oryx aircraft losses

Oryx Aircraft Losses - The remains of a military plane after it was shot down by Ukrainian forces in Chernihiv Credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Russia may not sustain an air deficit for more than a fortnight after at least nine planes were shot down in just 24 hours, analysts say.

Oryx Aircraft Losses

Defense analysts say Moscow has been unable to establish air superiority because it has been unable - at least so far - to launch a "complex" attack capable of wiping out the country's air force and surface-to-air missile systems.Ukraine.

Sikorsky Uh 60 Black Hawk

Western officials were surprised by Russia's inability to win an air battle because of its overwhelming air superiority. Without air superiority, large, slow ground convoys can be captured by Ukrainian drone strikes and shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles that the West provides to Ukraine.

Military strategists believe that if Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv in the east continue to resist the invasion, Vladimir Putin's military effort will disappear in "three weeks at the most" unless a major resupply effort is made.

"The Russians did not plan for a long war or make sure it was sustained over time," said Professor Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London.

Russian military losses are recorded by observers who rely only on visible and verified images, such as a crashed plane or a burnt tank, posted on social media or captured by journalists.

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As a result, actual losses may be higher, but verified images and footage show that 11 Russian planes, 11 helicopters and two drones have been downed since the invasion began 12 days ago, including nine over the weekend.

Russian aircraft destroyed included at least four Su-34 fighter/bombers, four Su-25 attack aircraft, two Su-30 fighter jets and nine attack helicopters. The economic cost was enormous, estimated at nearly a quarter of a billion pounds for fighter aircraft alone.

Each day of prolonging the war is costing the Kremlin around £1bn a day - catastrophic given how tough the sanctions against Russia are.

A US Defense Intelligence Agency official said in a briefing released overnight: "We continue to observe that the airspace over Ukraine is contested. Ukrainian air and missile defenses remain effective and in use. The Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and use air defense assets .

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"Both sides have lost inventory of aircraft and missile defenses. We will not talk about numbers. We estimate that both sides still have most of their missile defense systems and capabilities."

The numbers were cataloged by Stijn Mitzer, a conflict analyst who posts under the name Oryx on Twitter and the website of the same name. The website said: "This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment for which photo or video evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of destroyed equipment is higher than recorded here."

Defense analysts say Ukraine still has several fixed-wing fighter jets operating from airfields in the country's west and surface-to-air missile sites, some mobile, that Russian forces have not detected and destroyed.

The success of the surface-to-air missile attack forced Russian aircraft to fly lower, providing them with protection from missile attacks but leaving them vulnerable to attacks from man-portable air defense systems - guided missiles.

Aérospatiale Sa 330 Puma

Justin Bronk, an air force researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, the UK's leading defense and security think tank, said: "The rate of losses is getting so fast it's unsustainable. It's a real problem for the Russians. They lost nine planes over the weekend. This it's a lot."

He said Russian cruise missiles were deployed to hit airfields at the start of the invasion, but that such weapons, while useful for targeting "fixed infrastructure, hard runways and craters, are no less effective at compacting smaller targets such as fighter jets".

He suggested that runways could be quickly repaired and fighter jets removed from conflict zones in eastern Ukraine and redeployed to the west of the country, ready for deployment. Ukraine had fewer than 100 fighter jets at the start of the war, and it was unclear what was left after days of fighting.

"Ukraine is still flying," Mr. Bronk said, adding that the "continued absence" of major air operations by Russia raised "serious questions" about its capability.

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He said: "While the early failure of the VKS [Russian Air Force] to establish air superiority can be explained by a lack of early warning, coordination capacity and sufficient planning time, the current pattern of activity suggests a more important conclusion - that the VKS lacks the institutional capacity to plan, preparing and flying complex air operations on a large scale."

He said that if Russia could conduct "sophisticated air operations," Moscow should have achieved air superiority by now by hunting Ukrainian surface-to-air missile sites.

After failing to cut off Ukraine's leadership in the early days of the war, experts warned Russia was left with the prospect of a humiliating defeat or pressure for more violence.

In Monday's statement, Moscow appeared to scale back its previous demands on Ukraine. A Kremlin spokesman said fighting could stop "momentarily" if Ukraine stopped fighting, changed its constitution to remove a possible future with NATO, recognized the loss of Crimea and recognized separatist areas in the country's east.

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But defense experts say any possibility of a military defeat or stalemate - seen as a tactical victory for Ukraine - could mean an increase in violence in the coming days, particularly against civilians.

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