Key Points and Summary – Russia has failed to gain air superiority over Ukraine and now fights largely at standoff range.
-Robust, Western-integrated Ukrainian air defenses pushed Moscow away from fighter sweeps and close air support toward massed cruise missiles and Shahed-derived loitering munitions.
Tu-160 bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-The diverse but aging fleet faces attrition, spares shortages, and sanctions-driven production limits, forcing cannibalization and improvisation.
-The strategy has degraded infrastructure and burned Ukrainian air-defense stocks but hasn’t proved decisive.
-Open-source losses suggest a shrinking manned sortie rate ahead, while drone and missile inventories remain sizable. Border overflights and Baltic probes heighten NATO collision risk as Russia prioritizes long-range strikes.
The Russian Air Force: Constrained by Ukrainian Air Defenses
Unable to achieve decisive air superiority over Ukraine, Russia relies instead on unmanned Shahed-derivatives to prosecute strikes across the country—and risks collision with NATO.
The Russian Air Force is a large, relatively diverse force, but one that is also severely constrained in an operational sense, experiencing logistical stress, and a deployment strategy in Ukraine that has seen bombers and jets employed as a standoff strike and logistics branch, rather than attempting to exert air superiority.
Attrition has crimped both aircraft and crews, with other bottlenecks on the horizon: a dearth of spare parts and industrial production shortfalls are partly a consequence of Western sanctions.
Russia’s current inventory of aircraft is relatively diverse. In addition to legacy Soviet designs like the Su-24 and Su-25, the MiG-29 and Su-27 family of aircraft, there are also some modernized fourth-generation aircraft in the force, including the Su-30M, Su-34, and Su-35 aircraft, as well as a small fourth-generation-plus, or potentially fifth-generation air fleet that includes small numbers of Su-57 aircraft, and many helicopters of various types.
Russia’s fleet of strike drones is expanding in both numbers and sophistication.
Tu-160M Bomber from Russia. Image Credit: Russian Military/Creative Commons.
The sheer diversity of Russia’s air forces is an asset, giving Moscow a greater degree of operational flexibility. Still, many of those aircraft are Cold War-era platforms.
As such, they are old, maintenance-heavy, and somewhat reliant on foreign components and the global supply chains that deliver them, which are affected by Western sanctions.
Still, Russia can keep many aircraft airborne thanks to cannibalizing spare parts from other aircraft, imports of substitute components from abroad, and using domestic alternatives when possible. Those efforts, although successful in keeping Russian aircraft aloft in the short term, may not be as sustainable in the long term.
In 4 Words: Can’t Fight in Ukraine?
Russian air forces in Ukraine have been used, in essence, as standoff platforms to suppress Ukraine’s rear area infrastructure and to execute strikes around the battlefield, outlining a mix of cruise missiles and air-launched long-range missiles (which are also, on occasion, launched from Russian warships).
Instead of conducting routine fighter sweeps ahead of bombing missions or providing close air support with helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft, Russian air assets are now primarily standoff platforms, largely due to the robust, layered Ukrainian air defenses.
Ukraine’s air defenses are closely integrated with Western air defense systems, made possible by air defense aid to the country, and make low-altitude manned flight a very risky proposition. Russia lost many aircraft, including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, in the early weeks and months of the full-scale invasion due to these air defenses. This forced operational caution prompted a significant shift in Russian air operations.
Russia instead opted to employ relatively inexpensive and highly expendable loitering munitions like the Iranian-derived Shahed and other variants of that platform to strike targets throughout Ukraine. This both keeps pilots, who are more difficult to replace than aircraft, out of harm’s way, but also takes production advantages related to economies of scale into account.
As a consequence, Russia has eschewed achieving and maintaining air superiority throughout Ukraine, opting instead for a push against Ukrainian logistics, energy, and command nodes, even in areas far distant from the front line, part of a wider attempt to degrade Ukrainian morale and sustainment.
To that end, Russia’s Aerospace Forces’ main combat thrust has been as part of the Kremlin’s missile and drone campaigns, marked by occasional helicopter assault and airlifted, some aviation strikes, and air-launched cruise-missile strikes against critical civilian infrastructure from standoff ranges.
Has that strategy been a success or a failure? The mixed approach has seen some limited operational successes: massed drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure have degraded, particularly roads, rail transportation, and energy.
Russia Tu-160 Bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
It has also forced Ukraine to use valuable, limited, and expensive air defense munitions, further complicating Ukraine’s logistics. However, the Russian strategy has not produced a decisive knock-out blow to Ukraine, nor has it achieved air superiority, nor has it ended Ukrainian counter-offensives.
Open-source trackers, including Oryx, point to steep aircraft losses and attrition that, over time, greatly erode Russia’s ability to prosecute strikes from the air.
One of the consequences of Russia’s reliance on drones is the increased prospect of Russian air operations close to NATO borders, like the recent airspace incursions and drone overflights in Poland, which greatly raise the chances of accidents with NATO members, greatly increasing the risk to Europe and NATO. Recent Russian flights over the Baltics, probing runs intended to gauge NATO response times, may increasingly become the norm.
Russian Air Force: What Happens Now?
Russia can be expected to continue using its air forces as a strike system using massed long-range fires and large numbers of expendable strike drones to pummel Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Over the coming months, an increase in maintenance shortfalls is likely due to a shortage of spare parts and their rapid consumption, as well as the inherent limitations of Russian industrial output, particularly in aviation, which is expected to reduce manned sortie rates.
That being said, Russia still retains quite a substantial drone and missile capacity and will still be able to launch strikes with seeming impunity.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
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