The War in the Ukraine

Gloire_bb said:

Yes, they do. But as of summer 2024, VKS can't attack anything outside of tactical zone other than with cruise missiles, and can't do battlefield interdiction at all(lancet isn't VKS, and its capabilities in any case are dwarfed by the task - army logistics is thousands upon thousands of targets daily, lancet just recently passed 3000 strike video mark).

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Sinnavuuty said:

Here is a central point of VKS aerospace doctrine:

They were never created to do anything other than act within their tactical combat zone and this is feasible as long as their performance/mission is within the air defense zone protected by air defense assets on land - the SAMs. It has been this way since the consolidation of the VKS with the 2015 reorganization forming a single joint service of the field air defense systems of the ground forces (PVO-SV) and the Russian air force (VVS) within the VKS.

The Russians know that the problem with layered defense of an IADS is air defense saturation and stealth. The Russians cannot and could not create anti-access bubbles as the drawn maps demonstrate, they rely on a strategy of attrition, not area denial. The VKS with its aviation is a fundamental part of this strategy to engage any aircraft that tries to penetrate the defended areas, even more so those that try to saturate the Russian air defense on land with stealth and saturation, the VKS is part of this attrition strategy.

The air defense system as a strategic network is a combination of radars, integrated air defense, tactical/strategic aviation and missile defense. The LRA as a strategic aviation component of the VKS is a key part of this, pre-emptively attacking enemy aerospace power, trying to destroy as many aircraft on the ground as possible.

Several of the concepts attributed to this strategy can be seen in the war in Ukraine. At first, Russian aerospace forces used the LRA to pre-emptively attack the UkrAF, although I am almost certain that the Russian invasion strategy was a Russian capitulation of Kiev by Shock and Awe, the initial airstrikes were never part of a strategy to liquidate the UkrAF in the initial moments of the war, either due to a lack of capacity or a lack of its own strategy to effectively achieve this objective.

The Russians lost many fighter jets trying to fight the way they were never trained to do so, flying offensive air support missions for ground units, trying to eliminate Ukrainian IADS systems near the front line that provided air cover for ground units. The VKS spent a good part of its time being ineffective just conducting CAPs shooting down some Ukrainian aircraft and doing nothing else, its role returned to active with the UMPC/UMPBs kits, but before its task was almost certainly restricted, even more so when it was already It was clear that in the summer of 2022, the Russian advance would begin to stall, the change was truly visible with the change of command to Surovikin.

In this way, the Russians returned to their original attrition role, with the VKS remaining on CAP duties while using bombers to attack Ukrainian energy installations, with the implementation of the UMPC kits, this led to making the VKS active again in combat in support of the forces land, which had been restricted after the summer of 2022.

From the moment the enemy begins to eliminate the VKS's radars, then immediately begins to attack the Russian VKS special air power, then deals with the countless PVO-SV air defense systems, the Russians are banking on this attrition to degrade the power. enemy air special forces, leaving it with little or no ammunition or a lack of aircraft, but as long as the enemy does not run out of either, the Russians would no longer be a military force with any capabilities.

It is worth highlighting that the Russian strategy here is far from being anti-access, this strategy of a defensive bubble of denial while the Russians absorb all the attacks while the aviation remains stopped at the aerodromes is not true, the Russians have always seen defense as prohibitive in terms of costs and, therefore, focused on a strategy of limiting offensive damage and functionally defeating the opponent.

There are people in the West, even in think tanks, who think the Russians will hide behind air defense systems while being relentlessly attacked by enemy aerospace power, but this is fundamentally far from the Russian strategy. You can read about it here:

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What I want to establish here is that the VKS is doing what it was always assigned, no more tasks could be accomplished by Russian air power because they were never shaped to perform more assigned tasks, the Russians never had the same doctrinal adherence as the aerospace power similar to the West and will never have for several reasons.

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