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I'm not really sure how much it matters how well your aircraft is "built" when it's hit by a missile, but I am given to understand that Russian aircraft are actually designed pretty well - the Flanker, for instance, is pretty commonly acknowledged to be a peer to the F-15 (and of course the Russians equipped their aircraft with equipment such as high off-boresight dogfighting missiles and electronically-scanned arrays before the States during the Cold War and today continue to develop capabilities not fielded by the West, such as the Felon's cheek radar arrays and of course the favorite weapon of comic book villains everywhere, nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles).
Yes. From what I can tell, the (embarrassing) lack of glide bombs was more important to the lackluster support provided by the Russian air arm than any sort of aircraft quality issues.
However, I'd suggest a third thing where the VKS has stood out - perhaps not a "major game changer" in the course of what is primarily a ground war, but their employment of the MiG-31 and Flankers carrying long range air-to-air missiles seems to have been relatively effective, with the Russians scoring at least one kill with the R-37 in excess of 100 miles. Being able to threaten Ukrainian aircraft even when they are able to mask themselves from the Russian surface air defenses seems to have created real problems for the Ukrainians, and of course despite receiving F-16s more than a year ago the Ukrainians don't seem to have been able to seize air superiority, which I would guess is due partially to the effective Russian SAM network but also partially to the fact that the F-16/AMRAAM combo is just outsticked by the MiG-31/Su-35 and R-37 combo.
I could be wrong as I haven't looked into the Mainstay's situation very much, but from what I can tell the Russian airborne early warning fleet is too small for them to consistently keep them on station providing situational awareness, which is also embarrassing but if anything makes what their fighters seem to be able to achieve more impressive.
The newer Russian planes are fine compared to anything short of an F-22/35, but they can't build them quickly enough or at all (in the case of MiG 31s, or non-Flanker strike aircraft like the Su-22s and 25s, Tu-95s, etc.) to afford chucking them into the teeth of Ukraine's air defense network Gulf War style and they didn't start the war with huge numbers of them thanks to having next to no procurement budget during the 90s and 2000s. Does the Su-57 do anything that an Su-30/35 or MiG 31 can't also do (The R-37 is indeed clever.)? Who knows, because they've only built ~30 of them.
Mind you, even before being provisioned with Patriots and so on Ukraine started the war with a very good ground-based IADS thanks to being either the second or third-largest operator of the S-300 and other 80s era Soviet SAM systems in the world, especially given an all you can eat buffet of NATO recon. It would've been a tough nut to crack for anyone not named the USAF.
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I think the critique is that Russia's industrial output isn't capable of building that many planes. But they don't seem notably worse in that regard than other major powers- as you correctly note, throughput limits on aircraft manufacture are very very real.
Ah yes this makes sense - and yes, I do think it's correct that the Russians don't have the capability to generate aircraft in numbers approaching that of the US or China.
I do seem to recall when last I checked that their 40 or so losses of Su-34s had probably set them back about a year's worth of production, which I really don't think is all that bad, particularly considering how small the Su-34 fleet is. Whether or not they can afford to purchase them, though, I don't know - and losses of aircraft that aren't still in production (IIRC: Su-25s, Su-24s, Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms) will obviously hurt quite a bit more.
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The kill chain for antiair starts at detection and current air ops favor terrain hugging with popup approach for strikes. As such kills are almost predetermined by baiting bandits to an ambush location, not one to one fights in the air. Operation Sindoors furball is textbook what NOT to do, and the Ukrainians lacking cueing radars to allow extreme range missiles without using ones own radar. Plus, the F16s Ukraine received are all ancient block A MLU so they have no AESA radar at all. Maybe link16 but that's still useless without a cueing platform.
In any case industrial capacity doesn't matter as much as legacy stocks because you can't just whip up a thousand eurofighters on demand. This isn't WW2 where tractor factories could make T34s and piano makers could make planes Spitfires. A modern combat platform is far more advanced and just the factory to make one is a dedicated multiyear investment to get operational let alone the rate of production. Inventories are nice to have but those take up space and are either tempting targets for sabotage or logistical nightmares to get to the front.
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