Fly Low, Get Aggressive—How Ukrainian Pilots Fought The Russian Air Force To A Standstill

The Russian air force has a lot of new planes. The Ukrainian air force has less than many weapons, but they have better equipment.

Ukrainian pilots in their older, cruder jets fought Russians in the early weeks of the war. They did it by being aggressive.

The Royal United Services Institute wrote that the Ukrainian air force fighter aircraft were outclassed by Russia's roughly 200 Su 30 SM and Su 35S fighters.

The Su-30 and Su-35 are derivatives of the classic, twin-engine Su-27. There is a big difference between the two. There is only one seat on the Su-35.

Five years ago, the Russian air force began acquiring the Su-30 SM and Su-35S to replace hundreds of Soviet-vintage Su-27s and buy time for the development and production of the new Su-57 stealth fighter.

Most of the Russian air force's Su-30s and Su-35s were put to use in the war in Ukraine. According to Reynolds and Watling, at the start of the war in February, the Su-30 and Su-35 squadrons flew around 140 sorties a day.

The RUSI analysts said that the Su-35S and Su-30 SM fighters flew high in the air to support the Russian strike aircraft.

The Ukrainian air force's 30-year-old Su 27s and MiG 29s were outnumbered by them. The Russian jets had air-to-air missiles. The R-77-1 has a radar. A pilot fires a missile and takes evasive action after briefly turning on his radar. The missile's internal radar guides it to its target.

The Vympal R 27R/ER missiles of the Ukrainians are semi- active, meaning that a pilot must continuously illuminate a target as the missile closes in. He can't keep quiet. He can't leave. The R-77-1 has a range of as much as 60 miles. At 50 miles, the R-27's range is usually maxed out.

The Russian pilots were able to shoot at the Ukrainian pilots from farther away than the Ukrainian pilots were able to shoot back.

Russian forces shot down several Ukrainians. The Ukrainian air force had a pre-war inventory of around 30 Su 27s and 50 MiG 29s.

The Ukrainians would eventually replace many of these losses by restoring old, once-unflyable airframes. It might have seemed like the Russian air force was going to destroy the Ukrainian air force.

That wasn't how it ended up. New tactics were adopted by the Ukrainian pilots. Ukrainian pilots were forced to fly extremely low to get close enough to fire before being engaged because they were outnumbered by up to 15 to two.

At the last moment, the Ukrainians and Russians would sneak up on each other, and the missiles would explode. Aggressive Ukrainian tactics and good use of the low-level terrain led to multiple claims and several likely kills against Russian aircraft, although Ukrainian fighters were often shot down or damaged in the process.

Russian pilots were downed by the Ukrainians. After three days of fighting in which both sides lost aircraft, there was a pause in Russian strike and fighter sorties going deep behind Ukrainian lines.

The Russians changed their methods after that. The Ukrainian crews had been flying very low. Fighter pilots flying air-to-air patrols stayed on the Russian side of the line.

The air-superiority patrols were too far from the front. For combat air patrols, the Russian air force relied on its 90 or so Mikoyan MiG-31BM interceptors. The Vympel R-37M missile can hit targets up to 200 miles away.

The high operating altitude and long range of the R-37M allow it to menace Ukrainian aircraft near the front lines from outside the range of Ukrainian defenses.

The only plane that the Russians have lost in the war was a MiG-31. Not every missile hits the R 37M. The Ukrainian air force is bleeding, but so far it's not fatal.

Over 50 fixed-wing planes have been written off by the air force. Ukraine's losses are larger than Russia's. The Ukrainian air force is still flying and fighting despite its lack of numbers and high tech equipment.