Ukraine’s war has largely been fought on the ground over the past two years, with troops often locked in back-and-forth battles supported by heavy artillery and drones. The air forces of both countries have played a secondary role due to Ukraine’s limited aircraft fleet and Russia’s inability to gain the air supremacy it once hoped for.
But as the Russian military continues its attacks in the east, its air force has taken on a larger role. Military analysts say Russia has increasingly used fighter jets near front lines to drop powerful guided bombs on Ukrainian positions and clear a path forward for infantry. That tactic, used mostly in Avdiivka, the strategic eastern town captured by Russian forces last month, has paid off, experts say.
It also carries risks.
“It’s an expensive but quite effective tool that Russia is now using in the war,” said Serhiy Hrabskyi, a retired colonel in the Ukrainian army. “It is dangerous for them to send their fighter jets” close to the front line, he added, but it can “effectively affect Ukrainian positions.”
Last week, the Ukrainian military said it had shot down seven Su-34 fighter jets, almost all operating in the east, just days after shooting down an A-50 long-range radar reconnaissance aircraft. According to Ukrainian officials, it was part of a series of successful attacks against the Russian Air Force, in which Ukraine claimed to have shot down 15 aircraft in as many days.
Most of the demolitions could not be independently verified.
Oryx, a military analysis site that counts losses based on visual evidence, and Russian military bloggers confirmed the loss of two Su-35 fighter jets. Britain’s military intelligence services confirmed the destruction of the A-50 plane.
Justin Bronk, senior research fellow in air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute in London (RUSI), warned that “kill exaggeration is a systemic feature of air warfare.”
But he added that Ukraine “has certainly been carrying out an increasing number of ambush-type attacks” with the help of air defense systems in recent months and has racked up “notable successes.”
Following the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine managed to prevent Russia from controlling the skies through aerial combat and the skillful use of anti-aircraft missiles. After just a month and heavy losses among its fighter jets, Russia stopped flying its planes beyond the front lines, RUSI said in a report, and instead switched to launching barrages of ballistic and cruise missiles from afar. .
But that left Russia “unable to effectively employ the potentially heavy and efficient aerial firepower” of its fighter-bombers to attack Ukrainian front-line positions, the report said.
This began to change early last year, when Russia began using glide bombs, guided munitions that are launched from an aircraft and can fly long distances to the front lines, limiting the risk to aircraft from anti-aircraft missiles. The glide bombs, carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives, can penetrate underground bunkers protecting soldiers on the front lines.
“These bombs completely destroy any position,” said Egor Sugar, a Ukrainian soldier who fought at Avdiivka. wrote on social media. “All buildings and structures simply become a pit after the arrival of just one.”
Ukrainian officials and military analysts said Russian aviation had played a major role in the capture of Avdiivka, which required Russian planes to “fly closer” to the front line to maximize the effect of gliding bombs. And that exposed them to the risk of being shot down by Ukraine’s air defenses.
In late December, the Ukrainian military said it destroyed three Su-34 aircraft near the Russian-controlled eastern bank of the Dnieper River in the south, where Ukrainian troops have secured small positions. Then came the demolitions in the east.
It is still unclear what air defense systems Ukraine has deployed. But some Army officers and analysts have hinted at using American-made Patriot systems, the United States’ most advanced ground-based air defense system.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Russian losses were likely the result of “some relationship between Russian aircraft being compromised,” Ukraine’s intelligence gathering about the movements of Russian aircraft and the deployment of air defense systems “to eliminate them.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that “Russian forces appeared to tolerate a higher rate of aviation losses in recent weeks to carry out gliding bomb attacks in support of operations “Russian offensives underway in eastern Ukraine”.
One of Ukraine’s biggest successes in the air battle was the destruction last week of one of Russia’s A-50 radar planes (the second this year), which are essential for coordinating aerial bombardments of Ukrainian positions on the front. . “Taking away their eyes and removing their ability to aim is a pretty good victory,” Karako said.
British military intelligence He said Russia had seven other A-50s, but had “very likely grounded the fleet” in support of its military operations to prevent further losses, thus reducing the “situational awareness provided to aircrews.”
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russian aviation activity in eastern Ukraine had decreased significantly on Saturday night.
It is unclear to what extent Russia will be able to sustain these losses in the long term. RUSI analysts said this month that Russian aircrew losses amounted to almost 160 people, which they described as “a serious loss of capability.”
Russia’s state news agency Tass said on Thursday that state defense conglomerate Rostec would resume production of the A-50 “as it is necessary for the Russian armed forces.”
Hrabskyi, the retired colonel, compared Russia’s costly strategy in the air to its tactics on the ground, where it has sent wave after wave of troops on bloody assaults to capture cities, regardless of the human cost. “The Russians don’t care,” he said. “If they have an order, they will use all available capabilities, all available weapons systems to attack.”