NATO/US have big air forces that would simply put a bunch of its big-$$$ aircraft into the air at high altitude to fire expensive and highly accurate air-to-air missiles and knock down opposing aircraft, then bomb the ground from high altitude to get rid of anti-air installations, and only then fly in close air support.
Stingers are inexpensive comparatively cheap surface-to-air missiles that allow an individual soldier on the ground to pick off an aircraft that happens to fly sufficiently low; it's useless if air superiority is actually being contested or if aircraft are bombing away from high altitude and mainly functions to whittle down the size of the edge the opposing force's air superiority gives in the ground combat.
Russia also has accurate air-to-air missiles - with longer ranges. And very good integrated air defense. How do you overcome that without losing half your aircraft (let alone keep them fueled while your air tankers are shot down and airfields pummeled)?
The US hasn't supplied Ukraine with aircraft capable of flying SEAD/DEAD according to USAF or NATO doctrine. The Fulcrums launching HARM (old versions at that) are using 10-20% of the missiles capability.
So no, other than one old missile, they're not using US gear, nor US tactics, nor US ISR for SEAD/DEAD.
Thats not most of what Ukraine has been getting though, the majority of what they have been getting is decades old like.
- Leopard 1's.
- M113 APC's
- Mig 29's
- Sukhoi 24's
- Mi-28's
- Mi-8s
The HARM's that you speak off, we don't know what variant they are but they won't be super effective because they cannot be effectively integrated with the aircraft Ukraine has so they are probably older variants using pre programmed fixed coordinate attack modes.
That should hopefully change once the F-16's arrive and they can start more effectively using more modern air borne weapons especially for SEAD.
The air defences are probably some of the most modern pierces of equipment that Ukraine has.
HIMARS are a good example of modern equipment with relatively modern munitions but they still haven't gotten any PrSM's or ATACMS.
Latest HARM has a 150km range. Kh-58 has a 250km range.
Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)? Who will maintain them? How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back). How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
> Latest HARM has a 150km range. Kh-58 has a 250km range.
> Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)?
Probably relatively far from the action.
> Who will maintain them?
Ukrainians its one of the reasons why its taking so long for them to get them.
> How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back).
They don't have to fight at the front line, they can be used effectively as missile trucks to throw long range weapons like Storm Shadow and other long range weapons at Russian lines.
If a SU25 and Mig29 can survive doing that a F-16 will have no problem.
> How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
The same way that the SU25 and Mig29 do, the F-16 will survive much better.
Russian AAMs don't do any good if they can't target an F-22 or F-35. Russian IADS doesn't do so well against cruise missiles that are stealthy, and the US has THOUSANDs of them, as well as Tomahawk.
And how is Russia going to pummel NATO airbases? This isn't 1985 when the Soviet VVS had thousands of fighter bombers tasked with taking out the airfields. They're not next door to Germany/France/UK anymore since NATO has expanded East. The RuAF might have 500 flying aircraft for their entire nation. They have no stealth aircraft in service (the Felon isn't in production yet if ever).
I disagree entirely with your statement "Russia has objectively outclassed the West with missile tech (and defense)." Ukraine has shown that the A2AD, "hypersonic" and cruise missile tech touted by the Russians for decades aren't quite as impressive as the marketing brochures would imply.
Let's just look at AA gear. Pantsir has been shown to be ineffective against most drones, Storm Shadow, etc. Same with BUK. S300 and S400 have really good range, but I think that Patriot and SAMP stand up well in comparison. The Ukrainians are using older Patriot missiles and are successfully engaging Khinzal and any cruise missile the Russians can throw at it. NATO has THAAD and better versions of Patriot in their arsenal, so even being generous, I think this is a draw.
For offensive weapons, the Russians have nothing in the class of SCALP/Storm Shadow, much less JASSM/LRASM. They would even have a hard time coping with Tomahawk.
So what weapon system are the Russians going to use against Lakenheath and Mildenhall? A Kalibr is going to have a very hard time making it across the Baltics to the UK, and I doubt any aircraft doing a suicide mission would make it either. How about Aviano? Same problem. Ramstein and Spangdahlem as well.
And Russia sure has done a great job "pummeling" Ukrainian airbases, right? I mean, they've utterly failed at this. The Ukrainians are still flying Fencers, Fulcrums and Frogfoots from their bases.
Indeed it is and the proof shows that Ukraine intercepts a large number of Russian missiles with air defence.
Whilst Russia intercepts a lot of Ukrainian weapons with the intended targets.
The Russians have maybe shot down a single stormshadow out of all the ones that have been fired.
They don’t seem so good at intercepting modern western cruise missiles.
This all ignores that Ukraine managed to get TU141 drones that look like they have the radar signature of a truck past Russian air defence to hit targets within Russia.
> Yeah, they’ve shot down many more than that… plenty of photo evidence.
They have a single photo of a single storm shadow.
Because they haven't shot down anymore, I presume they will move it to 100 different sites to try and claim they have shot down more like they did earlier with the downed drones.
Stingers are inexpensive comparatively cheap surface-to-air missiles that allow an individual soldier on the ground to pick off an aircraft that happens to fly sufficiently low; it's useless if air superiority is actually being contested or if aircraft are bombing away from high altitude and mainly functions to whittle down the size of the edge the opposing force's air superiority gives in the ground combat.