But if the EU has no 5th gen fighters then they'd have a hard time maintaining Air Superiority against Russia if they manage to mass produce Su-57 or Su-75 and I am betting the Russian can do it before EU can have 5th gen fighters or FCAS.
EU industrial capabilities may also have issues, but they are (mostly) different ones than Russia faces.
After that the Russian "elite" units were elite in name only.
This was in hour 8 of the war and it's worth bearing in mind that this war could have gone very, very differently.
There were many russian helicopters successfully landing at Hostomel, the area saw heavy fighting for several days until it was under Ukrainian control.
> The Russian Il-76s carrying reinforcements could not land; they were possibly forced to return to Russia.[35]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport
Rumors of an Il-76 downed close to Vasylkiv did not prove to be true:
> Claims have been made that Ukrainian aircraft shot down two Russian Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft transporting assault troops.[33][124][34] However, The Guardian reports "no convincing public evidence has surfaced about the two downed planes, or about a drop of paratroopers in Vasylkiv".[125]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_front_of_the_Russian_...
Within a narrative such as loss of elite troops would definitely have some serious impact. In the context of a war the loss of the aircraft could easily be more significant.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking if only X, but war is complicated. It’s possible Russia would have been worse off because they tried to use those VDV soldiers in a plan that disastrously failed. It’s slightly more likely that they would have been a small net benefit, but chances are things would look more or less identical today with or without them.
Saying doing X wouldn’t have mattered is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal here. Ukraine not using a missile for attacking that aircraft means they could have used it to attack a different aircraft. Similarly Russia got to use all forces in that plan not destroyed with the aircraft in some other plan.
That’s not backpedaling that’s just the inherent complexities involved.
Whatever shit tier RU MIC/performance has been, it has manage to consistently defeat or mitigate what US+EU has thrown against her. Which includes highend gear like PAC3 MSE. Meanwhile half the reason RU had a hard time was due to facing UKR's abundant legacy USSR systems. At this point it's not unreasonable to dismiss everything in EU arsenal as wunderwaffe tier especially without US support. Including F35... which even if US doesn't restrict usage against EU-RU scenario, could still be borderline paperweight without US tier ISR.
People also forget NATO fought a much shitter/temu RU in Yugoslavia where NATO threw everything at even more legacy soviet systems. All of the awacs, prowlers, F117 barely chiped away at 20% of Yugoslav anti air, something like 700 harms were fired and destroyed less than handful of SA6 batteries. Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago.
IMO there's a strong chance US would heavily restrict/limit F35 operations against RU. Because one shot down F35 by S400 let alone anything shittier completely evaporates narrative around 5th gen (and what that entails for IndoPac). They'd rather see RU hit F35s in hangers with standoff munitions because at least they can point to JP and SKR and say, see, you need to build harden air shelters.
Patriot works in Ukraine, they even got a few Khinzal. But of course any air defense is limited by available ammo and you need enough of the right kind of air defense in the right places for this to work well. The Ukraine is really limited by the number of available systems and ammunition. And for something like the Shahed drones you need other ways to defend yourself to avoid exhausting your precious ammunition for advanced air defense systems.
Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.
>patriot works
With US ISR (i.e. AWACs) providing early warning, IIRC correctly UKR was salvoing full patriot battery to intercept single kinzhal/zircon tier hypersonics, i.e. entire supply of EU patriot launcher can be overwhelmed by handful of hypersonics.
>storm shadow
Similarly UKR could sneak cruise missiles through RU IADs is because US info share helped plan missions/routes to circumvent RU defenses. Competent (not even super modern) air defense has like almost 100% interception on subsonic targets like cruise missiles, provided the are detected.
The TLDR is hard to say how EU hardware will perform without US force multiplier tier ISR. Which will effect everything from finding targets to hit, hitting targets, and avoid getting hit even with same/better hardware. Which again, is not to say EU is bad... but EU very unlikely to be US level great.
Most likely because they did not have the specs or complete specs for them and how they looked like on radar. There was an article somewhere that I can't find right now where something like this was said: Once a new weapon system is employed against RU or by RU against UA, it takes about two weeks to create countermeasures for it.
We are seeing Ukrainians regularly hitting russian redars and air defence. Whatever nato wasn't able to do in hte 90s the Ukrainians are fully capable of doing today, because they are doing it. And with lots of european help. So this is just outdated speculation you're doing.
EU part of NATO has improved ISR (helios, sarlupe, copernicus etc) but nothing rivalling US tactical and strategic capabilities, i.e. as far as I know, there's no EU system that provides all weather real time targetting.
Likewise the reason why Russia couldn't steamroll Ukraine swiftly is because Ukraine anti air is very formidable (using Soviet hardware no less). That is why it is wrong to simply assume Russia is weak.
russia is weaker than they have been since 1991, possibly 1950.
There is a reason they are now delivering ammo using mules and actually attempting old school cavalry charges on horseback.
And it it's not because donkeys are better than the armoured, tracked towing tractors or because actual horses are better than tanks.
There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions. For the same reason everyone is zipping around in dirt bikes and golf carts or UKR retiring M1 tanks from frontlines. Look up survivability onion, tanks/armor get detected and destroyed because they're too visible vs modern frontline battlefield recon. If you want to survive, have to move to smaller/more agile platforms to avoid detection in the first place. RU and UKR are both learning and adapting. It's reflection that last 50 years of doctorine is obsolete, aka everything EU military also hedged on. If shit ever hits the fan, NATO maybe donkeying as well.
I don't think that's true. As an example, Finland and French doctrine are very different. It's easier to test all Euopean nations diffrent doctrine and choose what works best (especially if countries from the Balkans add their grain of salt)
Imho that's where European defense industry (as a whole) is interesting. Because you have 5 competing IFV designs (well, over 15, but really, 5 different design that does different things). You also have multiple tanks (and AMX-10s), as well as a bunch of different drone constructors. Even in gun design you have multiple choices, andh while optics and optrionics are Thales', overall equipements are extremely distributed. Europe might find itself on the backfoot in case of an engagement, but i'm pretty sure it would bounce back quickly.
Still sources like Covert Cabal and others do make me think it isn't only a tactical consideration the russians have made but also a reflection of the fact that they very much do see the end of their stockpile.
> There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions.
It's a war of attrition, both sides are using whatever they can lay their hands on at this point.
I agree that mules / horses are better in certain situations, and not even considering cost. I believe even US 10th Mountain division still uses them
The Russian failure is the exemplar. They were re-waging WW2, and they have little more than a lot of cooked tankers to show for it. Now we’re rolling with throwing prisoners into trenches to stop the maneuver warfare, because they can’t maneuver.
The US is probably in as bad of a condition. Given the poor performance of air power in Ukraine and the Trump/Putin driven destruction of world alignment, US naval power is questionable. Aircraft carriers will become ineffective as modern SAMs are sold on the market. Our submarine platforms are old, manufacturing is barely operational, and we’ll probably fire key individuals if we haven’t already.
In WW3 the role of an aircraft carrier is to launch its airplanes exactly once, before it is sunk.
It seems more likely that mules were used where they make sense: Supplying ammo to a trench deeply in the forest, where mules are the superior "technology". Then that observation was blown out of proportion.
Remember that "the Russians are fighting with shovels" was a slogan in 2022.
Israel's F-35 have being going in and out of Iran's airspace with impunity, so no, I don't think that is going to be an issue.
But there remains a question of quantity and determination.
I'm not sure how applicable this would be to a confrontation with European countries. Russian fighters will get getting lots of flight hours on CAP as well, but not much combat based on reporting. Both sides are keeping everything inside their own AD bubbles.
Their own press photos shows uncovered Philips screws on a supposedly stealth aircraft, and their "loyal wingman" drone used the first opportunity near the frontlines to try to defect.
They have less than 30 airframes, probably 30-40% have some level of operational airworthiness.
The Russians get a lot of glazing on social media about military prowess. The reality is they’re fighting a tiny, poor country, got their asses kicked early on when nobody was really helping Ukraine substantially, mostly by virtue of their own incompetence.
The Russians version of the USAF is their information operations. They’ve helped to nurture right wing shitheads in the US for decades culminating in two freakshow presidential administrations. They’ve done the same in Germany in the former GDR and in the UK with the leave wankers.
They can only do that if US provides them with required components
oh wait...
P.S. Many mocked Russian munitions came with chips made by Texas Instruments among others, but thing is those chips are so damn generic you can get that from random shops in Shenzhen.
Their previous orders have still not been delivered since they were sent to the frontlines in Ukraine.
I doubt India will want to repeat that.
With rumours of Pakistan getting J-35, 5th Gen fighters are necessity I guess.
Besides they can force Russian to manufacture them in India like Su-30 MKI.