- The Ukrainian airforce says it shot down four Russian fighter jets this weekend.
- On Saturday, the Ukraine airforce chief said two Su-34 and one Su-35 fighter jets were downed.
- Another Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber was destroyed, on Sunday.
Not really great news when you just lost a strategic town. I feel they are reporting every single kill, even the most minor ones, while underreporting the general state of things at a bigger level.
Avdiikva is a big loss, but just like Bahkmut it was inevitable as long as Russia will throw away men and materiel into the meat grinder, whilst Ukraine values their soldiers lives
They’ve made the Russians really pay for all their ‘big wins’ and ran a serious defense throughout, it was common to see 10+ Russian tanks and IFVs destroyed each day. The troop losses have been so numerous, that’s been hard to keep track of
“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
Any single plane shot down isnt small. And they allegedly shot down 4. Not just that, pilots may also be lost, which is just as if not even worse of a loss for russia.
Last month, Business Insider’s Sinéad Baker wrote that Russia was strategically trying to bait Ukraine into using up its Patriot stocks to leave itself vulnerable.
This is like the most idiotic strategy. It will take Ukraine a short amount of time to get more missiles. They are probably sending back every single MB of data from these Patriots to the US Army.
The US hasn’t fought a country with actual jets in decades. This is priceless information for them and missiles are basically free.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pilots they are putting in fighters aren’t experienced fighter pilots. Using Russia’s thinking, I would be retaining my experienced pilots to train non-military pilots how to get into a fighter, fly it and attack with it. Then when they are all dead, use my experienced pilots.
I read (sorry dont have a source) that russian fighter pilots fly commercial just to get flight hours, cause they dont get enough from the military. So uh… maybe a lot of them just didnt and maybe still dont have much experience at all. Or maybe they do now… those who still survive.
Well it’s not like you can take a commercial airliner pilot, stick him in a fighter jet, and tell him to go drop bombs. While he may need less training he’d still require a significant amount of training before he could be expected to take on even relatively safe missions and return safely. It’s not like Su-34’s etc. roll off the assembly line quickly enough to regularly use them on kamikaze missions.
