of Russian generals in the field, the VKS is fulfilling precisely the duty for which it was equipped and trained – all along the doctrine developed by the GenStab.
This are the ‘Reasons No. 1-100’ of why we’re never going to see VKS’ Su-34s roaming the skies of Ukraine all the way to the Romanian border, using R-77s to shot down Ukrainian Su-27s, while deploying PGMs to precisely destroy MiG-29s or Su-25s on the ground, and yet other PGMs to knock-out Ukrainian air defences - free along the motto: like in a video-game...
Talking about VKS and PGMs: Colonel Andrew J Bachevich (US Army, ret.) – one of less than a handful of sober, balanced, and serious military historians left in the USA - has explained it in his TV-appearances already years ago. When invading Ukraine, in 2014, Russia lost the control and contact to about 120 major arms-manufacturing enterprises – including about 50 manufacturing the host of PGMs in the VKS service. Ever since, the GenStab did try to re-establish some of production at home, but this was largely spoiled – both because of the endemic corruption of the Putin-regime, and because of resulting sanctions, which cut off Russia from approach to the necessary know-how and high-tech.
‘What a surprise’ then, that Russia can’t run large-scale production of PGMs, that the few that are available are either from stocks manufactured back in the 1980s and early 1990s or astronomically expensive and thus not affordable for the GenStab; or that the VKS never got enough money to buy new PGMs, and thus has next to none to deploy in combat operations. Indeed, that it has to send its Sukhois with a price tag of US$40-50 million apiece into low-altitude strikes armed with ‘dumb’ bombs.
Bottom line: stop trying to understand and explain the VKS by Western – especially US – way of thinking. If you want to understand and explain it, you need to see it entirely from the Russian point of view, and also to consider plenty of factors that are anything else than ‘directly related to air power’. I simply can’t but repeat myself: keep the big picture in mind.
" e ora fanno tira e molla perché la situazione gli conviene.
