On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.
rusi.org
The first is the limited quantities of air-delivered precision-guided munitions (PGMs) available to most VKS fighter units. During combat operations over Syria, only the Su-34 fleet has regularly made use of PGMs, and even these specialist strike aircraft have regularly resorted to unguided bomb and rocket attacks. This not only indicates a very limited familiarity with PGMs among most Russian fighter crews, but also reinforces the widely accepted theory that the Russian air-delivered PGM stockpile is very limited. Years of combat operations in Syria will have further depleted that stockpile, and may mean that the bulk of the 300 VKS fixed wing combat aircraft massed around Ukraine have only unguided bombs and rockets to draw on for ground-attack sorties. This, combined with the lack of targeting pods to spot and identify battlefield targets from a safe distance, means that the VKS fixed wing pilots’ capacity to provide close air support for their forces is limited. As a result, the VKS leadership may be reluctant to commit the bulk of their potential striking power against Ukrainian troops before political approval is granted to employ unguided munitions to bombard Ukrainian-held urban areas.
Another potential explanation is that the VKS are not confident in their capacity to safely deconflict large-scale sorties with the activity of Russian ground-based SAMs operated by the Ground Forces. Friendly-fire incidents by ground-based SAM units have been a problem for Western and Russian air forces alike in multiple conflicts since 1990. Running joint engagement zones in which combat aircraft and SAM systems can engage enemy forces simultaneously in a complex environment without friendly-fire incidents is hard; it requires close inter-service cooperation, excellent communications and regular training to master. So far, Russian forces have shown extremely poor coordination across the board, from basic logistics tasks, to coordination of airborne assaults with ground forces activity and arranging air defence cover for columns on the move.
The VKS leadership may be hesitant to commit to large-scale combat operations which would show up the gap between external perceptions and the reality of their capabilities
A final factor to consider is the relatively low number of flying hours that VKS pilots receive each year relative to most of their Western counterparts. While accurate numbers across each unit are hard to find, periodic Russian
official statements suggest an average of 100–120 hours per year across the VKS as a whole. Fighter unit flying hours are likely to be lower than those for transport or helicopter units, so the real figure is probably a little under 100. RAF and US Air Force fighter pilots often complain that they struggle to maintain multirole combat readiness with around 180–240 flying hours a year, access to modern high-fidelity simulators for additional training, and better cockpit ergonomics and weapon interfaces than their Russian counterparts.