I’m not denying Russians can achieve technological brilliance, often bypassing budgetary constraints in novel ways, equally their military technology seems to regularly come up top trumps on paper and not in the battlefield.
I read this article with great interest over technical details, but stop short of accepting conclusions along the lines of "Flap Lid is comparable to SPY-1". Only the folks who train and operate against those systems in the real world really know if that's true, and it's one of the things we are least likely to have accurate information about in the public domain.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1vj7r6/is_...
Thinking about what Kopp says my conclusion is that he wouldn’t be happy with any single engine fighter.
The Ukrainian Air Force is still operating mostly because the Russian one is somewhat MIA. Possible/Partial explanation for their bad performance is corruption. Another one is much more alarming and that is that the Russian strategy does not require air superiority.
Either way it is not relevant to the S-300 which is deployed within the borders of Russia as it is a defensive system.
What you want to read about instead is the Krasukha:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44879/ukraine-just-cap...
it is a bit unclear why, yet Russia has frequently been using much more expensive Su-30/35 fighters and Su-34 bombers for close air support instead of more traditional/suitable/cheap Su-25. As close air support naturally loses a lot of planes to MANPADS and air-defense guns, especially considering that Su-30/35/34 aren't armored like Su-25, Russia has lost a lot of those Su-30/35/34. Also using mostly unguided bombs (despite all the Russian propaganda claims of using only "high-precision weapons"- just look at that glorious state TV report on using "high-precision" where they show plane loaded only with FAB-250 unguided bombs at timestamp 24:55 of https://rutube.ru/video/4b400cbcfbbd6c1b730b5e80138fe598/ - and they even show supposed launch of a ground attack missile from that plane loaded only with those bombs :) Russian planes have had to go pretty low to achieve any resemblance of close hits - it is the city bombing that they do from 8-10 km altitude while bombing any specific target requires to go very low where they again lose to MANPADS and other air-defenses. As a result of high losses (close to 100 planes out of supposedly 1300 combat capable planes that the whole Russia has - that 1300 is an official number, divide by 2x at least to get real number :) Russia has significantly scaled back the close air support and decreased air superiority missions.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...
A hypothesis was that this indicates that before the war only a limited number of aircrews got sufficient flight time (which, obviously, is quite expensive; especially if many of your planes - just as tanks - aren't properly maintained to save costs or due to corruption) and the same people were used in all the operations in the last decade; and once these air crews "ran out" there is a bottleneck in capable replacements.
But S-300 definitely was deployed not only within the borders of Russia but also by Russia in Ukraine, I recall seeing evidence of that - it's a defensive system that is also used to defend the deployed Russian ground forces from air attacks.
I think you'll agree that is bollocks. No sane modern invasion plan would consider air supremacy as only a nice to have. In this case we can clearly conclude that other assumptions made at the planning stage were badly, badly wrong.
Russia really fucked up in their assessment of their adversary in all areas. They assumed that a lightning strike would cause near instant capitulation. It wasn't a "blitzkrieg" because the entirety of the world's intelligence ignored the fuff and called it before kick off, publically. Also UKR were able to prepare somewhat.
The horrendous thing about this conflict is that Russia cannot expect to win on their original terms. They will still kill civilians wholesale and destroy infrastructure in a desperate attempt to claim a "win".
Civvies have and will die in greater numbers than soldiers in this conflict and that is something that needs to be considered by us all. At what point do we decide that a possible strategic nuclear escalation is a worse worry than a complete massacre of a sovereign nation?
Welcome to Russia. They don't fly SEED. And they knew that going in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpzUCSdxi7k
> They assumed that a lightning strike would cause near instant capitulation.
Yes, I'm well aware of this narrative. I happen to think their current plan, however we arrived here, is to play for time. The opposite of a blitz.
They are depopulating and starving Ukraine and flattening major cities with long range artillery. You aren't too far off. But it isn't to claim a "win", they aren't cartoon villains.
> At what point do we decide that a possible strategic nuclear escalation is a worse worry than a complete massacre of a sovereign nation?
Unfortunately at no point. That is part of their calculus.
They appear to have gained an edge over the US in both offensive and defensive nuclear capabilities as well as having caught the EU with their pants completely down. This is the likely reason why they wasted a few of their new hypersonic missiles as a demonstration. And why they flew into Swedish air space and flaunted hot nukes which has never happened before even during the Cold War.
Citation needed. They appear to be a generation behind their adversary in just about every way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
https://www.axios.com/kinzhal-hypersonic-missiles-russia-ukr...
US has heavily invested in their second strike capabilities, and is far ahead of Russia on that.
US has largely viewed investment in first strike capabilities as a waste, the DPRK is their only adversary that could possibly be decapitated with such weapons.
A first strike against Russia would result in an unstoppable second strike, what good are first strike weapons in this scenario?
The Mattis quote in your article provides a good tl;dr
>U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis stated Russia already has the capability to hit U.S. port cities with missiles, and said that Poseidon "does not change at all the strategic balance".
US is already incapable of stopping “regular” ICBMs, poseidon does not change the calculus at all.
I assume you mean SEAD? (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses)
"Kinzhal" is a slight modification of standard Russian "Iskander" ballistic missile allowing it to be launched from a plane (specifically an intercepter fighter jet MiG-31).
As with most ballistic missiles, the warhead flies a part of its trajectory at a hypersonic speed, but has to slow down at the final part of its trajectory. It is just as hard (or easy) to intercept as any other ballistic missile.
Mounting it on a plane gives it a longer range, and potentially makes it harder to be destroyed by a pre-emptive strike (although experts disagree on this).
Traditionally the term "hypersonic weapon" is used for very different class of weapons. Basically, a true "hypersonic weapon" is something able to maneuver while flying at hypersonic speeds, and able to maintain this speed all the way to the target. "Kinzhal" is nothing like it.
So it is not some fantastic wonderwaffe making NATO air defenses suddenly useless. It presents some additional challenges, but nothing drastic.
What makes possible nuclear war with Russia really dangerous is just the number of "conventional" ballistic missiles Russia has. In theory Russia may launch thousands of rockets carrying tens of thousands of warheads, and no air defense has any hope to intercept all or even most of them.
This is the same as it always was. The difference with Soviet Union is that Soviet leaders appeared to be afraid of a world suicide, and Russian leadership appears (or wants to appear) to be crazy and ready to destroy the world.
The rummoured narrative is that the Russian spies believed that they have enough higly positioned Ukrainian military officers on their payroll. Thus the Ukrainian president will either have to run away at the start of hostilities or get couped by his own people. After that they can place a new leadership structure on Ukraine.
I don’t know if it is true. I don’t have proof either way of course. It’s merely one of the possible narratives which could explain how the Russian’s military command could have hoped for a quick victory while not being stupid.
It also appears that in the Russian case either the S300 itself or the training of the crews has not been particularly effective against the Bayraktar drones, which I'm not aware of Russia having an equivalent of to use against the Ukrainians.
https://www.mideastcenter.org/post/how-did-turkish-uavs-outm...
There are a lot of military experts saying that they see baffling examples of incompetence from the Russian army in this war, failing at really basic stuff.
I'm no military expert, but I've seen Russian infantry videos where they are basically running around like headless chickens as the saying goes, like they received no training at all.