Taking pot shots at marginal KP is obviously sub-optimal. It would be better to kill a Ukrainian jet even if it means some Russian grunts on the line eats some bombs.
This is basically a consequence of the Russians’ inability to achieve true air superiority owning to insufficient SEAD/DEAD capability. The Russians lost too many jets themselves to Ukrainian bait ops that they are forced to shoot at extreme range to ensure the safety of their own planes and pilots.
What the Russians desperately need is their equivalent to the J16D. Hell, even the EW version of the JH7A will probably be a total game changer for them.
This is an ongoing lesson that you can’t just focus all your resources on tip-of-the-spear assets and neglect the rest. Because if you have a weak spear shaft, your super fancy spear tip is in effect just a really expensive and suboptimal dagger.
Air superiority in the traditional sense no longer applies here. We just need to call it Drone superiority. I propose a new term -- LoLo superiority. Low Altitude, Low Speed. Just so we can include props and helos, which have astonishingly came out from this conflict in shining colors.
The basic bottleneck for the Russians is to find targets so they can let loose their Iskanders, FABs, X-38ML, LMUR, Tornado-S, TOS, MLRS, Gerans, Krasnopols, Lancets, and long range FPV drones like Molinyas. The Russians have an overabundance of long range firepower, it's about finding targets to exercise this firepower.
SEAD/DEAD no longer applies on the battlefield for the Russians as it's been a long time since I last saw any short to medium range air defense system, as well as any Soviet ones, on the Ukrainian side. Even the SHORADs like Strelas and Avengers have become rare to nonexistent. Either they have been shot out entirely by Lancets or they have ran out of munitions. If they are parked in hangers, the Russians have been diligently targeting hangers with every massed and rather frequent Geran raids.
It's the Ukrainians that need to exercise SEAD/DEAD against the Russians and both sides have found the best way is to just use drones to knock out AD and their radars. The AFU resorts to using long ranger FPV with Starlink antennas, whereas the Russians have recently copied the same tactic using Molinya FPV drones. That's on top of the Russians now capable of extending the range of fiberoptic FPV to 65km, which is also used on the Molinya. There's also the Molinya that acts as the mothership drone that carries another FPV drone and acts as a signal relay. The Ukrainians have sea drones that mount FPV drones which is launched against Russian AD. Lancets have extended their range to 100km, and even used to take out these sea drones. Ironically within a week of each other, both sides have popped S-300 radars on each side using long range FPV.
All this is to say traditional SEAD using manned aircraft is now a deadend. No one is now using them. Drones are used against AD while AD is used to take down recon drones. It has reached to a point where you now have portable AD that's basically using fast FPV interceptor drones instead of missiles. I am inclined to say, ground based autocannons, interceptor drones and gunship helicopters are now the primary antidrone defense for the AFU. It matters that you need to take down out recon drones, because without the eyes, the other guy can't target with the Iskanders or cruise missiles.
That Chinese AESA farm radar used to scan perimeters for vermin, maybe more useful in detecting Baba Yagas and recon drones for someone to shoot a Verba MANPADS or launch a handheld interceptor drone.
The war has come to a point the most important activity is to find each other's drone operators and kill them. Jets don't really matter except to deliver guided bombs, and thats already been pretargeted because some drones have found the targets. It always comes back that the beginning of the kill chain is a drone discovering the target. No need for J-16s or EW JH-7A. Send the equivalent worth of Maviks instead. It has come to a point that while the Russians still use laser guided air to ground missiles, the targets are lased by a drone rather than some pod on the wing. The jet is just a truck, the guys finding the target, making the decision to kill, are the ones in some basement with a big monitor screen, flying an Orlan-30, a winged drone not much bigger than an RC plane.
Fighters are also completely useless against drones and an F-16 is a complete waste of money. Better helicopters and prop planes with machine guns taking them down the old fashioned style. The Russians have Ka-52s and Mi-28 attack helicopters plucking UAVs off with 30mm autocannon and Verba MANPADs. (The Verba has been a shiny and underrated weapon for the Russians.). The Ukrainians have Mi-24 Hinds and Mi-8s shooting down Gerans with machine guns, even employ old prop Yakolevs, quite successfully. The AFU Su-27s and MiG-29s are mainly used for guided bomb deliveries, through once in a while, yet another Su-27 recently, was shot down. Ukrainian Su-24 were used previously but are practically attrited and depleted some time ago, hence I haven't spotted mention of them for a long while. The Russians have other jets that can potentially deliver FABs and have tested using Su-30s for such missions. But it seems to have they have too much trucks from the Su-34s alone and not enough targets. The Russians have an overkill issue where the same target can be eliminated using another weapon, a Tornado-S for example, or using a Geran, so there's quite a bit of overlap.
