But most SAM losses were in Crimea, where the front has not moved.
Which kinda works in Ukraine's favor as they can launch their saturation strikes reliably along all of the coast where they also have far more reliable ISR assets since NATO exploit international air space to their advantage by flying both P-8 and Global Hawks in the area, monitoring AD positions in real time and offering targeting solutions.
Still the results have been increasingly lackluster as the Russians adapt to the threat.
Ukraine airstrikes near Russian border
You should probably mention that this area was in Ukraine's hand a couple of weeks ago, so it means it has been recently captured by Russia. Not as dramatic as implying that Ukrainians are totally about to dump SDB's on Belgorod's downtown
So pro-Russian groups in here tend to dismiss the coming Ukraine F-16's with retorts of Russian IADS will deter them and the more popular retort of Russian fighters armed with R-37M's will keep F-16's far away from frontlines yet we see here JDAM airstrikes likely from SU-27's or Mig-29's hitting targets pretty much at the Russian border.
I'm kinda digging the way you are trying to spin this into some sort of game changing situation and also a common ocurrence now, trying to pretend there isn't a specific context going on in this area, including the situation that they probably had to fly really low all the way to launch them, cutting the range of the bombs considerably but likely to be deemed a worthwhile trade-off afforded by the fact there are clear still clear ways to aproach Kharkiv from the Southwest at low level.
Being these routes relatively far away from more active and dangerous areas of the front-line, kept them away from MANPAD and lower level SAM systems. Also seems to have helped the fact that either EW assets haven't been deployed yet or were off since we are aware that SDB's are a fairly known quantity to Russian EW crews, as pointed out multiple times by several articles.
So, unless there is an stealth F-16 version Ukraine is going to receive we are not aware off, they'll be forced to do the exact same type of flying to avoid getting nailed either by Foxhounds or long range AD just the same. Physics doesn't really care about the current wunderwaffen.
yet somehow outdated soviet era Ukraine fighters managed to get in JDAM range of Russian border.
No offense, mate, but you really need to stop treating this place like its full of idiots. GBU-39's aren't your grandma's JDAM; heck they aren't JDAM's at all to begin with. You trying to imply it, is disingenous to say the least.
They are glide bombs and as such even from a low level, with a lofted trajectory , they can still achieve some range to afford some safety to the platform.
As US/Ukraine takes out Russian IADS especially in Crimea and other occupied territories Ukraine F-16's are going to have much success delivering their JDAM ordinance and other standoff-ish weapons.
As we all know, Ukraine is taking out entire batteries and not some components of it and the Russians can't replace them at all, neither components or batteries, apparently, lol.
You seem to be projecting Ukraine's (and NATO's) AD situation on Russia for one reason or another, while also failing to acknowledge how many assets, irreplaceable ones at that, Ukraine has to spend against these targets to neutralize them, likely temporarily, because you should probably know, they are the manufacturers of that equipment and bothered to keep some manufacturing capability around.
Funny you don't seem to show the same level of "optimism" for the Russians, though, considering RuAF has more leeway over Ukrainian skies, and for every image of a destroyed S-300/S-400, we get images of at least 2 o 3 Ukranian AD systems compromised one way or another. But I guess those are all decoys, don't know why Ukraine needs more AD systems if they really haven't lost any.
On that note, there is a complete image of the damage on Morozovsk AB. Seems that outside of the hangar, they hit a whole load of emtpy parking spots.
