This is true in the US and Canada as well.
The Ukrainian Air Force has found a new clever way to keep using normal air bases. After a hangar got bombed by cruise/ballistic missiles they would print a 1:1 aerial/satellite picture of the rubble, hang it over the actual rubble and then clean up under the print. It took quite a few weeks for the Russians to understand this ruse.
The doctrine of always having air superiority in NATO (and thus not needing makeshift runways) is so far rather justified given the hilarious level of incompetence shown by the VKS. Although the RAF seems to be more anxious about it, they definitely know much more than me. We do need a lot more air defense though, it's clear that before the next NATO-Russia confrontation they will have a rich arsenal of flying trashcans like the Shahed, as well as some decent missiles.
This sounds very interesting! Any sources?
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-r...
BTW, if you like reading longer reports on the technical/military aspects of this war then I can recommend RUSI. I haven't seen a better source so far. They release a report every now and then.
A critical weakness of the Russian strike campaign was battle damage assessment. First, the Russian military appears to have presumed that if an action had been ordered and carried out then it had succeeded, unless there was direct evidence to the contrary. Evidence of success appears to have disproportionately relied on three data points: confirmation from pilots that they hit their target; confirmation from Russian satellites that a site showed damage; and confirmation from signals intelligence (SIGINT) that Ukrainians reported a strike and damage to their equipment. Russian satellite reconnaissance proved very limited, even though Russian survey space reconnaissance of Ukraine has been conducted since at least 2012, and detailed reconnaissance, in the interests of invasion planning, since mid-2021. A probable reason for this may be the insufficient number of satellites in the orbital grouping of the VKS and the overestimation of their technical capabilities. Indirect confirmation of this explanation is provided by the fact that the AFRF began buying additional satellite images of the territory of Ukraine and individual military facilities on the world market in April 2022. One of the visible failures of satellite intelligence is the inability to detect on time a significant volume of strategic railway movements by the UAF, which, in March 2022 amounted to three–four echelons per day.
The poor Russian battle damage assessment process made the Russian military highly vulnerable to deception, which has been consistent throughout the conflict. Early strikes on Ukrainian airfields, for example, destroyed many hangars. By photographing this damage and printing the resulting pattern on to sheets, it became possible to clear the rubble and erect covers for aircraft to return to the site, sheltering in positions that the Russians would confirm as destroyed. This led – somewhat amusingly – to the Russians debating whether Ukrainian fighter aircraft were operating from subterranean shelters at several sites. Repeated strikes on dummy air-defence positions also saw a considerable wastage of ammunition, while Ukrainian troops could confirm that sites were destroyed over the radio even when they were still functioning, causing Russian aircraft to ignore air-defence systems in their mission planning. The already-publicly reported use of dummy HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system) later in the war to lure Russian fires is indicative of the systematic use of deception to ensure survivability by the UAF, and it has proven widely effective.
The presumption of success caused the Russian military to take several unjustifiable risks in the disposition of its forces during the first 72 hours of the conflict. Aircraft did not fly with EW pods during the opening phase as they were not deemed necessary following the presumed success of the strike campaign. Similarly, Russian manoeuvre forces were not properly supported by air-defence units and Russian air-defence units were told to presume that aircraft were friendly. This enabled a significant number of ground-attack sorties by the Ukrainian Air Force, including using UAVs such as TB2, against Russian formations, even when they had attached air-defence units. Ukraine suffered aircraft losses in air-to-air engagements, however.
However, the fact they are just now starting to issue body armor to their soldiers and have not had any real combat experience in the modern age might be difficult challenges to overcome.
It's a lot different to push around your effectively unarmed neighbors than the US, who has been in large scale military conflicts since the 40's. To put it in perspective, the US spends over 800 billion dollars per year on the military. It's more than the next 10 countries, combined.
Still, the us spends more than 2.5x per year than China.
But yeah you're right, national and collective defense strategies should not rely too much on VKS' weaknesses, that's not the only potential problem.
As far as I could tell after a bar argument, this is more or less an urban legend[0]. While the referenced article only debunks the "Every 5 miles" myth, further (brief) reading led me to believe if there were ever any designed airstrips into the interstate system they were short-lived and likely very one-offish style programs.
[0] - https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-2000/one-mile-...
That's disappointing. It sounded so cool! The part of this story I recall is that overpasses were spaced widely enough to avoid interfering with airplanes should they need to find a landing spot.
That's probably not a useful data point, as bush planes are massively different from warplanes. A Pilatus PC6 is one of the largest "bush planes" and at max weight, is 1/3 the weight of an empty F-18 and needs 1/5 as much runway to takeoff with no jet blast concerns
It’s not that they were built for the military, but the advantages to the military were also obvious.
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/...
Sorry for offtopic, but I (evidently) got triggered by the inclusion of the word 'unprofitable' in your reply
but otherwise yes? I don't think airports like IAD should run at a loss. they are very expensive to operate and primarily serve commercial airlines. the gate fees and retail rents should absolutely offset that, and if they don't, the airport should be closed.
Or restructured to be profitable. IAD is a good example of where there is clearly enough demand and example of similar scale airports being run effectively. So if they are running at big losses (no idea, not something I've researched) then that to me implies bad management (or poor political constraints) rather a fundamental business model problem.
The only effect on the "public good" is to serve a handful of rich hobbyist. And potentially as national defense infrastructure, which I guess is why the feds fund them.
If they add enough value to justify their existence, shouldn't they also turn a profit?
In all other cases, you are just taxing people who don't benefit from those airports to subsidize the few people who do benefit.
Now, not every unprofitable service is worthy of government funding.
There are public services we choose to run at a loss, like the postal service or public transit. These services definitely could raise their prices in order to turn a profit (they provide enough value that people would still pay the higher prices). We choose to run them at a loss as a sort of wealth redistribution program, where the taxes from the rich subsidize the cost of these services for the poor.
Hand-waving that away because it is wealth redistribution is invalid.
Profit is not a prerequisite of value.
Profit should not be the driving force of every mechanism in society.
Caveat, not every public service which costs money is able to cost too much. Rejecting the profit motive is not equal to rejecting a bounded budget for programs.
If we only put out fires if the property owner has paid their fire fighting fees the fire might uncontrollably spread to other properties, so we are better off just having a public fire fighting service. Every trucking company paying for their own armed escorts is much more expensive than taxes financing a police force that ensures safe travel. Transportation infrastructure, no matter if that's streets, subways or airports, promotes trade and efficient resource use by allowing people and resources to get to places more easily.
It's no different from building roads or sewage systems - you don't try to directly capture the building cost from the people using them because the higher order benefits from having a healthy, growing, functional society (both in the general wellbeing of the population, and in tax revenue) outweigh that.
These benefits are incredibly hard to quantify and likely don't even really directly/immediately affect the people using the transport. If the airport increased prices to try to capture that value in profit they would just be adding that friction back into the system and the benefits would disappear again.
Only if you assume the nonexistence of (or perfect ability to internalize through regulation) externalities (specifically, here, positive externalities.)
large airports overwhelmingly serve for-profit airlines and freight carriers. I'd argue a lot of this activity should really be moved to rail. but either way, it seems that the businesses involved should cover the cost to operate.
smaller airports are mostly used by hobbyists. while cool, this is not a particularly accessible hobby, and I don't feel it is worth subsidizing.
the only exceptions I can think of are airfields in remote communities (Alaska, islands, etc), and strategic locations that are desirable to the military.
Also many municipal airports serve as a beacon to help folks flying at night to get around.[1]