Did Russia guarantee total air superiority or not?
This is worth some considerations.
Interestingly, I rarely see any Western analyst say that Russia has failed to establish air superiority, which seems pretty clear to me that there is air superiority.
A description of air superiority: Air superiority is the degree of control of the air by a force that allows it to conduct its operations, at a certain time and place, without prohibitive interference from the air and missile threats.
However, the talk is that Russia has not achieved Air Supremacy and this concept is different from that of Air Superiority.
With Russia's overwhelming strength, it has full capacity to enforce Air Supremacy using the means theoretically available, after all, the strength that Russia has on paper is overwhelming. And I'm not just talking about air resources, but also logistical-operational support. The Russians are theoretically capable of interfering with transmissions between the drones and their control locations. Theoretically they can interfere and intercept/decode the Ukrainians' radio transmissions, theoretically they are capable of surgical precision attacks on any targets and with the intensity they wish.
So what is really holding the Russians back?
MANPADs? Light footprint on airfields under the argument of using bases as forward points?
The operating infrastructure of an airbase, once ground has been gained, can be quickly repaired to allow immediate operations, even if limited. Conquering Ukraine has all the time in the world to repair and expand these facilities in whatever way Russia deems best to support its Air Force.
The longer the conflict goes on, the more money Russia spends, the more time it gives the Ukrainians to reorganize and put up more resistance. No war is fought (on the part of the invader) so that it takes time, precisely because the uncertainties increase exponentially. One would be that close to imminent official defeat, the Ukrainians themselves could demolish all the supposedly valuable military infrastructure before handing it over to the Russians. Defenders want the conflict to drag on for as long as possible if they feel they can cause enough friction that military operations are no longer worthwhile or that favorable conditions, even for a negotiated solution, may appear on the horizon.
Economy of offensive force on the part of the Russians is a deprecated use of military air power, and this only makes operations more confusing, without clear objectives and facilitates the organization of defending forces. We are seeing this happen.
Russian ground advances are few and far between. There is even talk that there have been limited counterattacks by the Ukrainians. With such force, that shouldn't even be possible. The Ukrainians shouldn't even have the amount of armor they have.
What do you get out of it? Paper accepts everything. If we are just to analyze an operational picture based on the lists of military assets of both countries in conflict, we will come to the conclusion that this war should not even be a month old. But if we analyze the logistical problems, communication problems, problems with the supply of modern war material and precision missiles, we can conclude that perhaps the war can last at least another month, and that the forces on both sides are trying to adapt to a fluid situation, and that both sides will want to nullify the opposing side's movements and plans.
The alleged total air superiority should also be a source of clarification on the part of western authors who, in my view, do not address certain questions.
We do not see Russian aircraft throughout the entire Ukrainian territory performing battlefield interdiction tasks and preventing Ukrainians from receiving foreign aid. There were air attacks on Jitomir, but very limited. There was the attack on the Foreign Legion base, but limited. This aid that Ukraine receives will be used against Russian troops. We see no indication that Russian CAS role aircraft are managing to provide, in brute force and in the expected numbers (hundreds, perhaps), of large-scale close air support missions in cooperation and coordination with ground forces.
Probably the dispersion in battalion-sized units such as the aforementioned BTGs throughout the entire 1500 km operating area of the war could be mitigating in this case, we have even seen some CAS missions after Russia lost several support and logistical convoys, but it is clear that Russia, unlike the annual strategic exercises it usually employs, CAS is not part of the fixed doctrine of the Russian Army.
What follows are the following questions:
1 – If Russia has air supremacy, that is, there are no Ukrainian aircraft or missiles capable of interfering with Russian air operations, why can't they do interdiction tasks?
2- If Russia has air supremacy, then why don't its troops advance under the cloud umbrella of Su-25s and attack helicopters?
3- If they do not advance quickly, would the Russian ground forces have training and material conditions to take advantage of breaches opened by the air elements? If they have these conditions, why haven't they made significant advances since the first week of the war?
4- If they are able to interfere and intercept/decode and geolocate Ukrainian radio transmissions, why are their communications so bad with each other to the point of interfering in their actions and, above all, why can't they get ahead of the Ukrainian actions of way to exploit any tactical advantages in strategic successes? This questioning alone casts doubt on their intelligence-gathering capabilities on the battlefield.
Due to these questions, we can deduce that the Ukrainians still have some amount of S-300 and surveillance radars. We can also assume that they have better access to battlefield intelligence (either on their own or through NATO transfers), and that they likely still have a dwindling and increasingly inefficient number of combat aircraft. At the same time the battlefield is infested with MANPADs and the Russians lack PGMs and this makes them use unguided weaponry from higher altitudes, making accuracy poor.
We can also infer a confirmation that the Russians still do not have the ability to coordinate large numbers of aircraft in the same sector, that is, they lack concentration of firepower. Not only that, the very coordination between the different BTGs is deficient, the Russians' lack of communication is already widely accepted by military analysts. We can also assume that there is virtually no real-time coordination with Russian combat units and air units, at least not fixed-aviation ones, which compromises any exploration of gaps on the battlefield. Russian communications problems and lack of training are a hallmark of this Russian action in Ukraine.
It's hard to argue that the Russians have no problems in many tactical, doctrinal and operational aspects, including unexpectedly the deficiency of Russian intelligence, that column that was considered the most effective of all time, heir to the erstwhile KGB.
