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HomeDefenceWhy the famed Russian Air Force failed in Ukraine and the vital...
DefenceThe FinePrint


WHY THE FAMED RUSSIAN AIR FORCE FAILED IN UKRAINE AND THE VITAL LESSONS IAF CAN
DRAW FROM IT





DEFEAT OF RUSSIAN AIR POWER IN UKRAINE RAISES HARD QUESTIONS FOR IAF. IN THE 1ST
OF A 3-PART SERIES, THEPRINT INVESTIGATES LESSONS FROM UKRAINE WAR FOR IAF’S
EQUIPMENT & DOCTRINES.

Snehesh Alex Philip
15 October, 2022 11:24 am IST
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Illustration by Soham Sen, ThePrint
Text Size: A- A+

New Delhi: Elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, complete with a cravat and
gold pocket-watch, railway magnate and banker Jan Bloch was lecturing military
experts at London’s Royal United Services Institution on the future of war. “The
theatrical spectacles called manoeuvres,” Bloch argued, “are in no way related
to real warfare.” Technologies like the machine gun, he warned, would increase
“slaughter on so terrible a scale as to render it impossible to get troops to
push”.



The generals ignored the amateur theorist’s 1901 talk on the impacts of combat
technology. Future conflicts in Europe, the Spanish strategist Manuel Fernández
Silvestre insisted on the eve of the Great War of 1914-1918, would be settled in
“one day’s hard fighting”.

Eight months into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s military failure is forcing
strategists across the world to ask the most searching questions since Hiram
Maxim’s machine-gun ended the age of horse-powered militaries.

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In the first part of this series on the military lessons New Delhi should be
learning from the war, ThePrint investigates what it means for the Indian Air
Force (IAF).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also read: All about Shahed-136, Iran’s ‘kamikaze’ drone that Russia is using to
strike Ukraine

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




WHY RUSSIAN AIR POWER LOST 

For two generations, strategic thinking in New Delhi has worked around the
belief that the Indian Air Force would be able to hold its own in future wars.
Air Marshal V.K. Bhatia has written that the IAF is tasked not just with taking
on the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, but also providing close-air support
to “ward off numerically much stronger Chinese ground forces”. The Basic
Doctrine of the Indian Air Force, released in 2012, prioritises ”control of the
air, so that the enemy air force’s ability to interfere with its own surface
force action is blunted”.

The Russian Air Force — renamed the Vozdushno-kosmicheskiye sily (VKS), or Air
and Space Forces, in 2015 — was meant to spearhead Russia’s Ukraine campaign.
Its failure poses hard questions for the IAF, not only because it operates an
overwhelmingly made-in-Russia fleet, but because of fundamental issues to do
with the changing nature of air warfare.

Looking at the numbers in February — when Russia launched massive strikes to
destroy the Ukrainian Air Force, or the Povitryani Syly Ukrayiny (PSU), on
ground, and obliterate its air-defences as well as command centres — victory
seemed inevitable. Compared to the 772 fighter jets operated by the VKS, the PSU
had 69.

The difference in the number of attack helicopters operated by the two countries
was 544 and 34 and dedicated ground-attack aircraft, 739 and 29. The two sides,
moreover, operated similar equipment.



Eleven hundred missiles — including Kh-101 cruise missiles deployed from Tu-95
‘Bear’ and Tu-160 ‘Blackjack’ bombers, the heaviest in the VKS fleet — hit
Ukraine in just the first 10 days of the war. The number of cruise and
short-range ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine more than tripled by August, to
3,650 — eight times the size of India’s entire arsenal, according to an expert
estimate.

The missile and precision-munition attacks hit an estimated 90 per cent of their
targets, but did nothing to degrade either Ukrainian air defences or command
centres. Targeted runways came back into operation inside hours. Kyiv held out
against the Russian army, and the fighting in eastern Donbas — in eastern
Ukraine — degenerated into a rocket-and-artillery slogging match, which would
not have been unfamiliar to soldiers

The reasons things didn’t go according to the VKS plan are becoming clear. For
one, Ukraine’s Russian-manufactured-and-supplied long range S-300 surface-to-air
missile systems, medium range SA-11 Gadfly (Buk-M1) and short range SA-8 Gecko
systems proved a significant deterrent to VKS air missions.

The Russia-Ukraine war has shown that aerial warfare has changed from close
kinetic action to beyond-visual-range, where sensors, advanced Active
Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars and long-range missiles come into
play, besides electronic warfare capabilities that can jam enemy radars and
spoof incoming missiles.

Guy Plopsky, a military aviation expert who focuses on Russian military, noted
that VKS operates a relatively small fleet of manned combat support platforms
such as airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), electronic warfare (EW) and
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, for supporting
precision-strike and other missions.

He underlined that there is a large capability gap in C4ISR (command, control,
communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance),
Electronic Warfare, target acquisition and targeting, stealth, precision-guided
weapons and other relevant areas between the VKS and leading Western air forces.

When Russia launched its missile blitzkrieg, it was following Western air forces
doctrine, a path first laid out by Italian General Giulio Douhet, U.S. Army Air
Corps’ Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, and the Royal Air Force’s Air Marshal
Hugh Trenchard.

Maximilian K. Bremer, director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility
Command of the US Air Force, and Kelly A. Grieco, a resident senior fellow with
the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft
Center for Strategy and Security, noted that these founding fathers of airpower
theory championed winning and maintaining “command of the air”, or, in today’s
doctrine, “air supremacy”.

Douhet suggested “to have command of the air means to be in a position to
prevent the enemy from flying while retaining the ability to fly oneself.”

But the Russia-Ukraine war has raised questions against this western doctrine of
air control or air supremacy, which is also followed by the IAF.

“The question is whether air dominance is necessary or air denial. If we take a
futuristic war with China, both India and China will see a very contested space
and neither country would be able to establish full air control of the other,”
Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retd), Director General of the Centre for Air Power
Studies, New Delhi, told ThePrint, explaining that air denial could now be the
main focus of warfare.

Bremer noted that it would be foolish to think that the air domain and air power
is less relevant to future wars, or that Russian ineptitude renders lessons
about air power’s role unhelpful.

He argued that far from irrelevant, control of the air domain was the battle’s
center of gravity.

By adopting an air denial strategy — that is, maintaining an air defense in
being to keep Russia’s manned aircraft at bay and under threat — Kyiv thwarted
Russia’s ability to not only ascertain the disposition of Ukrainian forces but
also to respond rapidly to events once it became obvious where the
counterattacks were taking place. Quite simply, air denial — not the traditional
concept of air superiority — was a prerequisite for Ukraine’s battlefield
success, he analyses.

Sources in the Indian defence establishment said that future wars will not only
be won by the side which fires first at the enemy, but also by one who spotted
the enemy first.

And this is where the Russian air force, more oriented as a defensive force
rather than one able to carry out large scale offensive operations, found its
challenge.

The S-300 air defence system, even if two generations behind the current S-500,
is a formidable deterrent for the Russian fighters.

Graphic: Soham Sen | ThePrint

To make things work, the VKS began to rapidly deplete its limited stockpile of
precision-guided munitions, which Russian factories had ceased to produce in
2014 due to Western sanctions. The high-precision 9M729 cruise missile is guided
by information flowing through a half-dozen socket attachment points, which let
data flow through its heat-shield. Those socket-attachment points are
manufactured by United States companies

Likewise, the 9M949 rocket used a fibre-optic gyroscope manufactured in the US.
The Russian TOR-M2 air-defense system utilises an oscillator designed in the
United Kingdom — which is no longer available.

The VKS responded to the subsequent shortage of precision-guided munitions with
low-level ground-attack missions — only to find itself confronted with a lethal
hail of United States-supplied FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, and the
British-manufactured Starstreak, besides the Soviet manufactured Igla systems.

The Indian defence establishment sources pointed out that the war has exposed
that Russian fighters lack the ability of modern electronic warfare and also the
capability to fight beyond the visual range, forcing them to come within the
bubble of the Ukrainian air defence systems.

Countries like the US and China have specialised multiple electronic warfare
aircraft that will fly with their combat jets to jam and spoof enemy radars and
air defence systems.

Estimates of VKS losses run up to 175 destroyed and 68 captured aircraft —
including several of the state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-34 heavy fighters, each
costing an estimated $35 million.

But if the Ukrainians have air defence systems, so do the Russians and more
lethal ones at that.

What helped the Ukrainians were the anti-radiation missiles, fitted to their
MiG-29 jets by United States military technicians, which enabled them to blind
Russian air-defences.

It gave the Ukrainians air force a potent counter-punch as the missile homes in
on radiation transmissions at 3,200 kilometres per hour — either obliterating
Russian radars or forcing them to shut down to avoid detection, as Thomas
Harding reported in the The National last month.

The sources quoted above said that the early setbacks and the failure of the
original Russian thinking that Kiev will drop arms soon, led to a weakened
morale within the Russian military, which was now more focused on avoiding
casualties.

Another issue with the Russians, the sources said, was the overt dependence on
attack helicopters.

Graphic: Soham Sen | ThePrint

“The Russians did not learn from their Afghanistan experience where they lost
over 300 helicopters due to stingers. The same thing happened in Ukraine where
they were shot down easily by shoulder-fired missiles. Their doctrines should
have changed,” the source said, adding that while helicopters are useful, they
cannot fly within the bubble of a stinger.

In Ukraine, Russian attack helicopters have suffered severe losses, for little
gain. The United States Army, as it considers replacements for its OH-58 Kiowas
and UH-60 Blackhawks helicopters, is exploring platforms that fly fast at below
radar-detection level, instead of high and slow like the current set of
helicopters.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also read: A first since World War II – what Putin’s order declaring partial
military mobilisation entails

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


THE REVOLUTION IN AIR POWER TECHNOLOGY

Long before the Ukraine war, realising the limitations of Russian technology,
India had moved to fit its Russian-made Su-30 fleet with Israeli
electronics-warfare suites. Following the air battle after the Balakot strike,
where its Su-30 MKIs were outmatched by Pakistani F16s with long-range AAMRAM
missiles, India also sought to retrofit Israeli-made Derby missiles to the
aircraft. And the IAF has long been seeking more Western-made aircraft, like the
state-of-the-art Rafale.

Fundamental issues, though, have been raised in the course of the air war that
go far beyond the shopping the IAF needs to do. For generations, air-power was
available only to nation-states with either large technological-industrial
infrastructure or deep pockets.

In Ukraine, as experts Maximilian Bremer and Kelly Grieco put it, the war has
lifted the curtain on a world where air power has been democratised — and called
into question the whole idea that traditional air forces can win air
superiority.

Graphic: Soham Sen | ThePrint

The unlikely war-winning weapon in the Ukraine war was built around technology
that can be bought off the shelf. The Ukrainian armed forces now are reported to
be operating over 6,000 small drones, mainly derived from commercial-use
variants. Ranging from staging precision strikes on Russian armour, to providing
long-range artillery exact coordinates, the drones have played havoc with the
famed Russian military strategy.

Even though drones like the much-celebrated Turkey-made Bayraktar TB2 are more
vulnerable to traditional air-defences than propaganda videos suggest, expert
Aaron Stein has noted, that is besides the point. The TB2 is cheap, at well
under $5 million each, and easy to replenish, since it uses components also
manufactured for commercial aerospace applications.

Future air wars, expert Peter Wilson speculated, might see robotic systems
occupying an even larger role, especially in hazardous ground-support missions,
or to hover over targets unseen. “Loitering munitions are cheap and very
deadly,” said former Indian Air Marshal Anil Chopra.



“Larger drones,” Chopra added, “leave a lot of radar signature which is helpful
to the enemy to track them down, but small ones are almost undetectable.”

India has pumped funding into drone development, with home-grown firms like
NewSpace and ideaForge working on everything from drone-swarms, autonomous
wingmen and surveillance. But Indian military procurement systems are slow,
experts have warned, and acquisitions are often left behind by technological
change.

There isn’t a well-developed domestic aerospace ecosystem in India either, nor
the kind of deep public-private partnership model which grew Turkey’s defence
sales from $1 billion in 2002, to $11 billion last year.




TOUGH CHALLENGES IN TIGHT TIMES

Even as it grapples with these larger challenges, the IAF also confronts some
hard short-term realities. For one, India’s munitions stockpiles are nowhere
near those needed for the kind of grinding conflict seen in Ukraine. Late in
2019, former Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat had told ThePrint that he had
built up reserves for an intense 10-day war with Pakistan, and was preparing
stockpiles for a 30-day conflict with China.

There is no similar data available for the IAF — but given the enormous costs
involved, and the slow growth in budgets, it is improbable the resources can be
found to match China, especially in a long-drawn conflict.

According to some, India has already taken some steps in the wrong direction.
Earlier this month, the IAF raised its first squadron of the indigenously-made
Light Combat Helicopter. The Army also has plans to induct several more attack
choppers.

“The Ukraine experience helicopters will provide easy targets for shoulder-fired
missiles on the Line of Actual Control (between India and China),” one senior
defence officer pointed out.

Air Marshal Diptendu Choudhary (Retd), former Commandant of the National Defence
College, argued the core problem was that Russia failed to reform its thinking
to engage with a changing military landscape. “The transformation of the VKS was
limited to organisational restructuring and superficial changes.,” he pointed
out. “There have been no independent doctrinal changes.”

Bremer’s message to the US Air Force (USAF) is something that the IAF should
also ponder on. He is of the opinion that the USAF, instead of insisting on
expensive and exquisite capabilities — such as next-generation fighter jets and
stealth bombers to conduct deep strikes and pulsed operations — ought to move
more rapidly toward unmanned and autonomous systems and swarming tactics with
thousands of small and cheap drones.

“Otherwise, the Air Force runs the serious risk of repeating Russia’s mistakes
by holding tight to a force structure centered predominately on manned aircraft,
creating a situation where the force is too costly to risk and too small to
sustain losses during a prolonged war of attrition,” he said.

So are commercial dual-use technologies, like those powering drones and
precision satellite imagery, going to prove just as able as exquisite — and
fantastically expensive — cutting-edge military equipment? Will new
anti-aircraft weapons render conventional combat aircraft irrelevant? Could
advances in robotics make manned air forces a thing of the past?

We don’t know for sure — but this much is clear: War is cruel to unimaginative
thinking.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also read: Myth of a palace coup: Did Putin aide warn against Ukraine
escalation? Are oligarchs dissenting?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

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