In recent times, Ukraine has dealt a very serious blow to the Russian Aerospace Forces!
Ukraine** officially announced: On February 29, 2024, 3 Russian Su-34 fighters were shot down! At that time, the Su-34s were firing gliding bombs at the positions of the Ukrainian infantry, and after the fighters shot them down, the six pilots did not eject them.
So far, Ukraine has still not announced which ** has been used externally, and Russia did not respond when Ukraine announced it. However, Singapore's defense minister revealed that NATO had dropped F-35 stealth fighters on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. It's just that the F-35 was not directly put into combat, it was used as a stealth reconnaissance aircraft to locate the Russian air defense system and transfer the coordinates of the Russian fighter to the Ukrainian air defense system.
This indirect participation in the war makes the F-35 still a great threat to the Russian Aerospace Forces.
Statistics show that in the second half of February this year, Russia lost a total of 13 aircraft, including one A-50U AWACS aircraft, two Su-35 and ten Su-34 aircraft! These 13 fighters were shot down, and the economic loss alone exceeded 10 dollars, plus more than 12 pilots of 12 fighters and 1 AWACS aircraft, which is a very big loss for Russia! The successive downing of warplanes has caused a huge blow to the morale of Russian troops. Then let's take a look at why the Su-34 was shot down one after another?
Let's start with the life story of the Su-34. At that time, there was a popular theory in the USSR called "large-scale in-depth campaigns", which, to put it simply, was not aimed at breaking through on all fronts, but only to find the enemy's weak points on the front line and launch a fierce attack on it, and then send troops to sneak behind enemy lines to destroy their transports, warehouses and all other important targets, so that the enemy would lose supplies and support, and then the enemy would no longer have the strength to resist and would easily win.
During World War II, in order to speed up the advance of the army, the Soviet Union would dispatch its air force to provide low-altitude fire support to the ground troops, and the most frequently used was the "Il-2" attack aircraft, which destroyed tens of thousands of German tanks on the battlefield and was once praised as the "Black Death" by the German army.
In order to keep up with the theory of "large-scale in-depth campaigns" in order to keep up with the times, the Soviet Union developed its military industry after World War II, and it was necessary to develop a modern tactical-class bomber. However, the Soviet Union proposed to develop a new bomber in 1986, and as we all know, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and it should be said that the Soviet Union at that time was "about to collapse." The Soviet Union no longer had the conditions to develop a new bomber, and it was only possible to modify the existing fighter to meet the requirements.
The Sukhoi Design Bureau carried out a "makeover" on the basis of the Su-27, changing the original cockpit, significantly strengthening the armor of the fuselage, from which the Su-34 was born. But then the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Air Force ran out of money to build fighters, until 2006, when the Su-34 was delivered to the Russian Air Force.
In 2015, Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war and sent the Russian Aerospace Forces to support the Syrian ** army, which was the first in the Su-34 war. The Su-34 achieved zero losses with heavy armor, good airframe performance, and achieved excellent results with high-capacity bomb loading. So why was the Su-34 shot down frequently during the Russian-Ukrainian war?
The first is the lack of air supremacy! The Syrian opposition does not have systematic air defense and lacks early warning radars and anti-aircraft missiles to defend against air attack, and the Su-34 is a good place for Syria. But Ukraine does not belong to Syria, and no matter how bad the Ukrainian air defense system is, it can be regarded as existing, not to mention that NATO is equipping Ukraine with air defense systems.
The second is the Su-34 design flaw. Since the Su-34 is a heavy armored aircraft, its maneuverability is relatively weak. Coupled with the fact that the Su-34 was dropping gliding bombs while flying at low altitudes, this increased the risk of the Su-34 being shot down. It has been 20 years since the Su-34 was developed and delivered to the Russian army, and its applicability on the battlefield is also debatable.
Third, there is a lack of AWACS! Since the Russian army lost two A-50U early warning planes within two months, the Russian army has never dared to allow early warning aircraft to dispatch, and the lack of early warning aircraft is a "clairvoyant", and the fighter plane will lose the guidance of early warning aircraft, and the mission completion rate of the Russian Aerospace Forces has also dropped significantly, and even the chance of missile hit has become greater.