1. Air warfare is part of expeditionary warfare and a key component of force projection.

2. Smart and capable opponents avoid A2A combat by destroying their air force on the ground e.g. Israeli in 1967 or by making it suicidal for the other guy to launch fightes (e.g. Kosovo in 1999 or Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 1999).

Try to destroy PLAAF on ground no matter how smart. you have very limited comprehension ability of creating realistic scenarios.

And your average Russian pilot has not dropped an LGB and especially not in combat.

LGB are for poor airforces. Russia uses live cruise missiles in exercise with upto 50 aircraft. infact more than 50% of revenues from tactical missile corporation is now from Ruaf.

Your average Russian fighter pilot has never been involved in a comprehensive air campaign against any sort of air defence system.

And many of the average Western NATO air force will be getting operational fifth generation F-35 by 2020.

comprehensive air compaign against what? ONly token single engine F-35. Ruaf can afford all twin engine heavy fighters with biggest EW pods.

Huh?

We were talking about NATO deployments here and who they can rely on to provide assets.

I think Libya was last war for Nato deployments.

Sure they do – their military is bigger than most Western European ones and they contributed a fair amount of troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan including Army Aviation assets. They’ve deployed a couple of times for Baltic Air Policing.

Their airforce will probably stabilise at about 80 fighters, 48 of which will be F-16C/D Blk 50s and potentially equipped with AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles. They’re probably the only Eastern European Air force who will get F-35s to replace MiG-29s.

I think you should taper your ethusiasim for Poland and be realistic. Poland can only afford things what Western EU can transfer as payments. and those payments are soon be gone. i am not even going into high energy prices that are coming. few cruise missiles on few fighters located on few airbases does not make some credible defence.

And as stated, because Poland doesn’t trust Russia at all, they’ll pay the NATO insurance premium to keep the Alliance alive.

The NATO Insurance Premium is participating in multi-national US led coalition operations be it Iraq/Afghanistan, piracy patrol or Baltic Air Policing.

It does not matter whether Poland trust some one or not. It has become assembly line for Germany and you cannot afford new fighters and training based on assembly line. the era of transfer pmts coming to an end.

This is daft.

According to you North Vietnamese, Chinese (Korea) and Korean (Korea) pilots shouldn’t have been able to fly at all because the North Vietnamese/North Korea/China standard of living was dismal!

Really clutching at straws now.

As i said Soviet Union never commited to defeat Israel.so not much training or planning against it. Israel has enormous advantages to Russia. as Israel keeps Arabs busy. and Israel is economic burden on west. see the private inflows and keeping bankrupt governments in power.

Obviously the training and the command structures were insufficient. Georgian army performed poorly and that’s it.

Russian army performed poorly from a professional perspective. But they had overwhelming numerical superiority and didn’t run.

do you have evidence of numerical superiority. perform poorly due to lack of modern equipment is totally different thing.

You forget that the vast brunt of the fighting done by your victorious Red Army in 1942-45 was poorly educated, often illiterate bottom strata of society e.g. tank commander civilian requirement was that they had experience with a tractor!

The educated types were sent to higher level, more complicated positions.

This is not 1945

They are still enough to keep Russian Army as an overall poor performer.

poor performer on what standards?

Not important to US and NATO and certainly not important enough for a ground offensive.

ground offensive not needed. as you can create rebels and make strong use of airpower.

Really? Then that’s indication of a poor military intelligence service and pathetic military planning.

nope Georgia not important. to throw best over it. Now that military district is equiped for entirely different reason not connected to Georgia.

Georgia/South Ossetia has been a conflict spot since 1991 – there was a full blown civil war in 1991-92. And the Russians have been getting more and more involved since then.

If the Russian military can’t keep tabs on a small potential opponent and plan the suppression of their AD systems, then how would they expect to tackle on a bigger and more capable opponent?

Planning and intelligence are key components of any military operation.

It is not poor planning. Russia keep much better tab on Japan or some high tech force. Georgia melted under low tech. that is excatly how it suppose to be. You dont want to bankrupt a country trying to defeat a low tech force.This is similar to Russia soldiers guarding Tajikistan..

Excuses, excuses.

Soviet pilots performed poorly and that’s it.

I am explaining the reason for poor performance. Those reasons are not present in 2013. 1970s Soviet Union was barely recover from WW11. Its standard of living and precision were still a decade or so behind US and by extension Israel.

Actually they just panicked and broke and their President wanted units back to defend Tbilisi.

Whey they panicked? didnot they trained for such eventuallity for past 2 decades? or do you think Georgian sleeping?

Stuff like this happens all the time in war – after all wars are fought by human beings and human beings can panic, be scared etc etc.

Panic and scared? what kind of excuse is that.

The weapons are merely tools which most military weapons enthusiasts don’t understand. They think that T-50 or F-35 or M1A1 Abrams or T-90 are the important thing and ignore the human side.

Weopons does matter provided there is sufficient training and manned by well paid professioanals not some one collected from bottom strata of society.

So the Chechens did better fighting at conscripts than Georgians did. After all apparently Russia’s new professional army units did not perform any better than conscript units.

what kind of professionalism you can test when Georgian simply collapsed in 3 days. Professionalism was not even tested.

But then apparently professionalisation has not been working as well as as planned – professionals are distrusted by higher command who regard them as mercernaries, the professionals themselves aren’t very motivated due to poor pay and brutal hazings the military is known for and the Russians are still unable or unwilling to develop a capable junior officer/NCO side of it.

This applies to Army of course. But given 2008 was mainly a ground campaign, performance of army is critical.

I didnot say this thing not happening but they are far less than what you can expect in Soviet system.

So what? That fitted in with NATO political goals. After all unlike in Georgia where the Russians were protecting their strategically important border buffer zone, Kosovo was unimportant to most NATO countries and the intervention was based on “humanitarian” ideals.

Kosov not important?. i think you should step aside this humanitarian nonsense. Kosov is important for some one else.

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20130623170867
Kosovo: A state waiting to be recognized

Man you smoke crack. All those poor boys coming back in body bags and seriously injured probably wouldn’t call it “friendly.”

I guess Vietnam doesn’t compare to Soviet experience in Afghanistan either. Typical Slavic moaning of “woe is me” (I’m technically Slavic so I can say that).

Now you want to compare poor peasants of Vietnam with Saudi funded blank check. Money combined with ideology can bring alot of destruction.

Except Russians maintain bases all around in CIS. Hence in these conflicts they can use such short range systems as Su-25, Mi-35 etc etc.

They train on Su-24/Su-34 for much longer distance tactical strikes.

Georgia’s batteries were small too! They were also often abandoned and weren’t used that well.

except Russia didnot plan against them for decades thats what Israel planning all year long.

Sure that happens.

I highly doubt Turks will know anything about French Mirages and they are even become more unreliable with having more trade dependency on russia. same will be with new poorer members of NATO in east.

So Chinese civilian avionics are more advanced than NATO military grade stuff?!?!?!?!?!

I didnot say all Civilain avionics. Chinese big firms have risen quite fast. see Huwaie. same happened in supercomputing technology.space technology.

Irrelevant. The Soviets got smacked. Bare in mind the North Vietnamese did far better than Soviet pilots too.

It relevant. Soviets were not as commited to war against Israel as North Vietnamese. If Soviet Priority was Israel. than it will have been alot of different planning from start.

And what have the Chinese faced? Nothing.

What have the Russians faced? Next to nothing – Georgian AD was poorly developed. A great example of just because you have some toys doesn’t mean you have an effective defence system.

Georgians are far more competent than most of Middleast militaries and mountainous terrian give its own advantages. and there was no compaign against them with cruise missiles to demoralize them or bribe them.

It is as realistic as you can get. Because if you do it poorly you’ll lose aircraft (e.g. loss of F-117 over Yugoslavia) or be unable to complete the mission.

So what we have:

1. No proof that Chinese/Russians airforces/militaries are at same or better quality than NATO forces.

2. No proof that Chinese/Russian military tech is same or better quality than Western forces.

3. Proof that Western forces are good at executing long range aerial campaigns

4. Proof that Western C3 and logistics systems generally work and work well

so you have proof to the contrary. long range compain against what?

We’re talking about highly politically sensitive COIN here. And by politically sensitive I mean within Afghanistan. Karzai wasn’t exactly too cooperative a lot of the time and there was a whole heap of warlords to keep in line.

It’s certainly not a 1967 style strike on a conventional opponents.

you dont need some one permission to surge. only 30k was possible in that time frame.

The carriers operate as they please. They can also be resupplied from sea.

they operate taking into account host countries. resupplied from seas very slow and ineffective.

Given US forces are based in South Korea and Japan means definite response within 24 hours.

you cannot roll back NK in 24hrs. you have to assemble much larger force.

I suspect if NATO drove a couple of divisions into Belarus, the Russians would not be able to mobilise enough forces to stop them within 24 hours.

Russia has good radar and intellegence than now what is on other side of the border. infact Zapad binannual exercise is designed for that. where are thousands of NATO soldiers yearly training in Poland?

Logistics are not about fuel and money.

They’re about getting the right equipment and supplies to the troops in a timely manner as well as the troops themselves. It’s about planning and coordination to get things from depots at home to ships/planes to in-country depots and then distribute to troops as needed.

Georgia saw a failure in Russian logistics. And Afghanistan and Chechnya also showed a disregard for logistics.

Georgia was overun in 3 days. Afghanistan was fought against SAM missile supplied by western countries.
NATO was lucky that Russia cooperative in Afghan war. Russia could have closed CIS aerospace and resupplied the afghans with modern training, weopons, intelligence and see how far realistically NATO logistics can survive. You make unrealistic comparisions.

The Americans and NATO on the other hand are near masters of this. And even then failures do occur due to complexity of this.

They are not masters. see Afghanistan and Iraq example. Russia stayed neutral or cooperative. so NATO does not have thing that much about protecting logistics.

Not sure this obsession with poorly paid v well paid. I doubt Taliban are paid much and some of them fight quite well.

taliban are spent force and they didnto fight well either in frontal wars.

Maybe cause the US was trying to do it right. Merely throwing men into the grinder without proper planning and support doesn’t work. Surely the Russians learned this in Chechnya after several armoured columns drove straight into ambushes and were annihilated.

Slow surge does not change the tide of war. infact it make it costly. It is the fast and unexpected attack that throw things off balance.

So Russians are better at power projection than USA, despite USA having 10 flat tops, 20 stealth bombers, numerous cruise missile equipped ships and subs stationed around the world as well as 60 B-1Bs and for those less defended areas, long range UAVs, bases around the world, 76 B-52s as well as over 500 aerial refuelling tankers, 32 major AWACs (plus numerous small ones), 20 large communication jets (E-6 and E-4).

That 10 flat tops needs allies for resupply base and those allies have there own conditions. It is not that much freedom. and flattops have medium size aircraft with short range. not very effective for deep strike into large land mass.

Oh and the USA actually performing strikes with all above over the last 20 years including ultra long range B-2 missions.

Tu-95/Tu-160 also doing long range missions. it is the tactical fighter level missions that Flanker has introduced not the bomber level mission.

If needed the US can act quickly. Generally the requirement is not there especially as the politics tend to rule the day.

I suspect if North Korean T-54s tried to rumble into South Korea or China tried to attack Taiwan, you would see how quick the USA can act if necessary.

Quickly still be not in 24hrs. actually NK killed SK people couple of years back in attack.

Sure but can you coordinate a massive airlift and then ensure sustainment of such a large operation? Georgia would indicate not.

When you have fuel (remember any Russian attack on Middleast will be windfall) and money. every thing can be sustained.

Sure. Su-34 is a great asset.

Can you identify targets at that range? Can you coordinate suppression of enemy airdefence?

obsolete defences under sanctions with poorly paid and trained staff can be defeated even with cruise missiles.

As stated it’s not about toys.

An air force could have 1,000 Su-30/F-35 and 1,000 C-17s and still struggle to get out of it’s own territorial airspace because it doesn’t have the C3 or logistics systems to do so.

when you have world greatest land mass and have EU size Kazakhistan training ground. you dont need to venture too far train realistically for long range mission.

First of all Russia already had a lot of formations in the country or around it for peace keeping duties.

Secondly the Dutch/Belgians don’t need to invade neighbouring countries.

Thirdly, the USA can start swatting within 3 days thanks to it’s carrier force.

Those formations were not more than 10,000 troops.
Compared to Obama surge in 2009 in Afghanistan. It took 6 months to surge 30,000 men. and most were transferred from drawdown in Iraq. so how can you do similar in 3 days. 3 days only Supersonic bombers with supersonic missiles can reach targets.

That’s good news and great for capability building. I’m impressed Russia could mobilise such large forces so quickly.

There enough transport both in Ruaf and private that Russian can airlift several thousands troops in a day into Middleast.

Depends on exercise and what it’s focus is- some are A2A, others are ground attack and others are EW and yet others are multirole. Bigger exercises generally have some sort of AWACS and EW aircraft.

A lot of the EW and general training systems are performed by private companies with business jets or second hand aircraft. There’s also ground based units.

Some countries do provide own but these are often quite discreet aircraft based on existing transports and business jets and generally not cared for much by spotters.

E.g. Norwegian Falcon busines jets, Italian G222VS, as well as Tornado ECR and USN E/A-18G.

It seems to me Russia’s focus is purely defensive with modest force projection capability for keeping the buffer zone in tact (i.e. the various Stans).

And until we see the RuAF in action again, the impacts of the reforms will be hypothetical.

Ruaf is hardly defensive force. when you practice 8000km range bombing runs with Su-34. It is training for more realistic combat. I think most Su-34 has the large EW pods and extra large tail. so no need for separate aircraft. Extra large aircraft give more flexibility in range situational awarness and weopons. There is less need for an AWACS.

I
Though to be fare, NATO did manage to get info on just about any system the Russians had up to 1991s thanks to Israeli efforts, fall of Communism and the defection of Warpac members to NATO.

Most of the systems in 1991 were late 70s effort at best as Soviet Union was starved of funds for a decade before so theoretical stuff was not even operationalized. It only after hard currency infusion later in 90s that things improved.