Potemkin on the Dnieper: The Failure of Russian Airpower in the Ukraine War By: Sean M. Wiswesser

Russia’s military performance during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine fell short in every mark, airpower perhaps most of all. Through the first eight months of the invasion, Russia failed to achieve air superiority, failed at suppression of enemy air defense, and failed to deny the use of airpower to its adversary. The absence of Russian airpower was prominently on display during the September 2022 counterattack in the Kharkiv area, where Ukraine took back 3,000 plus square miles of its territory, and again with the counteroffensives in the south, where Ukraine retook Kherson.

Russia’s airpower failure in the Ukraine war was due to incompetent air campaigning and execution, coupled with the success of a highly effective Ukrainian ground-based air defense. The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) attempted to execute what they term a “Strategic Air Operation” based on a “non-contact” doctrine, articulated widely in recent years. But they could not achieve this in practice. As a result, like the famous Potemkin Village of Catherine the Great’s time, Russia’s Air Force today is only a fa?ade of a modern 21st-century Air Force. By fall 2022, Ukraine controlled the operational tone on the battlefield and in the air.

Doctrinal comparisons with the U.S. and West are useful, but only tell part of the story of Russia’s airpower failure. For instance, regarding the key air doctrine of Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD), Russian Air Force planners likely did not completely grasp the threat of Ukrainian air defenses because they had planned—arrogantly-- to overrun and capture them instead.?Russian military writings indicate they believe in air supremacy as much as we do in the West. The difference lay in Russia’s recognition of their own relative weakness and where they focused airpower modernization efforts in recent decades. But despite widely advertised and written about reforms, and billions spent on new fighter aircraft, Russian Air Force doctrine, air campaigning, and their ?flaws are on full display now in Ukraine.

?The Russian VKS’s main flaw in Ukraine has been a lack of effective air campaign planning, and an inability to apply the right operational art to the battlefield. The Russian VKS failed to integrate its air operations over the critical operational pieces of “space and time.” During the first eight months of the Ukraine war, as Elena Ioanes noted, “Russian military doctrine — the planning, systems, and strategy that are supposed to underpin how it conducts war — hasn’t been particularly effective.”[i]

Over the previous two decades, Russia had limited air engagements in both Georgia and Syria and used the latter conflict as a deployment exercise, rotating much of its tactical air fleet. But there was a crucial shortcoming for Syria, or for Georgia, to be considered effective as a test for the “new” Russian VKS (so named after the merger of several branches of air forces in 2015).?There was no integrated air defense network in either theater, nor did the VKS have the experience of operations against an adversary that was systematically battling for control of the airspace. The lack of a developed and tested SEAD doctrine was thus a key flaw that would come to the fore in Ukraine. The Russians would pay dearly for this deficit of experience.

In comparing SEAD and other U.S. and NATO doctrine with Russian doctrine, a flaw is revealed in Russian airpower and how they would apply it, or fail to apply it, in a twenty-first century conflict. This flaw in Russian doctrine as it pertains to ground-air joint operations was not a “new” one. The very term “joint” is something not understood or practiced in Russia’s military to anywhere near the degree it is appreciated in the US and NATO. In the past 30 years, while the United States and the West went through a modern revolution with air-ground joint operations and experienced conflicts with campaigns for air superiority, Russia had no comparable battlefield experience with anything like peer-level adversaries. They lacked the battlefield experience, and then the lessons in associated campaign and operational design that came with that experience.

As one former U.S. Air Force aviator, Mike Pietrucha, notes, “there does not appear to be a Russian equivalent to Colonel Warden’s The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, which has served as the foundational document for modern air campaign planning for the United States since Operation Desert Storm.” Pietrucha continues that Russia has not “developed the follow-on tools, processes, or techniques which are routinely used by the United States and NATO for air campaign planning.”[ii]

The Russian Air Force in #Ukraine could not demonstrate a thorough and professional air campaign plan because it failed to develope a generation of successful air campaign planners the way the U.S. and other western countries have. The Russians don’t campaign plan like the US Air Force and NATO, they don’t fly training missions like the U.S. does, nor do they wargame to the same level of detail. ?Instead, Russia attempted a “new” doctrine, with an emphasis on stand-off air action and the destruction of the enemy prior to engagement with infantry forces.

This approach was first heralded in a 2013 speech current Russian Chief of General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov. Gerasimov was quoted as stating that ?“the primary method for achieving military objectives [in modern warfare] are non-contact actions against the enemy through the massive employment of precision-guided, long-range munitions from air, sea, and space.” [iii]?The so-called “Gerasimov doctrine” grew in thinking over the past decade, with repeated mentions by Russian military leaders, experts, journalists and bloggers of this new type of “non-contact” warfare (bezkontaktnaya voina or BV in Russian), including cyber warfare, disinformation and other non-kinetic means.

Russia’s invasion started with a heavy reliance on stand-off ballistic, air-launched and other cruise missiles as the main feature of their airpower engagements. What Russia was essentially trying to do was to mimic the United States’ heavy use of airpower and missile attacks as the world witnessed the Gulf Wars (both) and in the Balkans, a version of stand-off and long range kinetic attacks. ?But in Ukraine the Russians were losing in the air just as they were losing on the ground because they were not able to plan and carry out true joint operations—a failure of air campaign planning. ?They lacked effective command and control, did not carry out effective BDA-battle damage assessment, and the VKS was too often subordinated to ground commanders eager to defend their forces rather than achieve strategic air aims.

The refrain from experts in recent years with Russia’s advertised military reforms and Putin’s increased defense spending was that the “Russian bear is back.” With the Ukrainian invasion the whole world was waiting to see how the Russian bear would perform, but it never showed up. As Justin Bronk from RUSI noted, Russia’s reticence to engage more forcefully in an American-style battle for dominance in the air, and the lack of any sustained SEAD campaign at all led to more and more problems on the ground. Russia engaged less and less in the air as the weeks turned to months. By the fall of 2022, Russia’s Air Force largely gave up altogether on SEAD.

Why did Russia’s Air Force fail to execute? Along with the doctrinal failures noted above - a lack of effective air campaign planning and training for the same - one has to consider Clausewitz’s admonition that war is not fought against an inanimate object. Credit should be given to the Ukrainians, who fought back very effectively against Russian airpower. ?How did Ukraine accomplish success in denying Russian airpower?

Ukrainian ground-based air defense (GBAD) effectively set up extended zones of defense using their existing and highly effective inventory of SA-300, Buk, Osa, and other systems. These systems were supplemented by new western systems, as well as other SAM mobile and personnel manpads, including hundreds of Stingers quickly imported from NATO countries. In this way, the Ukrainians employed Soviet-era air defense doctrine to great effect against their former Soviet comrades, now invaders. The result was an umbrella of air cover.

As Ukraine imposed air denial increasingly with its effective GBAD, and the war dragged on much longer than anticipated, the Russian Air Force struggled to come up with methods to continue to keep air power relevant in the conflict. By the late summer of 2022, Russia faced rapid depletion of PGMs and other inventory/equipment difficulties, forcing adaptations, including the introduction of foreign UAVs and other attempts at improvised or “backup” options when the Russian military leadership realized it would be unable to achieve air dominance in what it hoped would be a “non-contact” air war.

FINDINGS:

Advanced air defense systems and GBAD have limited the utility of both traditional airpower and drones on both sides. But while Ukraine’s GBAD has been paralyzing for the #Russian side, Ukraine managed to carry out massive counteroffensives successfully in both the east and southeast as noted above. Ukraine has also defied Russia’s own interior air defenses, making forays with their own drones deep into Russia.

???????????In comparing Russia’s dramatic losses to their limited experiences in both Georgia and Syria discussed above and drawing lessons back to their attempt at “non-contact” doctrine, what is different about Ukraine, and where has Russian doctrine and campaign planning changed or failed to change? In those conflicts, Russia’s Air Force did not face an integrated air defense system. In 2022, the Ukrainians deployed GBAD to devastating effect, while augmenting and integrating it with Western-manufactured systems. Russia’s Air Force has not countered this GBAD, and lacked effective air campaign planning tools, experience, and understanding to adapt.

The effectiveness of the Ukrainian GBAD despite Russian numerical superiority suggests a paradigm shift for future conflicts where Russia (or other regional powers) may attempt to project airpower. Justin Bronk argues that the effectiveness of Ukrainian GBAD makes a strong case for the West to supply reinforcements and new systems of the same.[iv] The success of Ukrainian GBAD will also inevitably bolster discussions in recent years that an air denial strategy -vice pressing for air superiority- on the modern battlefield can be effective, at least in stalling the offensives of an adversary. That said, the same Russian failure to carry out a sustained SEAD mission and drive on to its success, despite heavy losses, strengthens the U.S. Air Force doctrinal arguments favoring both SEAD and air superiority as a precursor to all other airpower instruments.

???????????Finally, we are left with the conclusion that the West and military experts around the world incorrectly assessed Russian airpower, and its military strength in general. The studies of this conflict and Russia’s failed preparation and planning for it will continue for years to come. As argued above, a close look at Russian doctrine and attempted modernizations prior to the 2022 invasion, and their effectiveness, should be explored further.

In spite of the terror tactics and attempts to intimidate, Ukraine fights on. And as military experts finally are starting to agree, the Russian Air Force has proven incompetent. Rebecca Grant summed it up well: “Russia’s performance in the air has been terrible…turns out, really, they were just sort of a continental air force. They don’t like to fly at night. They don’t like to fly very far into Ukraine.”[v] In fact, as judged from the September-October counteroffensives in particular, the Russian Air Force did not fly into battle much at all. Gerasimov’s doctrine?outlined above, called for Russia to conduct a “non-contact” war. So much for Russian non-contact war then, and its chances for success. The West should pay less attention to Potemkin villages and projections of military might, and more to doctrine, and execution of doctrine, in air campaigning. In Ukraine, the practice of Russian airpower was and remains an abject failure.

[i] Ellen Ioanes, “Here’s What We Know about the State of Russia’s Military,” Vox, 18 September, 2022, https://www.vox.com/2022/9/18/23359326/russia-military-failures-ukraine.

[ii] Mike Pietrucha, “Amateur Hour Part II: Failing the Air Campaign,” War on the Rocks, August 11, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/08/amateur-hour-part-ii-failing-the-air-campaign/.

[iii] V. V. Gerasimov, “Organizatsiya oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii v usloviyakh primeneniya protivnikom ‘traditsionnykh’ i ‘gibridnykh’ metodov vedeniya voiny,” Vestnik Akademii Voennykh Nauk, Vol.?2, No.?55, 2016. As cited in Samuel Charap et. al. Russian Grand Strategy: Rhetoric and Reality. Santa Monica, CA. RAND Corporation.Chapter 3, p.27.

[iv] Justin Bronk, Dr. Jack Watling, and Nick Reynolds, “The Russian Air War and Ukrainian Requirements for Air Defence” (Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies), accessed November 7, 2022, https://www.rusi.orghttps://www.rusi.org.

[v] Zamone Perez, “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Offers Lessons on Land, at Sea and by Air,” Defense News, August 1, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/global/2022/08/01/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-offers-lessons-on-land-at-sea-and-by-air/.

Biographical Note

Sean Wiswesser is a national security professional with over 27 years of service. He received a masters in strategic studies from the Air War College in 2023, and was a 1996 graduate with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar. He was awarded the 2023 “Russian Integrated Deterrence Award” from Air University for the full version of this paper, published in March 2023 by the “Journal of Small Wars and Insurgencies.”

Acknowledgements

??My sincere appreciation to primary advisor Dr. Douglas Peifer for all his hard work. Thank you as well to my co-advisors Dr. Anna Batta and to Dr. Andrew Akin, Professors Chris Marcell and Dr. Jay Varuolo with Joint Warfighting Studies, Dr. Heather "Ripley" Venable and Dr. John Terino of the Air Command and Staff College, and Dr. Elizabeth Woodworth , Director of Air War College Research, all these professors are truly a credit to Air Force University.

?Disclaimers

The views expressed in this academic research paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US government, the Department of Defense, or Air University. In accordance with Air Force Instruction 51-303, it is not copyrighted, but is the property of the United States Government.

????????????**This article is an abridged version of the author’s Air War College strategic studies paper, published in full by the “Journal of Small Wars and Insurgencies,” (Taylor and Francis Publishing). For the full article, as well as complete end notes and bibliography, please see:

https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2023.2187201