YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Russia's Air Force is in Crisis

Russia's Air Force is in Crisis — Transcript

by WarFronts · 3,497 words · 552 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00On the eve of February the 23rd, 2022,
0:02the Russian Aerospace Forces, commonly
0:04known as VKS, was on paper the second
0:07largest air power in the world behind
0:09only the US Armed Forces. Were Moscow to
0:11actually go through with its invasion of
0:12Ukraine, most analysts assumed they
0:14would quickly establish air superiority
0:16and crush the Ukrainian military. Well,
0:18as you know, that didn't happen. What
0:21happened instead was a combination of
0:23complacent planning and underestimating
0:25Ukraine, which led to a shocking number
0:27of aircraft losses. So shocking that the
0:29VKS stopped flying missions over
0:31Ukrainian-held territory. Turns out
0:33Russia's much-vaunted lessons from Syria
0:35only apply to flying over and dropping
0:37bombs on people without air defenses.
0:39Since then, the VKS has suffered far
0:41fewer losses than the Kremlin's land
0:43forces or Black Sea Fleet. Combined with
0:45the production of new combat aircraft,
0:46it might even look like the Russian Air
0:48Force is as powerful as it was before
0:50the war. But notice the keywords there,
0:52it might look like. Because while social
0:55media has focused on spectacular
0:57aircraft shoot-downs, the real issue
0:58facing the VKS is both far less visible
1:01and far more pedestrian. Forced back
1:03from the front lines by Ukrainian
1:05attacks on airbases and forced to fly
1:07ever-increasing numbers of missions to
1:08drop glide bombs or try to shoot down
1:10drones over western Russia, the fleet is
1:13now racking up far more flight hours
1:15than it was ever designed for, even in
1:17wartime [music]. And when your fleet is
1:18mostly made up of old Soviet equipment,
1:21that at least in some cases barely has
1:23enough spare parts lying around for
1:24peacetime, well, you can see how this
1:27might become a major problem. In short,
1:29Russia's Air Force is currently going
1:31through a silent crisis of wear and
1:32tear. One that at best is burning
1:34through spare parts or forcing aircraft
1:36into retirement, and one that at worst
1:38is leading to crashes and the deaths of
1:40hard-to-replace crew.
1:43The anatomy of losses.
1:45[music] Evaluating the status of an Air
1:47Force by its battlefield losses is a
1:48little like glancing at a guy who works
1:50out and assuming he'll live to be 100,
1:53while ignoring his five-pack-a-day
1:55cigarette habit. Modern combat aircraft
1:57are incredibly complex systems that
1:59regularly operate under the stress of
2:01extreme conditions, all while their
2:02designers made drastic engineering
2:04sacrifices to keep their weight as low
2:06as possible to maximize performance.
2:08This in practice means that there is
2:10only a certain number of flights or
2:12flight hours that a modern combat
2:13aircraft can endure before it needs
2:15either a factory overhaul or to be sent
2:17off into retirement. And while this is
2:19true of all machines that go boom boom
2:21in wartime, it's truer of aircraft than
2:23for others. After all, if your tank or
2:25ship breaks, there's a decent chance
2:27that they could be recovered and towed
2:28back to base or back to port. If your
2:30aircraft breaks down, it tends to fall
2:33out of the sky and kill everybody on
2:35board. That's a major problem when you
2:36consider that training up a single
2:38combat pilot costs millions of dollars
2:41and takes years. In defense economics,
2:43this underpins the concept of something
2:45called imputed losses. An imputed loss
2:48is the destruction of military assets
2:49not through getting on the wrong side of
2:51an explody thing, but through factors
2:53like wear and structural fatigue. For
2:56example, if 100 fighter aircraft with a
2:58total engineering lifespan of 5,000
3:00flight hours each log 500 hours of
3:02intensive combat flights in a single
3:04year, you have effectively lost 10
3:06aircraft even if the enemy's air defense
3:08consists of man with a big pointy stick.
3:11In high-intensity conflicts like
3:12Ukraine, the rate of these imputed
3:14losses can outpace the speed of building
3:16new replacements and the rate of actual
3:18combat losses. So, you can end up in
3:21weird situation whereby your fleet looks
3:23menacing on paper, but from a mechanical
3:25point of view, it's being eaten alive.
3:28Depending on the age and the state of
3:29your fleet, the practical upshot can be
3:31anything from the inconvenience of
3:33having to buy more fighter jets than
3:34your defense budget planned for to
3:36seeing your military capacity
3:38dramatically crumble in the middle of a
3:40war. For the VKS, this process is
3:42especially devastating because Soviet
3:44aircraft designs always had
3:45significantly shorter lifespans than
3:47their western equivalents. Even later
3:49Russian modernizations, which narrowed
3:51this gap, are still far from capable of
3:53logging the sort of flight time their
3:55western equivalents can rack up. A
3:57Soviet era Su-27 or a MiG-29, for
3:59example, has a lifespan of around 3,000
4:02hours while a modern Russian Su-35 can
4:04hold out for some 6,000 hours. An F-16
4:07by contrast can go all the way up to
4:09over 10,000 hours. And none of this gets
4:12any better when you account for the fact
4:14that older aircraft tend to need more
4:16maintenance work and need to have more
4:18components replaced. This can be a real
4:19problem when specific aircraft and some
4:21of their components are just no longer
4:23in production. So, when the three-day
4:25special military operations end into a
4:27attrition or slugging match against a
4:29country with the largest set of air
4:31defenses in Europe and support from most
4:33NATO nations, it completely threw a
4:35wrench into VKS operational planning.
4:38Prior to Ukraine, the VKS had only ever
4:40expected to fight two types of
4:41conflicts: short and localized ones that
4:43it would win easily or a Titanic
4:45showdown with NATO, in which case it
4:47would lose so many aircraft so quickly
4:49that wear and tear wouldn't have time to
4:51become an issue. As such, the sheer
4:53unforgiving length of the Ukraine war
4:56has taken a serious toll. And that's
4:57before we even discuss Ukraine's growing
5:00long-range strike capabilities, which
5:02have forced the VKS to maintain a
5:03constant presence along a 1,200 km front
5:06combined with defensive commitments all
5:08over Western Russia and even over parts
5:10of Siberia. In short, the scale of
5:12Russian combat aircraft use is currently
5:14at unprecedented heights. Combine that
5:16with forced retirements and crashes and
5:18the result is likely a loss of
5:20operational airframes that goes way
5:22beyond the numbers lost in combat.
5:27Now, before we really get into the
5:28weeds, we should note that after the
5:30initial losses and scaling back of
5:32high-risk operations at the start of the
5:33war, the VKS uh was still flying
5:36significant numbers of combat missions.
5:38It was only [music] the compounding of
5:39multiple factors over a long period of
5:41time that brought them to where they are
5:43now, operating at an unsustainable
5:45level. Of these, the biggest factor was
5:47probably the Ukrainian effort to target
5:49Russian aircraft and helicopters at
5:50their airbases. Since very few airbases
5:53have hardened aircraft shelters with
5:54aircraft usually just being parked in
5:56the open, it doesn't take much to damage
5:58or destroy them. So, you might ask, "Why
6:00not just surround the bases with air
6:02defenses?" The trouble is that even
6:04Russia, with the world's largest
6:06collection of air defenses, can't cover
6:08everywhere at once. Defenses have to be
6:10deployed to other high-value targets,
6:12major cities, and Putin's holiday homes,
6:14oftentimes leaving certain airbases
6:16vulnerable. The result has been a series
6:18of devastating attacks on airbases in
6:20both occupied parts of Ukraine and in
6:22regions of Russia near Ukraine, using
6:24everything from ancient Soviet-era
6:26Tochka ballistic missiles and small
6:28drones launched by sabotage groups to
6:31hordes of one-way attack drones. Now,
6:33the solution here would be for the
6:35Kremlin to move its planes further away
6:37from the front which is what they did
6:39both to remove the threat from some
6:41systems with limited reach, like Tochka
6:43and ATACMS ballistic missiles, and to
6:45provide more warning time to its
6:47aircraft so that they could take off
6:48before the long-range drones managed to
6:50reach a target airbase. And this is
6:52where the whole wear and tear thing
6:54comes in. Because they are today taking
6:55off from bases far further from the
6:57front, more flight hours are required
6:59for pretty much all combat operations.
7:01And in the case of some strategic,
7:03this went to such an extreme that
7:05airborne radar aircraft are now mostly
7:07operating from central Russia, while
7:09strategic bombers are now mostly based
7:12in the far north of the Kola Peninsula
7:14and in remote airbases in the Far East,
7:16which means every cruise missile strike
7:18mission against Ukraine might involve
7:20putting 15 to 20 flight hours on their
7:22aging airframes. And then there's the
7:24issue of those early warnings about
7:26incoming drones. While it's obviously
7:27better for Russia to fly its planes away
7:29from an airbase that may be being
7:31targeted by long-range drones than have
7:33them go boom, those escape flights still
7:36add more flight hours onto the airframe.
7:38And it's not like the equation is
7:40usually as simple as failure to fly
7:42equals destroyed plane. Often, the
7:44drones being warned against are going
7:46nowhere near the airbase, which means
7:48the aircraft are often just wasting
7:49hours of their flight time flying in
7:51circles until the drone threat ends.
7:53This cycle repeats multiple times a week
7:56across dozens of airbases all over
7:58western and southern Russia. And its
8:00greatest toll is being placed on Russian
8:02combat aircraft that are conducting
8:03missions in or near Ukraine. In other
8:06words, the most relevant Russian
8:07aircraft for the war are suffering a
8:09disproportionate amount of wear and
8:11tear. And then there are the tactics
8:13that the VKS is using against the
8:14Ukrainian Air Force. Since the war's
8:16early days, the VKS has been trying to
8:18gradually destroy the Ukrainian Air
8:19Force by flying constant combat air
8:21patrols relatively close to the front
8:23line, just beyond the range of
8:25surface-to-air missiles. If they locate
8:26one of the low-flying Ukrainian fighters
8:28or strike aircraft, they can launch
8:30long-range anti-aircraft missiles at
8:31them, accepting that while an
8:33overwhelming majority will miss,
8:35occasionally some Ukrainian aircraft
8:37will not be warned in time or its pilot
8:39will make a mistake and be shot down. In
8:41practice, the problem is that doing this
8:43more or less constantly along a 1,200 km
8:46front line eats up a huge amount of
8:48flight hours. This has gotten even worse
8:51since these aircraft began flying from
8:53more distant bases, leaving them all
8:55with less fuel and less time on station.
8:58In turn, meaning that more aircraft
8:59flights have to be used to carry out
9:01this mission. As a bonus, the best
9:03Russian fighter-interceptor is the
9:04MiG-31, which has been out of production
9:06for decades and has notoriously high
9:09maintenance requirements and a
9:10relatively short lifespan. For example,
9:12its engine needs to be overhauled or
9:13replaced after just 300 flight hours.
9:16So, for what few shoot-downs and
9:18deterrence against the Ukrainian Air
9:20Force the VKS achieves this way, it is
9:22paying for them dearly by rapidly using
9:24up the remaining lifespan of its aging
9:26interceptor fleet. At the same time, the
9:28VKS has been forced to dedicate a
9:30significant portion of its fighter jet
9:32and helicopter fleets to constant combat
9:34air patrols specifically tasked with
9:36hunting down the ever-increasing number
9:38of Ukrainian drones and cruise missiles.
9:40And while you would think that old
9:41fighter jets, still operational but no
9:43longer suitable for front line use,
9:45would be perfect for this task, the
9:46drone's mostly plastic construction and
9:48slow speed often makes them difficult to
9:50track on the old radars found aboard the
9:52unmodernized versions of these aircraft.
9:54Combine this with the unwillingness to
9:56risk losing semi-stealthy Su-57s over
9:58Ukraine for PR reasons, and you get to
10:01see them relegated to flying combat
10:02missions against cheap, slow drones over
10:05central Russia. Even areas where Russia
10:07has gained the upper hand have come at
10:08the expense of its air friends. One of
10:10the notable developments over the last
10:11couple of years has been the explosion
10:13in the number of glide bombs used by
10:15Russian forces. Old aircraft bombs with
10:17new glide and guidance kits attached to
10:18them, glide bombs have proved a cheap
10:20and relatively effective way to hit
10:22Ukrainian forces from a safe distance.
10:24As such, the Russians are pumping them
10:26out, and while 10,000 such strike
10:27missions were recorded in 2023, the
10:29number this year is expected to crest
10:3280,000. But, because these strike
10:34aircraft need to be escorted on every
10:36mission by dedicated fighter jets like
10:38the Su-35, this has become yet another
10:41mission type consuming a lot of flight
10:43hours for many of Russia's most modern
10:45combat airframes. Again, the key we want
10:48to impress upon you is that all of this
10:50leads to additional wear and tear. In
10:52pretty much all of these cases, you
10:54could argue that flying these missions
10:56is the rational choice in wartime. The
10:58problem is that these missions being
11:00rational does not mean they magically
11:02reduce the strain on the aircraft. And
11:04with the war now running for nearly 5
11:06years, all of those endless stacking
11:08flight hours are going to have an
11:10impact.
11:12Public outcry.
11:14[music] As the structural degradation of
11:16the VKS fleet has accelerated, the
11:18reality of this crisis has begun to
11:20bleed onto social media via Russian
11:22military aviation channels that are
11:24reporting on the war. The most
11:26significant of these is the Fighter
11:27Bomber Telegram account run by an
11:29influential retired, surprise, Fighter
11:32Bomber pilot with the extensive
11:33connections to active duty VKS
11:35personnel. In a recent high-profile
11:37post, the channel began complaining
11:39bitterly about the insane and
11:41unsustainable number of flight hours
11:43being placed on VKS aircraft, as well as
11:45on the pilots and maintenance crews. In
11:47his telling, Russian aircraft are
11:48currently logging thousands, plural, of
11:52flight hours every single year. Even if
11:55this isn't an exaggeration and the truth
11:58is closer to 1,000 flight hours a year
12:00instead of thousands, that would still
12:02mean massively compressing the normal
12:05operational life of combat aircraft to
12:07just a few years. At that point,
12:09anything recently made would need a
12:11factory-based life extension while the
12:13older aircraft that started this war
12:15with years of service already behind
12:17them would be pushed into early
12:18retirement. Fighter bombers disclosures
12:21also highlighted a very real human cost.
12:23It's not just the metal airframes that
12:25have been subjected to extensive
12:27fatigue, but also the maintenance
12:29personnel and aircraft crews. Ground
12:31crews especially have been working long
12:33shifts for years now often exposed to
12:36the elements while attempting to patch
12:37up complex electronic and hydraulic
12:39systems. This combination of exhausted
12:41personnel and aircraft that are flying a
12:43decades worth of flight hours in just a
12:45year or two has created a high risk
12:47environment where critical failures are
12:49bound to happen. One such failure
12:51happens on September the 29th when a 295
12:54MS Bear strategic missile carrier
12:56spectacularly crashed shortly after
12:58takeoff from Ukrainka air base in the
13:00far eastern Amur Oblast. The 295 MS is a
13:04decades old heavy four engine turboprop
13:06strategic bomber that has been serving
13:08as the main platform for launching
13:10cruise missiles at Ukrainian
13:11infrastructure and cities. Reports from
13:13Russian aviation circles indicated that
13:15the bomber suffered a failure of three
13:16of its four massive Kuznetsov NK-12
13:19turboprop engines which made it
13:21impossible for the bomber to return to
13:22its airbase with everyone on board being
13:24killed in the resulting crash. A triple
13:27engine failure on a strategic asset is
13:29something that should be practically
13:31impossible. It's only when you're flying
13:33aircraft beyond their safe engineering
13:35lifespan with an intensive rate of
13:36combat operations while also
13:38refurbishing them with parts looted from
13:40retired airframes that you get a failure
13:42on this scale. Nor is this the only
13:44example. Less than a month later on
13:46October the 21st, the Russian tactical
13:48multirole fleet was hit by a bizarre
13:50case of two separate crashes of the same
13:52aircraft model on the same day. The
13:54first aircraft, a Su-30SM operating out
13:57of the Chkalovsk district, reportedly
13:59suffered an unspecified catastrophic
14:01malfunction during a routine training
14:03flight with the crew ejecting and being
14:05recovered with some injuries. Just hours
14:07later a second Su-30SM crashed in the
14:09Moscow region this time with fatal
14:12consequences for the crew. In short,
14:14there are real world consequences to
14:15pushing these aircraft beyond their
14:17limits. Consequences that are only going
14:19to get more severe the longer this war
14:21goes on for.
14:24The industrial choke point.
14:27Now, under normal circumstances, an air
14:29force is supposed to carefully manage
14:32the degradation of its aircraft fleet by
14:34avoiding excessive wear and tear, as
14:36well as by sending aircraft to
14:37specialized facilities for a major
14:39overhaul to extend their lives or
14:41retiring them before they become too
14:42dangerous to operate. The problem is
14:44that these relevant specialized
14:46facilities only have so much capacity to
14:48do this kind of work. Meanwhile, the
14:50wartime pressure means that combat
14:52missions have to be flown even if it
14:54degrades the lifespan of remaining
14:56aircraft. And while production of new
14:58combat aircraft is more or less keeping
15:00pace with combat losses and crashes, it
15:02is far from being able to compensate for
15:04the incredible rate of wear and tear
15:06that the VKS is putting on its aircraft.
15:08The problem is especially significant
15:10for aircraft that no longer have their
15:12critical components in production. This
15:15in the gradual cannibalization of the
15:16aircraft fleet by stripping components
15:18from one aircraft to repair another. But
15:20this practice has its limits. Already
15:22worn-out components from donor aircraft
15:24don't last long, meaning that you
15:26eventually hit a point where the
15:27remaining number of operational aircraft
15:29just falls off a cliff. To explain, we
15:32got the writer of this episode to whip
15:33up a handy four-step guide to what this
15:35might look like in real life. True to
15:37his nature, he decided to call it the
15:39fleet degradation doom spiral. Step one.
15:43As donor aircraft are stripped, the
15:44total pool of available airframes
15:45shrinks. Step two. The remaining
15:47operational aircraft must fly even more
15:50hours to meet the combat mission
15:51requirements. Step three. This increased
15:54workload, combined with getting already
15:56worn-out replacement components instead
15:58of new ones, accelerates the wear on the
16:00surviving aircraft, pushing them toward
16:02breakdown and themselves becoming donor
16:04airframes even faster. And finally, step
16:06four. As the remaining aircraft fleet of
16:08that type shrinks, certain critical
16:09components stop being available at all,
16:12crashing the viability of using the
16:14remaining aircraft. All of which brings
16:16us to the major question that we've been
16:18circling for the last 80 minutes.
16:21Exactly what does this all mean for the
16:23VKS and the wider Ukraine war? Well, the
16:26simple version is that while the Russian
16:28Air Force continues to exert significant
16:31pressure in Ukraine and is still on
16:33paper the third largest Air Force in the
16:35world, its silent crisis is quickly
16:37degrading the effective fleet size.
16:39Today many of its aircraft are
16:40practically on their last legs and in
16:42need of being replaced in the near
16:44future. The VKS could in theory keep
16:47those aircraft listed as operational,
16:49but that will mean either an increasing
16:50rate of crashes or those aircraft in
16:52practice just sitting on the ground and
16:55only existing on paper. The prime
16:57example of this problem is the aircraft
16:59that VKS inherited from the USSR like
17:02the MiG-29, Su-24, 25, 27 and so on. On
17:06paper these still represent a very large
17:09percentage of the whole VKS fixed-wing
17:11aircraft fleet, but in practice many are
17:14no longer flying regularly if at all.
17:17Combine that with putting the greatest
17:19load of combat missions on its most
17:21recent combat aircraft like the Su-34
17:23and Su-35, the VKS is effectively
17:26hollowing out its future force. When the
17:28war in Ukraine eventually ends, the VKS
17:30will find itself possessing an inventory
17:32that is structurally compromised. Right
17:34now it would take far more money than
17:36the VKS budget provides to produce new
17:38combat aircraft at the rate necessary to
17:40at least keep its operational aircraft
17:42fleet stable. And that wartime budget,
17:44which has allowed the VKS to pay for 50
17:46new aircraft per year, is inevitably
17:48going to shrink in peacetime. And don't
17:50forget that the money for new aircraft
17:52will need to compete with expensive work
17:54on the development of future aircraft
17:56models if the VKS doesn't want to be
17:58left technologically behind. In other
18:00words, the most likely outcome of the
18:02Russian air war against Ukraine is that
18:04Russian air power will, over time,
18:06continue shrinking as current aircraft
18:08have to be retired before they can be
18:10replaced. And that leaves us with the
18:12sight of a once powerful air force that
18:14still looks huge on paper but is quickly
18:17shrinking with many of its older
18:18aircraft not even being relevant against
18:20its main potential opponent in the form
18:23of NATO air forces. While that might be
18:25small comfort to the Ukrainians
18:27currently being bombed by these craft,
18:29it does at the least suggest that the
18:31VKS may end the war in worse shape than
18:34anyone could have possibly imagined.
18:37Thank you for watching.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Russia's Air Force is in Crisis by WarFronts, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,497 words across 552 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.