Thread by @PhillipsPOBrien

A thought thread on the most remarkable thing of the war--here we are more than a month in this, and the Ukrainians are openly transporting equipment on major roads under clear blue skies. This represents an almost total failure of Russian airpower.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1508570300761391105?s=20&t=E2ZGhlXECwpLoIr1e_yOfA

And as this is a captured Russian piece of equipment, it would have to be relatively close to the place of capture, so we are talking near the war zone.

This cuts both ways, there are pictures of Russian columns operating in the open in clear skies--yes they can get attacked but they can also operate much of the time.

Why is this interesting? 1) it might be that this air war is extremely rare as well an unexpected. As the Russians have been denied air supremacy, but the Ukrainians dont have the ability to take it either, we are witnessing the open maneuvering of land vehicles on both sides.

2) The more important point might be that this unusual air supremacy contest has obscured the vulnerability of the large heavy AFV. They (tanks) have been able to operate out in the open in this war on both sides more than they should, because of the weird air war balance.

So be wary about those arguing for the long-term value of the tank being retained. If either side in this war can ever gain air supremacy, the tanks of the other would have to operate far more cautiously and would be destroyed in an even higher number than they are now.

As part of this, I think we can start to understand what the Ukrainians have done to Russian airpower. They havent stopped it per se--they have stopped it from flying search and destroy/patrolling missions. What do I mean from this?

Russian aircraft are still flying over Ukraine, but they are flying very cautiously, seemingly to fulfil a specific mission which mostly involves dropping (dumb) bombs on stationary targets (buildings, depots, etc).

What they seem to be unable to do is patrol or fly search/destroy missions using intelligence to react quickly to reports of Ukrainian forces out in the open to try and attack them. They should have air assets always on hand to try and attack Ukrainian targets when they appear.

But they dont regularly seem to do this. So Russian airpower has been severely hampered by taking away its flexibility to patrol and forcing it to fly specific missions in as cautious a way as possible. We have not seen an airpower campaign like this in airpower history.