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Russia is quickly depleting its fleet of warplanes through overuse, and
Ukraine deploying F-16s could worsen the situation: expert
Tom Porter Aug 14, 2023, 6:53 AM PDT
Silhouettes of people watching Russian jets in flight.
Members of the Russian Air Force perform with their Su-27 type aircraft
during the International Air Show at the Hungarian Air Force base in
Kecskemét, southern Hungary, in August 2013. ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via
Getty Images

An engineering expert says the Russian air force is being depleted
through overuse in Ukraine.
The arrival of Ukraine's F-16s could worsen the problem, wrote Rand's
Michael Bohnert.
Ukraine says it urgently needs F-16s to reduce Russia's air dominance.
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Russia's fighter planes are malfunctioning because of overuse, handing
Ukraine a potential advantage in its air battles against the Russian air
force, an engineering expert said.

In an article for Defense News, Michael Bohnert, an engineer at the Rand
Corporation think tank, said that Russia's warplanes were running out of
"aircraft life".

"Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on,"
he wrote, adding that by his calculations as many as 57 Russian planes,
many repurposed Soviet-era machines, might have been lost because they
broke down since the start of the war.

That's in addition to UK intelligence figures in February, which
suggested about 130 of the estimated 900 planes in Russia's air force
deployed in Ukraine had crashed or been shot down during the war.

Bohnert said that because many of the aircraft are reaching the limit of
their 3,000 hours of flight time, the problem could worsen.

"To make up for it, they'll have to procure more aircraft, increase
maintenance, reduce operations, or accept a smaller force — or some
combination of those," he said.

He added that the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine by its
Western allies, which had been delayed by bureaucracy, could damage
Russia's air force even more.

"As the VKS devotes a greater share of its dwindling force to countering
those, it will have fewer aircraft left to support Russian ground
operations," he wrote, referring to the Russian air forces. "VKS
fighters in the sky will also be less capable, stemming from two years
of overuse."

But not all experts share Bohnert's conclusions. The International
Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, said in a report
that Russia retained the capacity to rapidly add to its aircraft
supplies from its aeronautical factories, potentially meaning old
aircraft can be quickly replaced, and its overall strength in the air
had not significantly diminished.

In the early weeks of the conflict, some analysts believed that Russia
would be able to establish rapid control of Ukrainian air space, with
its air force more sophisticated and bigger than Ukraine's. But
effective Ukrainian air defenses meant that Russia was unable to do so.

As it seeks to retake territory from Russia in its counteroffensive,
Ukraine has been requesting F-16s from its Western allies that it says
would help tip the air battle in its favor.

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