The clear lesson from this conflict is the necessity to achieve air superiority for decisive advantage.
The conduct of the war in Ukraine provides two distinct lessons on airpower. The first lesson is what not to do: The Russian air force’s failure to establish air superiority at the outset cost Vladimir Putin’s forces the ability to achieve a decisive victory at the start of the conflict. The second is about the difficulty of establishing air superiority with insufficient resources and capabilities. This is what has forced Ukraine to endure costly attacks on its territory throughout the war.
Both sides possess lethal air defenses that deny opposing air forces the ability to penetrate their battlespace. The result is an attrition-based conflict that benefits Russia.
The Significance of Air Superiority: The Ukraine-Russia War.
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Yet Ukraine still has the potential to turn things around. Properly equipped, Ukraine could conduct an integrated air-ground campaign to secure air superiority, in the times and places of its choosing,to reverse the territorial gains the Russian army has achieved up to this point. To do so, Ukraine must plan and execute operations that integrate their long-range surface-to-surface weapons with combat aircraft, drones, cyber operations, electronic warfare (EW), and special operations to achieve air superiority.
If successful, Ukraine could gain an advantage over the Russians, break through their front lines, and change the course of the war.
F-16s are about to enter Ukrainian service, but what effect they have depends on many factors: the number of F-16s and F-16 pilots available for combat operations; the level of training and pilot proficiency and experience; the capability, or block, of the F-16s provided; the weapons available; the numbers, level of training, and proficiency of F-16 maintenance personnel; and the ability of the aircraft to survive and operate under Russian attack, among others.
Currently, neither Russia nor Ukraine is using combat aircraft to conduct deep strikes, relying instead on missiles and drones. The lethal air defenses on both sides have resulted in a state of air parity, in which neither force has control of the air. Still, Ukrainian air defenses, combined with innovative indications and warning practices, have successfully limited the damage caused by Russian air attacks, despite Russia’s numerical advantage in aircraft.
A key advantage for Russia thus far has been the freedom to operate from a sanctuary. Restrictions imposed on Ukraine have limited the employment of weapons provided by the U.S. to the use in Ukrainian territory and airspace. Russia possesses air superiority over its own territory and some portions of the battlespace in Ukraine. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently highlighted this condition as his military’s top concern. Fortunately for Ukraine, the poor leadership, lack of training, and ground-centric doctrine of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, or VKS, limit their potential. Russian airpower impacted the war much less than originally expected. But the VKS is learning from its earlier mistakes—and improving.
The Theater Airpower Balance
The Ukrainian Air Force (UkAF) is an independent military service, reorganized in 2004 to integrate aviation and the missiles, guns, and radar of its ground-based air defense (GBAD) forces. Russia also maintains an independent air force, reorganized in 2015 to include the space forces. The VKS comprises aviation and GBAD units (though the Russian army also maintains separate air defense capabilities), but coordination of air operations is the responsibility of ground force commanders, not the VKS, thus inhibiting Russian forces from exploiting the full potential of airpower.
In the buildup to war, the balance of airpower was strongly in favor of Russia, which fielded 350 combat aircraft in the region, capable of hundreds of sorties per day. Among them were some of Russia’s most advanced combat aircraft, including Su-30, Su-34, and Su-35S jets. In addition to its numerical advantage, the VKS also enjoyed a significant qualitative edge, with better radars and longer-range missiles. Russian fighters demonstrated they could gain a radar lock and execute “fire and forget” missile launches at 50 nm in combat. In one instance, a Russian fighter reportedly shot down a Ukrainian fighter at a range of 95 nm. The VKS fielded significant and effective EW capabilities and a small fleet of AWACs aircraft, whose long-range radar provided early warning to Russian combat air patrols. VKS fighter aircrews had combat experience flying in Syria, but had limited experience in complex operations and delivering precision-guided munitions (PGMs).
Ukraine entered the war with a much smaller and less capable force—roughly 50 MiG-29s and 32 Su-27s, plus about 40 Su-24 and Su-25 ground attack aircraft. While lacking combat strength, however, the Ukrainian pilot force was able to rapidly adapt during the first days of the war, shifting to low-altitude operations for self-protection, for example.
Air defense was a key task for the former Soviet armed forces, and both Russia and Ukraine inherited and maintained large GBAD establishments. After Russia, Ukraine has the second-highest density of GBAD in Europe. These layered GBAD capabilities consist of air defense radars, long-range (SA-10) and medium-range (SA-11 and SA-8) SAM batteries, anti-aircraft guns, and thousands of man-portable air-defense missiles (MANPADS). Following the Russian invasion in 2014, the UkAF prioritized modernizing this force and as the war progressed, it added contributions from NATO members, including Patriot/Hawk batteries and mobile short-range air defense systems such as Gepard and Avenger.
Russia’s GBAD forces are similar, though larger, more modern, and more capable. They include the SA-21, which can combine with modern tracking and targeting radars to deliver a three-fold increase in engagement range over the SA-10. In combat operations, a long-range Russian SAM reportedly shot down a Ukrainian aircraft at low level from a range of 80 nm. To date, the lethality of Russian and Ukrainian defenses against penetrating aircraft has dominated the course of the air war.
Russia’s Attempt at Air Superiority
As Russian forces moved to attack at the start of the war, the UkAF dispersed its aviation assets to secondary and tertiary airfields to complicate Russian attacks. Deployable support kits enabled aircraft maintenance in the field and support personnel were trained to do maintenance and preflight inspections from the dispersed fields. Munitions stocks were relocated for security, and dummy batteries and radar sites, augmented by signals deception, were set up to draw attacks. Then, hours before the Russian assault, GBAD units also began to disperse. Although most survived, the haste and timing of this dispersal made a coordinated defense more difficult during the opening phase of the conflict.
The Russians mistakenly expected their invading forces to be greeted with open arms throughout Ukraine. Russia’s concept of operations was to employ special forces to eliminate Ukraine’s political leadership in Kyiv—a task planned to take just a few days—while ground forces would trap Ukraine’s army in the east and southeast and the air force would degrade Ukraine’s air defense capabilities to gain control of the air.
With the opening of hostilities on Feb. 24, 2022, widespread electronic attacks sought to disrupt UkAF air defense radars, while aerial drones were employed to bait UkAF SAM batteries into revealing their positions. Russian penetrating aircraft and long-range missiles struck some 100 Ukrainian air defense targets (air bases, radars, SAM and anti-aircraft batteries, and command and control nodes), knocking out multiple radars and SAM batteries. But Ukraine’s prewar dispersal ensured that most of Ukraine’s aviation and GBAD units survived. Meanwhile, Russia’s dynamic targeting and battle damage assessments proved slow, incapable of locating mobile UkAF GBAD units or dispersed aircraft, which took the lead in countering Russian air operations until the GBAD could reconstitute.
In the initial assaults, Russian fighter bombers averaged about 140 sorties per day, typically flying at medium altitudes to depths of 150 nm. VKS fighters, flying in single- to six-ship formations, struck the initial target set with mostly unguided weapons and poor accuracy. Russian Su-35 and Su-30 fighters flew medium- and high-altitude combat air patrols in support of the penetrating aircraft during the first three days, reportedly scoring multiple kills of Ukrainian MiG-29, Su-27, Su-24, and Su-25 aircraft. Ukrainian fighters, flying low to evade radar detection, also reportedly scored multiple kills. Heavy aerial combat operations concentrated around Kyiv.
UkAF fighters and drones, in combination with ground forces, inflicted heavy casualties on Russian armored forces advancing in a single column and to seize the Ukrainian capital. These forces, mired in traffic jams, had expected to take on occupation duties, not execute ground combat operations, and were unprepared for fierce resistance. Within three days, Russia’s ground offensive bogged down, and with ground forces needing fire support, the VKS had to switch from controlling the air to close air support.
While historically consistent—aviation support for Red Army movements in WWII were called “aerial artillery”—this choice in a modern war was a strategic miscalculation. If the VKS had continued its counterair campaign, Russia might have achieved air superiority.
For deeper penetration strikes, the VKS used missile attacks against radars, bases, and infrastructure targets, firing about 24 missiles per day on average over the first three months of the war.Unable to respond to the rapidly changing battlespace, however, Russia failed to significantly degrade Ukraine’s IADS. As a result, VKS fighters began low-level strikes to avoid Ukrainian radars, attacking Ukrainian forces in the front lines with unguided bombs and rockets. But flying predictable flight routes day after day, they exposed their jets to Ukraine’s thousands of MANPADS, losing an estimated eight fighters in a week. Fratricide added to Russia’s losses.
By the fall of 2022, the two sides reached a stasis that continues to the present day. MANPADS rendered daytime low-level sorties too dangerous, while SAMs and fighters made medium- and high-level altitudes lethal to penetrating sorties on both sides. Russia succeeded in pushing UkAF GBAD units back from the front lines, enabling the VKS to send glide bombs against Ukrainian positions, but the VKS was deterred from flying inhabited aircraft in deeper penetration missions, forcing it to rely on drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. Ukraine’s defenses proved highly effective against those weapons. For instance, in May 2023 Ukraine reported shooting down around 90 percent of Russian cruise missiles and drones and nearly 80 percent of air- and ground-launched ballistic missiles nationwide. Patriot missiles, where employed, shot down 100 percent of incoming ballistic missiles. Such success illustrates why VKS combat aircraft were reluctant to penetrate these defenses.
In some respects, the air environment that evolved in Ukraine by the summer of 2022 illustrates the same fears held by the U.S. Air Force regarding GBADs following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when Soviet-supplied SAMs and guns shot down 60 Israeli fighters in four days. That success helped drive the United States to develop stealth technology in the 1970s as a means to counter integrated air defenses. The F-117 stealth fighter proved how effective stealth can be in the 1991 Gulf War, fueling an appetite for stealth that included the B-2 bomber, the F-22 and F-35 fighters, and the B-21 bomber over the next three decades.
Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles
A signature element of this conflict has been the rapid development and employment of uninhabited systems—both by Ukraine and Russia. Although UAVs have been employed in multiple wars dating back to World War II, we have never seen such wide use of these systems in combat. In 2023, Ukraine sent 100,000 small drones to the front and conducted almost 200 long-range strikes using kamikaze/attack drones against Moscow and bomber bases. Russia, in turn, fired thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as attack drones against Ukraine. While short-range quadcopters currently flying over the front lines already provide surveillance and targeting information, and offer limited precision strike capabilities, the longer-range uninhabited systems now proliferating across the battlefields in Ukraine represent the real potential of these lower-cost precision strike systems.
Historically, developing nations attempting to use airpower for offensive strikes have not fared well when confronting advanced Western powers: Think of Egyptian and Syrian aircraft losses at the hands of Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars or the Iraqi Air Force against allied forces in 1991 and 2003. For decades, long-range precision strike conferred a significant military advantage to the United States and other Western powers. In Ukraine, however, the fielding of a new generation of UAVs shows the potential is clear for less-developed forces to acquire precision long-range strike capability, including those employing irregular warfare tactics and terrorists. Not only are these weapons effective, but they can be affordably manufactured in quantity by non-state actors.
The cost to counter these weapons can be disproportionate. Iran’s massive air attack against Israel in April 2024 consisted of hundreds of such UAVs, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles. While nearly all were shot down—or ignored if they did not have a lethal trajectory—the cost of intercept was significant.
Ukraine and Russia now fly thousands of sorties per month in the battlespace using short-range small UAVs, or drones. Both use commercial drones and military variants along the front lines. Indeed, Ukraine recently formed a separate branch of its armed forces to accelerate innovation in ground, maritime, and aerial uninhabited system development.
Small drones, roughly the size of a football, can be used for surveillance of the battlefield or direct attacks, where the drone is fitted with a small explosive charge and flown by an operator with a first-person view (FPV) camera directly into Russian armored vehicles, bunkers, and trenches. Buoyed by operational success, Ukraine is constructing thousands of small drones, using commercial components fitted into a 3D-printed airframe. After deploying 100,000 small drones to the front in 2023, Ukraine plans to build 1 million in 2024—about 3,000 a day—in some 200 factories spread across the country. The drones give platoon-sized elements their own ISR capability, a key to survival along the stalemated front lines.
Loss rates are high—the small drones are vulnerable to electronic attack and typically only survive for a few sorties—but their low cost allows both sides simply to buy and field more. The small drones perform important roles in surveillance and targeting, making hidden ground maneuver extremely difficult while providing precise targeting information to artillery, contributing to the current stalemate on the ground.
Longer-range attack drones have also seen widespread use. The Iranian Shahed loitering munition provides a useful illustration. Iran began developing UAVs 40 years ago during the Iran-Iraq War and now fields and exports a wide array of UAVs for reconnaissance/surveillance and strike. Iran has since supplied Shahed 131/136 attack drones to Russia, which is now manufacturing its own improved variant.
Shaheds can be launched from ground sites or the back of trucks using a boost rocket. The airframe is powered by a small gas engine driving a wooden propeller. Guidance is provided by satellites and an inertial navigation system. Flying at low altitudes and 115 knots, Shaheds deliver 30 to 50 pounds of explosive payload and can travel 700 to 800 nm (similar to a fighter aircraft). At $20,000 to $50,000, they cost a fraction of a manned system. Between September 2022 and August 2023, Russia fired roughly 1,600 Shahed drones and 1,651 missiles. Ukraine’s defense forces use guns, if possible, to shoot down the Shaheds to preserve SAM stocks.
Ukraine plans to build thousands of systems like the Shahed—long-range attack drones capable of deep strikes. After the launch of a development effort in spring 2022, 10 companies in Ukraine are now making drones that can reach Moscow and St. Petersburg. As Ukraine’s digital minister stated, “The category of long-range kamikaze drones is growing with a range of 300, 500, 700, and 1,000 kilometers. Two years ago, this category did not exist.” New Ukrainian long-range UAV types are being field-tested and incorporated into the inventory. Ukraine now fields and has used UAVs out to a range of 1,500 km against Russian infrastructure targets, as well as a new MQ-9-like variant that has an advertised range of 3,300 km.
Ukrainian operations employing these systems have ramped up over time. Ukrainian long-range attack drones hit a Russian oil refinery in June 2022 near Rostov, then conducted strikes against Crimea, including an attack against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet and Saki Air Base, reportedly damaging or destroying 10 aircraft. In October 2022, Ukraine hit the Tu-22M3/BACKFIRE at Shaykovka, damaging two bombers. From January through September 2023, Ukraine conducted 190 long-range drone attacks against targets including oil fields, air bases, and even the Kremlin in Moscow. In August 2023, Ukraine hit six locations in Russia and Crimea, including Pskov Air Base, roughly 350 nm from the Ukrainian border, damaging four military airlifters. Nine months later, UkAF long-range strike drones attacked a Russian drone factory and an oil refinery 700 nm from the Ukrainian border.
Gaining Air Superiority
If there is any lesson to extract from the Russia-Ukraine war to date, it is the absolute necessity of air superiority to achieve a decisive advantage. Without it, the conflict has devolved into a relative stalemate, resembling—literally—the trench warfare of World War I. Neither side has the freedom of maneuver and attack that air superiority enables, and victory is likely to go to the side with the most warfighting personnel and materiel—Russia.
Two elements are required to achieve air superiority. The first is offensive counterair (OCA) missions, which seek to gain control of the airspace to provide friendly offensive forces (in whatever domain) the freedom of maneuver to fight without adversary air interference—that is, to attack at a time and place of one’s choosing. OCA has five components:
1. Neutralizing Enemy Air Threats: OCA missions aim to target and destroy enemy aircraft, including fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance platforms, as well as other airborne threats such as drones. This also includes attacking an adversary’s bomber and fighter forces before they launch weapons.
2. Destroying/Suppressing Enemy Air Defense Systems: Targeting enemy air defense systems, such as surface-to-air missile sites, radar installations, and anti-aircraft artillery paves the way for follow-on operations, including close air support, interdiction, and conventional strategic attacks against enemy centers of gravity.
3. Protecting Friendly Forces and Assets: By gaining control of the airspace, OCA missions can help protect friendly ground and naval forces, as well as critical infrastructure. This enables friendly forces to maneuver effectively and at reduced risk.
4. Facilitating Follow-On Operations: Once the airspace is secure, friendly forces can conduct reconnaissance, surveillance, and strike missions with reduced interference and risk.
5. Supporting Overall Campaign Objectives: By disrupting enemy air operations, OCA missions help shape the operational environment in favor of friendly forces.
Defensive counterair (DCA) missions are the second major element necessary to achieve air superiority. This ensures friendly airspace, forces, and assets are safe from enemy air threats. DCA can be used to achieve freedom from attack, and can be decomposed into five components:
1. Protection of Friendly Forces: The primary objective of DCA missions is to safeguard friendly ground forces, naval assets, air bases, and critical infrastructure from enemy air attacks.
2. Securing Air Sovereignty: By intercepting unauthorized or hostile aircraft entering the airspace, DCA operations uphold national sovereignty and prevent airspace violations.
3. Air Defense of Vital Areas: Deploying air defense assets such as fighter aircraft, SAMs, and anti-aircraft artillery, this ensures a layered defense for vital command centers, logistics hubs, communication nodes, and population centers from enemy air threats.
4. Maintaining Operational Freedom: Neutralizing enemy air threats and denying adversary air superiority allow for the unhindered generation of air and ground operations and logistical activities.
5. Protecting Strategic Assets: DCA missions ensure the continuity of military operations and national defense capabilities by protecting strategic assets, such as air bases, ports, air defense installations, and critical infrastructure.
6. Escorting and Protecting Friendly Aircraft: DCA missions may involve providing escort and protection for friendly aircraft, including bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, and strike fighters, during their missions.
The most important step to achieving air superiority for Ukraine will be the development of an integrated air and ground campaign that leverages a wide range of capabilities: UkAF aviation and GBAD, persistent surveillance and reconnaissance, long-range attack drones, army long-range fires, electronic warfare, cyberattacks, deception, special operations forces, timely intelligence from NATO allies, and tight coordination with the ground forces. Developing this campaign and acquiring the resources to conduct it will require detailed planning—but it could change the course of the war.
Concept of Operations
The 1991 Operation Desert Storm air campaign “was perhaps the most successful war fought by the United States in the 20th century,” according to a GAO report on the war. What made that success possible was its effects-based approach to planning, execution, and assessment, which tied tactical military actions to the ultimate political objectives for which military force was being applied. This effects-based methodology can be applied to any military operation.
Effects-based campaign planning begins with setting the strategic end-state upfront and unfolds by identifying the operational-level centers of gravity as target sets, along with tactical level targets that must be engaged to achieve those operational objectives. Cyber operations, deception and decoys, special operations, drones, anti-radiation missiles, electronic attack, and lethal precision attacks from both air- and ground-based weapons must all be coordinated to achieve air superiority. As Air Force doctrine states, this requires both a comprehensive plan and an effective command and control philosophy.
For Ukraine, the first step is for UkAF to work with the army to determine the optimal locations and times to gain air superiority. The desired effect is to use control of the air to gain momentum on the battlefield and begin reversing the gains the Russian army has achieved to date. Then, with the initial breaching of Russian lines, UkAF airpower must be employed to assist in the attack and, simultaneously, interdict Russian reinforcements being rushed to the area. With control of the air in critical areas, UKaF airpower assests such as the F-16s entering service can deliver heavy weapons to disrupt Russian ground forces, smash artillery positions, and pave the way for Ukrainian army breakthroughs on the ground.
Intelligence is the next area of focus. Here, Ukraine has a significant advantage, given that the U.S. and its NATO allies are already providing timely intelligence on the location of key Russian units and capabilities, such as radars, SAMs, air bases, artillery batteries, jammers, and other high-value targets. Providing the Ukrainian Air Force with its own ISR-capable aircraft, like the MQ-9 Reaper, would also help in this regard. As the campaign progresses, intelligence must be rapidly provided to Ukrainian military leadership and combat units.
As part of campaign preparation, an important step is the building and fielding of thousands of long-range attack drones. Ukraine already has a head start on this venture and has demonstrated the potential in strikes over the past year. Ukraine’s allies could provide valuable assistance—the drones are low tech and low cost and can be manufactured in small factories in multiple nations. Harnessing additional advanced economies in this task could enable the rapid establishment of significant attack drone inventories.
Ground forces must likewise be integrated to assist in the suppression of enemy air defenses by employing long-range fires, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), ground-launched cruise missiles, and the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). These long-range missiles can reach into Russian-occupied territory to eliminate key GBAD targets, such as radars and SAM batteries, and are more difficult to counter than slow-speed drones. Restrictions on their use, however, have hampered Ukraine to Russia’s benefit, and must be removed. Special operations forces and cyberattacks also have a role to play in this phase of the campaign. The UkAF and the Ukrainian ground forces must work in a truly integrated fashion to target and suppress Russian air defense systems.
UkAF GBAD units, notably the long-range S-200s, S-300s, Patriots, and other air defense systems, can help by threatening Russian fighter combat air patrols (CAPs), and electronic warfare (EW) assets could “sanitize” the airspace, grounding enemy reconnaissance and surveillance drones and degrading Russian SAM radars.
Air superiority is achievable if the tools outlined above are integrated into a cohesive, comprehensive, and integrated plan.
Recommendations
The comprehensive, integrated campaign proposed here can not be achieved by Ukraine alone. To be successful, the United States and its NATO allies must take a series of steps, and Ukraine must follow with steps of its own:
1. The United States should immediately remove constraints on U.S.-made weapons to help Ukraine defend itself against its much more powerful and well-equipped invader.
2. The United States and NATO should provide Ukraine with timely intelligence to make quick and decisive determinations to achieve windows of air dominance.
3. The United States and NATO must ensure military aid to Ukraine is sufficient to enable strategies that can achieve decisive outcomes and move Ukraine toward victory. Merely ensuring their survival against a greater force for a little bit longer buys only time, not victory.
4. Drop its Soviet-based military doctrine at all levels and focus on establishing air superiority, rather than using air assets to suppor ground maneuvers.
5. Evolve its current ground control intercept, and command and control doctrine to ensure that SAMs and friendly fighter aircraft can operate in the same airspace simultaneously.
6. Incorporate its Air Force leadership into the Ukrainian General Staff to foster and facilitate integrated, all-domain concepts, planning, and employment.
Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula (Ret.) is one of the world’s foremost airpower experts and Dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He visited Ukraine in May 2024 and shared his views with senior military, government, and Air Force leaders. Dr. Christopher J. Bowie worked at RAND on airpower doctrine and strategy, on the Secretary of the Air Force’s personal staff from 1989-1991, and later was Deputy Director for Strategic Planning on the Air Staff. He was Director of Northrop Grumman’s Corporate Analysis Center for more than a decade and is now a non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.