Maybe the Russians thought like you and tried to add Wings in order to be able to throw the guided bomb from a farther distance from the front line without risking the plane that will drop the guided bomb. Although if they had called Afif, he would have done this faster, but whatever!
Depending altitude and aerodynamics. At best " winged " glide bombs gliding range is ~20km. Most of the time the carry aircraft will still have to enter hotly contested airspace. Higher altitude correspond to longer throw distance, but as the VKS found it the hard way early in the war, flying too high meant that they're vulnerable to medium-high altitude AD. Now we do know that Ukraine medium-high altitude AD are being bolstered by some the industry best (sky sabre, IRIS-T, Patriot Pac-2 etc) hence even if VKS somehow manage to improve the accuracy of its loadout. It's still irrelevant and hardly with any significant effect to the general battlefield situation.
The Russians want no part of any of the newer model / variant F-16s. Russia doesn't have enough advanced dog fighters and air superiority fighters to even risk them entering Patriot / Iris-T / SAMP/T protected air space, to try and challenge the F-16's. Even if they did get through Ukrainian air defense and were able to penetrate deeper into Ukraine, it's not obvious that they would fair well in combat against the F-16s.
Forget American tech in many weapon systems Russians are quite behind China and Iran as well.
Nice! The Sea Sparrow is a reasonably cheap, but effective alternative to some of Ukraine's other air defense capabilities. Especially against drones and the like. Shorter ranged, but really precise. I'd be curious to know (not that they'll tell us) how many Ukrainian BUK launchers are basically in a state of storage because they don't have adequate Russian made missiles for them. 500 (as an example) Sea Sparrow missiles could go a long way in bringing a lot of those platforms back on line.
Still not a Tank though
If I remember correctly There is Czech air defence system that merge BUK platform with Italian equivalent of Sparrow missile, isn't it?
I don't think Ukraine is particularly short on tanks, especially as more T-72s flow in from the Czech Republic and Poland in 2023. I think you'll see about 150-200 more of them come into the country via the international community. Many of them are / will be in the process of being upgraded and retrofitted.
We're escalating slowly, gauging the Kremlin's reaction, while clearing out the backlog of mostly obsolete Western weapons, which will allow for the purchase of a lot of new toys among the Western countries. In the process, we're bleeding the Russian army (and thus its threat) dry for a generation and deeply hurting the Russian (they're not our friends) economy at the same time. This will be the cheapest price the NATO and its allies will ever have to pay to clean out Russia of its Soviet war arsenal. Ukraine is a willing combatant and the West's interests (the neutering of Russia) are being served.
He said they aren't.
They'll make due for now. That's largely what Russia is using on the other side and the defender (especially backed by Western intelligence) has a huge advantage.
What about Hostomel, Sumy, izyum, Mariupol etc ? The weapon delivery works.
They will now. Because they have to. In the past western powers are there to back Russia up. See Napoleonic wars, WW1 and WW2, not this time though.
