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I think the Issue is how weak political scenario in EU has become. We civilians are paying the price for a land that Europe Committee cares only for the fertile land in which was part of the economical importance not for the people. We all know that US was poking the Russian Bear behind the EU curtain & just in case you all forgot after COVID.
What can we say here, the author of the video, as well as its participants, are dreamers. In reality, the exact opposite is true. Russian pilots, like airplanes, are more competent and resilient. Not a single air unit of NATO countries, including the United States, is capable of such intensive work as Russian pilots, this was proven in Syria. Everything else is your imagination. and Russian pilots can carry out up to 10 combat missions per person per day, this is happening today. And NATO pilots can do this. Absolutely not .And Russian aircraft are more effective and better than the air strikes of NATO countries. This was proven by Sukhoi aircraft, which did not give a single chance of victory in 13 international exercises against such aircraft as the Mirage 2000, Typhoon Eurofighter, F15, F16, F18 and even F22A and F35. everyone lost most of the battles to Su30 aircraft, and to the stripped-down export version
I'm an Aero Engineer. Some years ago I used to volunteer to carry out line work for a major European Airshow. Duties were to help with the general operations of the visiting aircraft. We had a Mig 29 with a fuel leak. It was a relatively minor leak but because it spent some of its time on public display it was decided to fix it once the public had left and have it ready for public display the next day. The Russian ground engineers were busy doing other things so one of the Russian pilots and myself under guidance from the Russian maintenance staff, defuelled the aircraft we fixed the leak and following an inspection from the Russian maintenance engineer we refuelled the aircraft and leaked checked it. Working with this pilot I get the impression he could do most of the operational maintenance himself. In a time of war this level of flexibility would be priceless!
@@gilh3947 lol right. Are those pilots even certified techs? Lol I wouldn't feel very confident flying a plane I fixed myself! If they are, good on them very different doctrines, one is woefully outdated (and mechanical), one is contemporary!
What are you talking about Russian pilots are in the air non stop flying strike missions or shooting down ukranians jets, uavs, or cruise missiles that argument may have worked in the past but not any more. I'm a pilot and my multi engine rating instructor is an f35 pilot he says it's absolute garbage but he said he wishes he was a Russian pilot so he could get that combat experience. The NATO AWACS let the get close enough to let the get to actually dogfighting "ukranian" pilots. Then again the greatest military minds in history are on TH-cam comment sections Pilo
@@sorryociffer я не буду спорить что сейчас Россия находится в упадке благодаря одному человеку, но я Надеюсь что под этим видео не будет полит срачей и люди просто признают что авиация США лучше, хотя вкс России могла бы держаться на достойном уровне если бы не наша власть!(please translate it)
Uhuh but what are the sides, a decent cole slaw and real fries can go a long way, also what are we drinking. Is the the coon tenderized? What are we drinking?
@@swissarmyknight4306 That sums up Russia in its entirety actually. Literally having a large chunk of the populace living 20-60 years behind everyone else.
@@swissarmyknight4306 Except there is the obvious counter-argument that the US, let alone NATO, enjoys a QUANTITATIVE advantage over Russia in addition to its qualititative advantage.
Yeah, it's kinda like if you fire the person that founded the company and put someone else in charge that didn't care about the company that it falls apart. Who'd of thunk it?@@Elthenar
For me, the defining moment for RF aviators in their all-in war against Ukraine was when two jets took off simultaneously and one immediately crashed because he turned while flying through his comrade's turbulence. In chess terms, that's losing in four moves.
And now you got B-21s entering low rate production. Not to mention the South Koreans, Japanese, Turkish, and Brits developing low Radar return platforms
@@fdangleshadang-a-lang7149 Plus the Japanese F-3 will be co-developed with Northrop Grumman and use an American software package. If they can build enough jets, Japan will be one of the most powerful Airforce on Earth
@@ГеоргийМурзичyes, we do. The west has over 1,000 stealth aircraft to Russia (maybe) 12, and a combined airforce 3x that of Russia’s. It’s not rocket science to figure out who’s going to have the advantage in the air.
@@nobodyherepal3292 how many countries would send their pilots to the fight? What makes NATO strong is the amount of countries. And that's what makes this union weak either since there's no unity among them even today
There’s a key difference not mentioned: One of these has rampant corruption at every level of the force, and the other knows to not drink the booze being used as coolant in their aircraft.
The other knows not to drink it, but doesn't even have it because U.S./Nato aircraft does not use alcohol for refrigerant or hydraulic fluid. Not to mention U.S. pilots get 10X the training, and the heir aircraft and weapons are easily 20 years ahead of the bleeding edge of Russian technology. A couple old F-15 charlies could outfight a squadron of SU-37s.
I remember reading an operational evaluation report on Russian pilots ( long since declassified) where Russian pilots were spreading alcohol based shoe polish on one side of bread, letting the alcohol soak thru and nibbling the bread on the other side. never saw any reports of vodka spilling or reaching the ground.
@@kdrapertrucker Su-37, the prototype? Didn't know there was a squadron of those. Edit, though rather an addition: also, thinking you're easily 20 years ahead of the assumed opponent's bleeding edge is how you lose. It's one of the highest achievable levels of ignorance and complacency. Respect your assumed opponent's capabilities to not be caught off guard.
@@johnbean9797 The US and NATO have tiny armies. The Russian belief is most of these professionals will be dead in the first few moths leaving nothing but Conscripts. In the case of Europe there are few conscripts in most countries. We are in peril.
@@williamzk9083 "The US and NATO have tiny armies. " WRONG! The US has the largest military in the world and by a wide margin. The US have 11 super carriers and China doesn't even have 1 let alone 11. The Russians used to have a carrier but they broke it. The US has more nuclear subs tnan the rest of the world combined and the US has more fighters than Russia and China combined. Trump tried to warn Europeans but they just laughed. Europe maybe in peril but the US is just fine.
@@NM-wd7kx You have 2nd and 3rd world reversed. Soviet aligned countries were defined as second world. Hence why African countries have been described as third world.
Ground crews are integral to any air campaign. Short term conscripts vs professional noncommissioned technicians can make the difference in aircraft availability. Would like to see that comparison in a future video.
@@petervautmans199 Sweden doesn't maintain anywhere near the ops tempo the United States does, and could not attempt to with their current logistical and maintenance structures. The requirements on USAF and USN MX teams is something you won't find anywhere else, and while there isn't another country out there that can get a wing flying, returned, repaired, refueled, and rearmed as fast as we can, the effect on our maintenance personnel is pretty grim with very low retainability after one term. You simply cannot train a group of people to do that or give them the necessary experience and leadership for those requirements on the timescales conscript armies operate on. One to two years just won't do it.
@@pxatm Finland has pretty much the system as Sweden does, even more conscripts even, and we train it a lot in high intensity environments, for example see the videos about dispersal in Finnish Defence Forces TH-cam channel. Of course it requires the population that is doing the conscription to have a high educational standard, but at the same time the conscription makes it easy, as you also get the best and brightest of each generation to go into the forces and pitch in their abilities. Or at this point more their ability to learn and master something quickly, then improve it and then pass it on back to the institution when they give feedback and training regimes are improved
@@Migog5 I think that the Finnish and Swedish forces are very impressive and I greatly appreciate our Northern partners, but I've been on bases that have more aircraft than the entire Finnish Air Force and, obviously, far less maintenance personnel. The United States has maintained surge ops tempo for years and that is quite simply not something you can train for in eleven months. American MX cadre have years of experience in training, years on the line, and decades of experience in their supervisors and leadership. Outright, there isn't another country in the world capable of our ops rate and if you wanted to get there you really can't do it through conscription. This isn't a point against our partner countries because they don't need that level of constant performance and the sheer expense of it makes it absurd for anyone that doesn't have constant demands for air power on every continent, every day. Keep focusing on what works for your team and keep up the good work, much love.
Most technical jobs like aircraft ground crews are not actually conscripts. They are professionals. You cannot teach a conscript to do that job in the amount of time they have available. Same with air defense system operators, they are all professionals
It feels like Russia's airforce is fairly binary in their capabilities. They have a finite capacity to conduct mission types with any degree of competency. NATO airforces are much more of a continuum. With attrition, Russia will perform fewer and fewer missions of any given type while NATO will still be able to do about the same number of missions but with ever decreasing skill.
Thats the fun part. The skill of NATO pilots probably wont be decreasing that much to be a substantial factor. Overall the knowledge base for NATO would be incredibly wide as your average NATO multi role fighter pilot is versed in air to air, air to ground, SEAD, Strike Planning and coordination and so on... In addition NATO has already many multi-national programs that regularly work in training pilots of different nationalities in integrated fashion. This means that say... Finland might be under constant enemy attack and yet its new pilots are safe being trained by experienced instructors not only from Finland but from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, France or whatever somewhere in the great lakes region of Canada safe from enemy action even in an enviroment that mirrors that of Finalnd, and all it took was setting up a Command, give it a few offices and transfer some personnel and support equipment from the already massive multi-national training establishment that has also been enlarged and put into high gear due to wartime training requirements.
@@Alvi410 During the Cold War, many NATO pilots trained in the US initially because there areas of the US that have more good days for flying than anywhere in Europe, plus the training bases were well away from the front if things got hot.
I doubt any NATO nation apart from the USAF can conduct a SEAD mission. To conduct SEAD you need Stealth (F-35), jamming aircraft, Anti radiation missiles, GMLRS mssiles to clear the border areas of SAM defences and radars and a lot of ELINT aircraft.
@@Alvi410 That's. Won't. Binary? You mean bombers and air to air? Yes, the Russian Air Force has limitations. Now, there's a lot of corruption in Russia and that might have had a role in the fact that the pilots couldn't be trained properly (not enough flight hours) or the fact they lacked pilots.
@@zaco-km3su sounds like cold war era copium. Vietnam and Korea shown otherwise. so do the Houthis which "muh superior training" can't take out even a bit
These are exactly the issues we were taught and discussed when I was a NATO fighter pilot in the UK in the early 1980s. I really appreciate the specificity from Chris, Billy and Justin in this video, applying the lessons learned over the past two years. Very well done.
A few minutes into the video I was thinking "it would be interesting to hear Justin Bronk's opinion on this too". And then a wild Justin Bronk appears :D
Comparing pilots of the NATO and Russian Air Forces is like comparing cadets with aces. Some have seen nothing but computer simulations and the fight against medieval tribes, while others fly 300 combat missions a year and leave on a heavy fighter-bomber from three Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. Guys, meeting one-on-one with a Russian pilot is the last thing you need.
I'm convinced Justin Bronk chose that specific chair, position of the bed and the color of the bed sheet and set it all up so that it subtly reminds you of the cockpit of a fighter jet. Kinda like that cockpit VR/wallpaper background he used in past interviews. (Where it looked like he was giving the interview right out of a fighter jet's cockpit). The cheeky bugger 😉
Tbh I'm more interested in mental gymnastics and quantum math tankies in comments would use to justify order of magnitude difference in flight hours not being a clear answer to this.
@@haobinlu "I have no idea what I'm talking about." Is what you're saying in short, huh? 😂😂😂 You're proud that you beat Americans that have been handicapped, restricted and blindfolded in their operations CONGRATS YOU NIMROD
Not sure what you're pointing at with "their results speaks for itself" US and UK media paints a picture of a incompetent bumbling Russian military, and anyone naïve to buy into active war propaganda could of course take that as "results speaking for itself" however last I checked Russia is winning, and winning against all of NATO's combined aid and tens of billions of dollars in cash aid. On the one hand the media portrays Russia as the Soviet Union 1970 as some massive superpower losing to "little" (larger than Germany or France) Ukraine, but simultaneously the media said Russia is tiny weak and has a smaller GDP than Spain. That's the problem when the propaganda contradicts itself, so which is it? Is Russia a massive superpower? Or is a shadow of the former USSR with a tiny GDP, if it's the latter it's actually performing extremely well against NATO's combined aid and Ukraine's substantial military.
State with GDP of Italy fights state with millions of conscripts and supporting industrial base and funding of USA and most of Europe. I think they are doing ok
To be fair, we are arming Ukraine with our tech and Ukraine in the air cant fight russia, they have ran out of planes. Whats dropping russian planes is SAMs. To which even American planes fall to SAMs, they did in both iraq wars. The war is just a proxy war America vs Russia using ukrainian people as fodder to which their president and our politicians/weapons companies are cashing out. There was nothing noble with this war, we pretty much instigated it.
@@NotASeriousMoose Yes, the west doesn't' have a industrial base anymore, are you for real? Germany, the US, have deindustrialized since the 1970s, more and more factories have closed, industry moved to Asia. The native US economy these days is all tech and financial speculation, banking, very little industry. The fact Russia alone, a nation with a small GDP and a shadow of the former Soviet Union, is producing more Artillery shells per year than all of NATO combined speaks for itself.
I wonder if the Chinese are still using the same Soviet ground control model and the Soviet type of pilot training. What I'd read was they had a huge wake up call a few years back, when they did a joint exercise with Gripens from the Thai Air Force and got their rear ends handed to them on a platter. Since then they've conducted a major revamp of their doctrine, tactics and training.
Yep that’s what I’d been reading/viewing. To be fair to the Chinese they are excellent at copying great inventions and doing it on the cheap. I don’t think for a moment that Russia could take on let alone sustain an air war against NATO but… China mmm I’m not so sure
@@pete2895 Don't think the Chinese are there - yet. I think the US Navy or Air Force would still make mincemeat out of them in an engagement, but they won't be a pushover and will be a lot better at ACM and air engagements in general than if they'd continued to rely on the Russian model.
@@pete2895 I think the issue is experience. They can buy, beg and steal all the technology and expertise in the world but nothing can replace the on-the-ground/in-the-air experience that hundreds and thousands of soldiers, airmen and sailors can bring home with them. China is getting some limited experience in Africa, but they seem awfully gunshy about getting involved in anything remotely serious that would lend their military practical combat experience. That said, never underestimate the quiet kid in class.
The cold war era soviet trained/equipped Egyptian air force got stomped on by the western trained/equipped Israeli air force to where they had pakistani air force pilots come over to adjust their doctrine and training. You'd think the russians would have already learned that their system was not a match for the western one. Guess not.
I suspect they don't change because, in personalist authoritarian systems, the primary purpose of the military is to keep the dictator in power. Other considerations, even military effectiveness, are secondary. From the perspective of trying to maintain Putin's power, a highly centralized system in which he can reward personal loyalty makes more sense than a system that empowers individuals to think and act for themselves. After all, independent thought might lead to questioning Putin's fitness as national leader.
@@steelytemplarimagine saying that beneath a mention of Israel. Entire country made om foreign conquered soil. By means of 1930's Zionism-inspired terror. Oh, sure, forgot. D. Dimokrasi. Of ever shrinking Palestine.
that's not a good example the soviet Airforce training was usually completely thrown out the window soviet jet fighters were designed as short range interceptors to cancel out any chances of Nato air superiority in central or western Europe they were designed for short engagements in wp airspace or over the front lines the Egyptians attempted to use them in a fighter role and flow into idf airspace Migs especially early mig-21 were designed to use sams and ground based radars to there advantage and there high speeds to outmovuver enemy aircraft before contact occurred. In this regard during the war of attrition soviet interceptors had a positive kill rate to idf aircraft and it wasn't until there were lured into idf airspace there poor dog fighting performance of the mig-21 and soviet training really showed. Early soviet planes like the mig-21 and mig-23 were designed to intercept and shoot down aircraft at the front all the ussr needed to do was contest airspace not win as long as airspace was contested the west ground forces would essentially be on there own and would be easily destroyed by soviet artillery and armored units. the Warsaw pact also manitned a fleet of combat planes that out number the west by at least 5000 combat aircraft.
As someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about, I'd say that what strikes me as the biggest difference between NATO and Russian fighter pilots, is simply the number of flight hours they get in per year. Until Russian pilots are able to get more time in the cockpit, I think that's what's going to hurt them the most, if they were to go up against NATO pilots.
My grandfather flew a MIG 25 for The Soviet Union. He told me that Russian pilots have nerves of steel and very patient, one false move and your dead. That's why the US developed planes that can shoot from hundreds of miles away and hidden by stealth😮
In Georgia, most of the Russian pilots who were shot down were drunk. Also, they never varied their attack routes, and the AA was concentrated along those routes after a while. Russian pilots do not get the 200+ hours that NATO pilots do in training per year, and they do not have the integrated and professional maintenance staffs that are intrinsic to the success of missions.
and yet the drunks managed to "Georgia’s air-defenders suffered heavy equipment losses during the war with Russia. Russian troops captured or destroyed all of Georgia’s large radars, five of its Osa systems, almost all of the Buks and several anti-aircraft guns. After 2008, what was left of Georgia was all but defenseless against enemy aircraft."
You’ve reached 400K by being watchable, non repetitive like SO many channels, bringing experts in to lend gravitas, being articulate and generally likeable and informative. A seemingly obvious recipe that’s so often botched. Bravo 👏
The differing approaches of the West spending considerable time and resources trying to train pilots to be highly adaptable and well-rounded vs the Russian approach of less intensive training supplemented by offloading a large portion of the decisionmaking workload to an external command structure reminds me a bit of some articles I've read talking about impressions each side had when examining captured airframes. If I recall correctly American crews were highly impressed by how rugged, simple, and easily maintainable the MiG-21 was (which I take to mean it was probably much cheaper to keep airworthy), meanwhile Soviet crews were highly impressed with the cockpit ergonomics of the F-5 and with how much of an effect its more carefully designed (and probably far more expensive to develop) aerodynamics had on energy retention in fights against MiGs with superior thrust to weight ratios. Overall it seems like more or less the same influences informing different decisions... On the one side, a wealthy and powerful group expending considerable energy and resources to make their people and aircraft as independently capable as possible. On the other side, a group working to make their equipment and crews as good as they can with the comparatively meager budget they have available and relying on a distributed workload to make up the difference.
MiG 21 had a pretty poor fatigue life and didn't last long. The European NATO nations have invested everything in Fighter aircraft and neglected everything else. In reality NATO airfields will likely be mostly out of action in the first few days and won't be able to run large scale missions. 1 No decent attack helicopters: Eurocopter Tiger is a failure. 2 A pathetic number of professional troops (eg 50.000 or so for UK) and a little more for France and Germany with no conscripts. In a war with Russia half of these men will be dead in the first few months and there will be nothing but ill trained conscripts. 3 No SHORAD defeces. Rapier, Crotal and Roland are gone and retired. Russian Ka-52 were able to fire Vikhr and LMUR missile at Ukrainian tanks from out of range. 4 No long range missiles apart from the medium range SAMP/T which is much shorter ranged than Patriot leaving Europe with no hypersonic defences or to attack the launch aircraft of glide bombs. 5 Neglect of anti micro drone systems 6 Neglect of even MANPADS modernization 7 No national service leaving a tiny cadre of professionals. 8 Pathetically underfunded military in Spain, Portugal. 9 Inadaquet numbers of cruise missiles and almost no SRBM 10 No stealth aircraft possible within 10 years. Its a pretty sad situation.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 well that maybe true, however with how big NATO is and the ensured American response to such an attack, the Russians must be able to “blitz” half of Europe, for which they cannot do, if they can’t even blitz Ukraine in the starting days of their invasion. Dont underestimate the Russians, but we have to be realistic here
Just in the amount of year to year training IN THE COCKPIT is not even fair. Western pilots get a whole lot more and a whole lot more scenario training. The USA made it a point to capture Russian made fighter jets and secretly train against them over Nevada. It's not boasting. But if you take two boxers, and only train one half as much... well... the under-trained ones are going to mostly lose.
I wouldn't take the VKS lightly, but the superiority in training and equpiment is on NATO's side. The VKS cannot even obtain air superiority in Ukraine, let alone the rest of western Europe.
Lightly compared to what? If compared to what they claim they can do, I take them very lightly, laughably even. In a vacuum though, they do possess things few other air forces do. Their equipment is out of date but they did have vast fleets of legacy fighters and they are the only nation besides the US with a big fleet of strategic bombers.
It'd be like the US not being able to control Mexican or Canadian airspace if we went to war with them. Complete embarrassment for 'the 2nd best AF in the world'.
I'm inclined to think there is good reason China is hiring Western pilots to train a new generation of Chinese fighter pilots and reform its missionprocess. China doesn't want to have a 'good enough' air force limited by its aircraft, bureaucracy or pilots. It wants to be the 'best' and it has passed judgement on the Russian way of war.
Another good question would be: How much effort would Russia put towards pilot recovery in the case of a shoot-down? We have the classic case of the US going out of it's way to recover downed pilots compared to Japan, but what about modern Russia?
For that matter, how many Russian pilots would even want to go back there when they could ride out the war in a comfy NATO POW camp. I'm not saying they'd get Taco Tuesdays, but that shouldn't be out of the question if they pony up with some good intel for us 😉
Pilot recovery almost doesn't matter anymore. 1. If you are behind enemy lines, they are extremely hard to recover. Iraq was one of the few exceptions due to the massive uninhabited deserts. In a European scenario, its unlikely you'd get to them before local troops get the pilot. 2. Aircraft are nearly as rare as pilots, and often rarer. Most militaries have more pilots than active aircraft, so it isn't like there is another F22 or F15 waiting for the pilot if they are brought back. 3. The time to make aircraft is measured in multiple years and often a decade. Modern air forces go into battle with what they have and even those in storage probably won't restored, serviced, and brought to the front before any war is likely to be over. 4. It is likely many aircraft will be hit on the ground with long ranged missiles. Thus, you will likely have a pilot surplus fairly quickly. 5. Modern weapons tend not to leave the pilot alive. Unlike movies, S400s and many air-to-air missiles have extremely large fragmented warheads. 6. Pilots who might be recoverable could easily be injured -- the combat itself, ejections, cute/landings, etc. before rescue. I'd say in a modern European war, airframes, runways, and initial precision munition supplies would be the major limiting factor. Both sides would probably need to expend these fairly quickly. It is highly likely that a significant number of aircraft would be lost within the first few days or weeks. NATO would almost certainly slaughter Russia given their numbers, training, vast depth (fighters in France, Germany, UK, etc. are virtually immune to Russian conventional attacks) while Russia is effectively fighting within easy flight (or missile) range of most of European airfields. I'd expect more of the Russian air force to be gone within days.
This is one of the best evaluation videos I've seen on Utube. No AI (Almost Insane) generated creepy voiced, rah rah patriotism, incorrect planes and click bait titles.
What particularly interests me concerning this and numerous other topics, is what systematic and expectational changes NATO/Western nations and their potential adversaries would need to make in the second phase of a peer-peer or near-peer high-intensity conflict. It seems reasonable to assume that, despite superiority in weapons platforms and operators, NATO/Western nations would need to replace losses in such a conflict more rapidly than in any operations they've experienced since 1945. How rapidly could industries respond, how rapidly could remaining pilots train up a new cadre of novice pilots, and what effect would the time constraints of such a conflict have on the doctrines of the potential adversaries? I'd love to see a discussion of this topic.
I don’t see why there would be such high attrition rates. Russia hasn’t demonstrated the capability to do that to the Ukrainian air force. NATO air forces would aggressively attack air defenses and air bases, something that Ukraine is not currently capable of doing with their current aircraft. There would be some need to step up procurement of weapons. Some of those additional production capacities are already being increased.
@@kwonekstrom2138 I basically agree with what you wrote, and I wasn't suggesting that NATO air forces would experience a particularly high rate of attrition. It would, though, seem reasonable to assume that NATO would suffer some degree of attrition during the sort of operations you describe. Low levels of attrition in the course of attaining complete air superiority would not pose a problem if the attainment itself was enough to end such a conflict. However, should the conflict continue after air superiority was gained, unreplaced losses would cause an ongoing degradation of the ability to exploit air superiority. The questions I posed weren't really about NATO vs. Russia, they were more about NATO vs. a high-intensity conflict that lasts for more than two years.
@@andieslandies You specifically mentioned 1945…. maybe you’re unaware which war that was and the attrition rates there. You also use the current Ukraine war as an example. If the air losses of BOTH forces in the current war were combined as “NATO” losses, it is still within (half) the current production of Lockheed Martin’s current rate of 180 aircraft a year. Which is only one manufacturer. China’s total number of J-20 for example is expected to number about 200. Over 1,000 F-35’s has been produced. Less than a wing of SU-57.
@@kwonekstrom2138 Thanks for your reply. I specifically mentioned 1945 as the start of a period because the attrition rates prior to that date are not relevant to the comparisons made in the video we are commenting on; they are also irrelevant to the questions I raised. I did not use the Russo-Ukrainian War as an example of anything. I am not trying to draw any conclusions, take a position on any topic, or disagree with anyone. I was only attempting to describe a topic that I would like to see discussed in the sort of detail that this channel is so good at presenting.
@@andieslandies Okay…. Picking an arbitrary date has no bearing on future attrition rates. The Korean war is AFTER 1945 and we lost close to 3,000 aircraft. For comparison this would be almost all NATO fighters today. There’s absolutely no reason to assume prolonged high attrition rate. This is because air defense is expensive. The Ukraine war is an outlier in that Ukraine doesn’t have standoff capability and Russia is too conservative to risk their aircraft. Air defenses can be easily overwhelmed, since they are expensive, can’t move fast, and cover large areas. The Ukraine war’s lessons are extremely limited because of the lack of air power by both sides. As for China, a prolonged air war there will be mitigated by the south china sea. They import the fuel needed for operations and those ships would be outside the range of their air fields.
The VVK will never embrace the NATO model because of the political system it operates for. Individual responsibility?!! No! Now, I can hear people saying ‘Well the Nazis were totalitarian but Luftwaffe guys were allowed to use the tactical initiative’ Hmm.. really? As doctrine, I would contend they were has hamstrung as the USSR. The Western Allies LEARN. They have to because if they screw up lots of young men and women will die for no discernible reason and their ultimate bosses - the people - will look rather dimly upon that outcome. Great vid (as always) Chris. 👍
I disagree that it was any more totalitarian pilot to pilot. I think on the fighter pilot level they certainly were allowed a great deal of flexibility. Certainly doctrine was negatively affected. I'd argue ingenuity is suppressed that allowance for initiative has little value. Some countries populace don't have initiative for example and are hierarchical- like Japan. Inherently collectivist cultures do also trend towards authoritarianism- even modern germany has the same issues. I think you put the cart before the horse. China doesn't struggle with originality because its authoritarian imho but both a symptom of culture. It's basic order and chaos I suppose- essentially a tamed wild beast will fight fiercer than one subdued from birth.
Confucius really screwed a large fraction of the world's population with his patriarchal, hierarchical social philosophy. And to this day few people recognize that Confucianism is inherently authoritarian; many things he was a wise sage on par with Lao Tzu and Bodhidharma. Daoism and Zen are wonderful traditions which have transformed my life. The analects of Confucius? Not so much.
Never met a fighter pilot who would sit in a sim for a single minute. My wing had a bazillion-dollar sim facility. I was investigating an incident, so I visited the sim to recreate the incident. The technician asked me to sign the logbook. Mine was only the second signature--the first was a VIP tourist. No actual pilots had used the sim in years.
The top-down approach to command and planning is the only approach that is compatible with an authoritarian regime like in Russia or China. Encouraging independence, free thinking and planning capabilities is only feasible in a open democracy where the authorities don't have to fear losing their grip on power (because losing power is an accepted part of the game and likely to happen after the next election anyway).
Russian pilots had their asses handed to them by the Israeli's in the 70's on multiple occasions over the Suez canal in engagements they initiated flying for Egypt. Forget NATO, the Russian doctrine and pilot training model would lead to a strategic defeat in a conflict with Israel.
Russia has already demonstrated in a peer level war that it has massive limitations. The number of sorties per day that the Russians have been able to generate is awful. Low hundreds, if that. The utter rigidity of their command has also been exposed. Flexibility and quick response time have been shown to be utterly axiomatic to winning in this war. With a massive preponderance of resources in the air they have managed stalemate at best. In a NATO war Russia would be the one outnumbered. If stalemate is all they can manage with vastly more resources why should anything substantive besides massive defeat be what they manage when they are the ones with smaller numbers?
NATO is arrogant and also living in the past. Russia not flying high numbers of sorties is a active choice and comes directly from late 1980s Soviet theory. Modern air defenses are extremely capable and not something NATO has *ever* faced in a actual peer conflict. The fools who think a conflict with Russia would be like Yugoslavia 1999 or the first gulf war are incredibly ignorant as to the technological and numerical capability of air defenses involved. The fact is the US and NATO have never faced a concentrated layered modern air defense network of systems like the S-300-S-400. This is exactly why the Soviet doctrine of the late 1980s was to hold air power in reserve and using artillery and cruise missile strikes, air power would be rear guard only until enemy air defenses were ground down. This is exactly what we see Russia doing doctrinally, so it really proves nothing about the capability of the Russian air forces, it only shows the overall strategic choices of the Russian military when facing modern air defense networks. Running SEAD missions against Russian frontlines isn't going to be like a video game, or shooting at a handful of SA2 sites in Iraq/Yugoslavia. I'm not even Pro Russia, I'm a Ukrainian American, but the chest thumping pro NATO braggarts are just as foolish as the pro Russian ones. Too much arrogance and ignorance in equal amounts.
I won’t deny that modern air defenses are much more intimidating than their predecessors. However, fighters and their doctrines have not stoped their evolution. An integrated SAM network is scary- but so is an F-35 with four AARGMs.
@@atomf9143 Yet that F-35 is also detectable, trackable and lockable by modern radar, that's a lesser known little talked about fact of stealth technology. Radar has improved right along with stealth, radar cross sections the size of F-22, F-35, SU-57 are all vulnerable to modern radar and anti aircraft systems. Stealth is great marketing for defense contractors and it's not useless, it provides a massive benefit against aircraft radar systems, so any Gen4 or earlier jet is going to have massive issues fighting against stealth aircraft, but it doesn't provide the benefit you think it does against modern ground based radar. NATO would be in for a rude awakening losing F-35 right along with F-16.
@@-Zevin- do tell: how exactly would these Russian defences cope with multi-axis attacks? How would they cope with having to defend every bit of border airspace from the Caucasus to North Cape? How would they cope with attacks coming in from the Pacific? THAT is what you would face with NATO in a full-blown conventional war. Russia is simply too big to defend everywhere and even if they do have a skin of air defences somewhere round the entire edge all that has to be found is one weak point to punch through that skin. Once that happens NATO assets pour through into the interior of Russia and wreak havoc. Russian air defences have also proven to be singularly ineffective against NATO stand-off strike weapons. Ukraine has struck airfields near Moscow and blown up Russian strategic bombers. NATO can easily do that. Russian air defences would certainly extract a significant toll. To suggest that they can stand up against the most powerful air forces in the world is simply ludicrous given their demonstrated performance in the war so far.
You are simply great at what you do and have interesting guests. No need to feel guilty because you focus on that and forgets all the thank you's and marketing spiel. The viewer are the ones who should thank you instead, so: This video was great and very much appreciated.
A most well explained primer to a topic that is only the surface level of a greater discussion on organizational force structure and doctrine. Things are always more complex.
As an Australian all lve seen is evidence of Russian superiority in a number of areas also this includes Russian pilots who are combat effective as a fighting force, as a posed to Western in milk runs like Afghanistan etc. etc
Nordic Airforce coloration is just going to be Epic! 4 Nations with very similar mindset and very similar goal ops Finish and Swedish joining of NATO is just going to be huge for the North Flank
Arkady Babchenko once likened Russian pilots to trained bears who were taught to ride bicycles, in contrast to Western pilots who often hold multiple STEM degrees.
Just a guess, but I’ll bet that the NATO pilot actually get to fly the hours paid for instead of some Russian General selling off half of the fuel and pocketing the difference..
I saw another documentary that said another problem with Russian aviation training is that their higher ranking pilots (the ones more likely to be on the ground planning, not executing their missions) are the ones who get most of their limited training time whereas NATO focuses more on training the pilots who will be actually executing missions.
The biggest issue for NATO vs Russia, is the time to train new pilots in a conflict. Russia would have a much easier time to train up new pilots, but most likely lose more of them, so as long as they can keep getting new airframes, their capability won't diminish from the low level it has. i.e it will keep consistent. NATO on the other hand requires highly trained pilots, which could take 5 years to train. This is not like getting new spitfire pilots in WW2. So the main issue, which I think Justin eluded to, is NATO needs to train a larger cadre of pilots ready for war, before the war happens. Budgetary increases need to be spent on the forces that take time to train up. So in this order Airforces, Navies (though it is easy to argue that at the current rate, NATO forces have sufficient to battle both Russia and China, depending on how China can actually raise a maritime force in the coming years), armoured forces (tanks), then finally increasing infantry. As Ukraine has shown, you can build foot forces relatively easily compared to all other troops.
In modern war you fight with what you have. RuAF wouldn't last very long at all. All levels of command and control, radars, airfields, and fuel storage/transportation would be under constant assault from H-hour with hundreds of 5th gen air superiority missions a day. Once the airwar is won, no ground force could hold out against thousands of attacks, 90% hitting what they aimed at, per day. Whatever is left gets to face the best equipped and trained ground force in the world.
@@mamba101 No,I didn't. Roughly half of Russia's nukes would work and some of those would get through, it would devastate the US. 98% of the US ones in return would work and Russia would cease to exist.
The entire issue with Russia's model is you take out a level and it cripples the entire operation. Same with Stealth, ground control can't do much if first thing they see SU-35s going down and incoming HARMs.
This is a unique take, and a decent one. Russia can't really imitate most of its roles with other airframes- it has Su-25 and 35 for ground attack, Su-30 for occasional SEAD and escort missions, and Su-35 and MiG-31 for A2A. Oh, and the Su-57 for parades. If its ground-pounders are knocked out or turned away, Russia doesn't have alternatives.
Anyone who's been paying attention to how Ukraine's been knocking russian planes out of the sky lately is probably pretty aware of how one sided it would be in a NATO vs russia air war.
Not so long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the entire Russian frontline fighter regiment was decorated because all of its pilots completed 60 hours in the air in a year.
Well, everything in the video might be true, but NATO air forces never fought against enemy with similar opposing force. And, as Billie Flynn said, operations usually don't go exactly as planned. Russians are well known for their asymmetric countermeasures, so in open conflict between NATO and Russian federation the result might be very surprising for NATO. Or the Russian army fails terribly. Let's hope we will never have an opportunity to find out this in real life 😉
You know what's so interesting to me, when you're seeing these footage of pilots prepping for flight or interacting with the ground crew, the NATO pilots just seem so much more relaxed and confident. Like they have a laid back swagger. Meanwhile, the Russians always look concerned or disinterested. Maybe it's just because I'm more used to western mannerisms, but I just feel like the Russians don't have the confidence that comes with having more flight-hours and competent, volunteer ground crews.
Oh Chris, 40 min vid, this particular one I know the answer... but not from NATO vs Russia, this one I learnt when Iraq went vs Iran. Wins the pilot who has the longer reaching missile, that locks the faster and avoids ECM the better. As for the first sentence, Iraqi pilots would see Iranian jets appear, and knowing they were F-14's armed with the Earth-to-Pluto-ranged Phoenix missile, they immediately turned around. So: Know what you got, what they got, and what to do in consequence. That's all. You rock Chris. Btw tell Bernhard not to look so serious in you guys' books' pics 🙂.
I think it would be a lot like desert storm... Token air resistance from Russia but quickly overwhelmed by huge technical advantages and sheer numbers.
During Korean war, Soviet pilots shot down many American planes and generally proved to be way better. In 1992. Russian pilots flying Su-27UBs visited American airbase and conducted simulated dogfights with F-15s. According to them, American pilots were beaten heavily and were left in amazement, some even angry about the performance of the Flanker… In the early 2000s Indian airforce Su-30MKIs trashed American F-15s and F-16s… In 2015. Indian Sukhois also trashed British Typhoons… A year earlier, Malaysian Su-30MKM pilots (trained by both Russian and Indian pilots) faced American F-22, F-18 Super Hornet and F-15C. According to all Malaysian pilots (btw some of them were ex F-18D and MiG-29N pilots), they could handle any American plane, especially in close combat, including F-22s…
well, NATO nations tend to be first world countries with airframes that twice as long as Russian airframes and get way more flying hours and a ton of professional instruction... Russia, China, most middle east countries have 'paper' militaries. they look good on paper and to edgy teens, but that's it. source: my uncle was a flight instructor for the RCAF and RAF, flying f.3's (flew F.3 in the first gulf war, combat) and the CF-18, he then flew alpha jets for a contract company that did advanced training called 'top ace'.
Is it fare to say, that whenever NATO equipment and doctrine has faced off against the Russian?Soviet equivalent, NATO has overwhelmingly shown itself to be superior? Fascinating video, I do hope that once Ukraine becomes properly equipped it can put this to the test and show it to be true, or better still, NATO air forces become directly involved.
No It's not fair at all. I'm not pro-z but I'm a realist. 1 The west has no SHORAD to of sufficient range to defend its Armour against long range attacks by Russian Attack helicopters firing LMUR and Vihr missiles. 2 Russian V370 DIRCM is jamming Stinger missiles because no action was taken to upgrade the mechanical scan rosette seeker in 2016. 3 Western Europe has pathetic SAM defenses. CAMM/Sky Sabre and IRIS/T are short-medium range missiles that are developments of fighter missiles. SAMP/T is not widely deployed and limited and few nations operate late model Patriot PAC-3 MSE. 4 Russian navy has some amazing nuclear aircraft. 5 We may mock Kinzhal but nothing other than Patriot can stop it. We dod have some good weapons but tiny numbers that are generally out of mass production.
@@williamzk9083 this was about air forces, not air defences. Historically NATO equipment and doctrine has come out on top when they have faced each other.
I'm going to point out a kind of big deal, the narrator keeps saying how NATO pilots have 120-180 flight hours. The minimum annual standard for NATO is 180. USA is averaging 121 flight hours annually. UK was averaging about 81 but they raised it up to 120. Germany had to report to NATO that almost 50% of it's pilots fail to meet flight hour goals due to their aircraft not being maintained and ready for service. Yet they don't actually disclose how much flight time the other 50% received. The French are hitting 147 hours, Hungary is hitting 30-40 hours (no joke) Slovak is doing about 100 hours... I think you get the point... I don't know where the 120-180 hour average came from, but 180 is the minimum standard and nobody is hitting it in NATO, not even the USA. So lets look at the other aspects discussed in this video. NATO has geared itself towards the Jack of All Trades, master of none philosophy with it's multirole aircraft. With the F-35 roll out, the concept of dog fighting is significantly reduced in importance and that's okay because it fits the new doctrine that's being envisioned. Aircraft like the F-35 are going to be more like a conductor of a symphony with all the instruments being played by drones under the direction of the F-35. So even if the Russian pilot has more skill in dog fighting, they'll find themselves in a 12 on 1 dogfight which doesn't end well for the Russian pilot.
and they wont even know they are there,,,, sim hours are also to be considered continued use of aircraft degrades what you have most squadrons will know where they areand whats needed
russia lost an AWACS -- the first time in history that an AWACS had ever been shot down -- and they tried to blame the kill on "friendly fire". For some reason I doubt that NATO fighter pilots would be hearing Vordt's theme song in a dogfight against Putin's partially armed heavier-than-air flying machines.
@@nobodyherepal3292 that on-the-ground one was... weird. the drone footage left a lot to the imagination, and while it may have been damaged it likely wasn't to a severe extent. Unless there's some footage I missed, and if I sound crazy please link something below.
So how is the recruitment and retention of NATO pilots. Are Russian planes such as SU 57 easy to maintain, and are becoming more efficient on fuel. Mach 2. NATO forces have always had air superiority in the US conflicts, but still had losses, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. So facing more superior anti aircraft missiles systems, and then add in 5th gen fighters jets. What is the life span of a NATO pilot
Hi Kris! Thank you for this video. It's very interesting toppic. You can analyse two interesting cases: Polish Air Force and Romanian Air Force. Poland made very good job and huge effort to swith training and mentality from soviet to NATO philosophy. PolAF built entire F-16 system influding organisation, tactics, logistics, language, navigation aids, command, communication and training. All polish F-16 squadrons are certificated by NATO (TACEVAL). Polish training system is certificated by USAF and it's equal to IFF training on T-38. Poland has own national ability to train pilot from zero to combat ready status accirding NATO standards domestically. Poland also has MRO alibity to maintain F-16 including depot level service and repair. They make it even for USAFE F-16s. On the other hand we have Romanian Air Force which bought second hand F-16 but they are sill flying and fighting like on MiG-21s.
"Grumble, grumble, grumble ... I suck at this marketing spiel. I shouldn't have to do it, anyway. You're all grownups! Don't you know it's you all's responsibility? C'mon! Human up! Slackers..." 😆
Russia has taken tiny air losses in Ukraine, compare the same 2 year period to numerous 2 year stretches in the Vietnam war and see how many aircraft the US lost. Meanwhile Ukraine has no functional airforce. This tells us more about a active strategic choice by Russia. Modern air defenses are extremely capable. They aren't "losing" the air war as much as they are not even fighting a air war, they are holding it in reserve, and using artillery in lieu of airstrikes. Why do people think artillery has been so important?
@@-Zevin- the US had air superiorty and dominated from the air == with thousands of sorties per year Russia has NO such superiority and is afraid to strike deep into Ukraine if they can;t win in Ukraine, what would happen against NATO?
@@slamin2095 When has the US faced a modern peer S-300/S-400 network? I'll answer for you it's never. The last time the US faced a even moderately peer air defense network was in Vietnam, remind me how many air losses did the US suffer in Vietnam? This is exactly in line with Soviet 1980s doctrine for a peer conflict, ground the air force and hold them in reserve, only using them for long range cruise missile strikes outside of air defense range, defense, and very limited probing attacks/CAS. This is exactly what we see in Ukraine, Against S-300 and patriot missiles the Russian's simply aren't even trying SEAD missions because they believe it to be too risky and not worth losses, instead relying on artillery and cruise missile strikes, saving their air forces. This is a deliberate strategic choice. So finally I ask again, how many air losses did the USA suffer in Vietnam? I want specifics, I want you to write it here in your reply.
@@-Zevin- Iraq was highly rated - strong regional power Certainly was considered well above the Ukraine AF and Russia is fighting its next door neighbor Vietnam was half a world away, as was Iraq
Another great video. Thank you very much. I appreciate that not only do you explore the aircraft but the doctrine / systems approach that a particular state or institution follows along with financial complications and workarounds, such as 'hubs' as the west tends to do by off setting through out sourcing. If I may introduce an observation that you and your team might be able to explain, the re-imaging of fourth generation fighter, whether it be east or west it appears to go beyond just tweaking and upgrades. Hence, I use the term 'Re-Imagine'. Case in point, the Lockheed Martin's offering to India of the F16, re-imagined into the F21. And yet it's now a fifty year old design.... It would be interesting to see your exploration into this subject. Thanks again for another great video.!!
That would be incorrect. You still need an air force to do tactical and strategic airlift, ISR, and carry out air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. Drones currently are not capable enough to do all of these critical tasks that an air force does to support the war effort.
@mr_beezlebub3985 I'm not saying there's no use for an air force at all, but just not in the way we've been using them for the last 60 years. Their cost just doesn't make sense anymore.
The Battle of Britain is a good example of which is better. The Luftwaffe had the numbers and recent combat experience where their combat tactics were honed. The RAF were on the defensive but had a good defensive set up. The aircaft were roughly equal in overall capabilities. So, on paper the RAF should have lost, but as they got the majority of the strategic breaks and so won the battle. The outcome of the Battle of Britain leads to one conclusion, we can't say whether the NATO or Russian air forces are the better until the bullets start flying.
1. The bullets ARE flying. Russian pilots are fighting in a peer conflict high intensity war. They are failing in that war. The best they can do with overwhelming numbers is a stalemate. That is a massive failure. 2. The bullets are flying. In case you hadn't noticed RAF and USN pilots are currently bombing enemy targets. Now to suggest bombing the Houthi a little bit is anything like dealing with Russia is ludicrous. But equally to suggest current NATO force crews don't have any combat experience is also ludicrous. 3."we can't say whether the NATO or Russian air forces are the better until the bullets start flying" is a patently ridiculous assertion. The bullets are flying and even were they not the assertion would still be ludicrous. Russian methods are doctrinally inferior and have been proven to be so every time a Russian-trained force has come up against a NATO-trained one. The Russian trained forces have lost EVERY time. That includes when Soviet pilots went directly up against American pilots during the Korean War. Now would Russia be able to inflict losses on NATO? Certainly. Dismantling Russian air defences over the front line would be a costly and messy job. It would be completed however. That, of course assumes air attacks by NATO forces would remain just over Ukraine. NATO forces could come in at any point from the Caucasus to the North Cape from over home territory. Add in aircraft carriers and that means the threat axis gets longer in the Arctic and suddenly exists in the Pacific. How does Russia deal with attacks on Vladivostock or Kamchatka by naval strike aircraft? The answer is it can't. It doesn't have the assets. It doesn't have the doctrine. It would lose and lose badly.
@@davidpnewton and in which directions are these bullets flying? In Ukraine they are targeting a nation that until very recently was part of the Warsaw Pact and use senior military leadership will be very familiar with the standard Soviet doctrine (just because the Soviet Union is now a part of history doesn't mean that the Russians have changed their basic tactics). The Houthis are not the Russians - so not a good comparison. So we can say that NATO pilots are getting some on the job training in bomb dropping, they are not getting any on the job training in ACM, which would be useful in a shooting war with the Russians. In the Korean War the Soviet pilots had restrictions put upon them that limited their combat effectiveness. So, again, not a good comparison. In 1939 the RAF had some experience in dealing with tribesmen in various parts of the Empire but ni recent air combat experience. The Germans on the other hand, had recent air combat and bomb dropping experience against some, at the time, fairly capable aircraft. I'm just pointing out that on paper only, you cannot determine which side is better. There are just too many intangible factors as the Russians are learning the hard way in Ukraine, as the Americans did in Vietnam and the British did in Ireland.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 on paper only you CAN make that determination if the gap is big enough. The gap between NATO and Russia is big enough. Russia is a country fighting an enemy without a navy and Russia is losing that naval war badly. Russia is a country fighting an enemy with a considerably smaller and less well-equipped air force and at best Russia has an air war at stalemate. Russia is a country fighting an enemy which began with smaller army forces equipped less well and lost to those forces badly in the opening campaigns. They are still making essentially zero land campaign progress against this enemy and suffering huge casualties in the process. THIS is the country you deludedly assert we cannot tell the quality of air forces of when compared to NATO forces. Why do you make this assertion which is patent nonsense? NATO air forces vastly outnumber Russia. They have vastly better equipment than Russia for the most part. They have pilots with more and better training than Russia. Yet you assert we "cannot determine" which side is better. The Russian air force would be blown out of the sky extremely quickly by NATO forces. The Russian navy would be blown out of the water extremely quickly by NATO forces. Russian air defences would take more time to crack and there would be a considerable cost involved. Nevertheless crack they would. At that point Russian soldiers would start to die by the multiple thousands each day. The Russian Army in Ukraine would quite literally be wiped out. They would all either be dead or captured. THAT is what would happen in a conventional war between NATO and Russia. That is without NATO ground forces getting directly involved. If NATO ground forces come directly into the fight in concert with NATO air power then on quite a few days you would not have thousands of Russian dead per day but tens of thousands. Ask the Iraqis from 1991 about what happens when NATO standard air power gets unleashed on a Russian doctrine army. Remember that although there are now considerably fewer aircraft in NATO air forces than back then that the NATO forces would be fighting from home ground or close thereto and ALL of the aircraft would be dropping precision-guided munitions. Targets per aircraft NOT aircraft per target: a huge increase in lethality.
@@davidpnewton welfare not comparing Ukraine vs Russia BUT NATO vs Russia and yes, we cannot determine which would be better on any grounds but paper strengths. Another example of this was the Falklands War. The UK with only 2 aircraft carriers with fewer than 30 Sea Harriers defeated the much larger and better equipped Argentinian Air Force. It's so sad that you can't get this concept into your jingoistic head.
Chris... you may suck at the marketing, but never change, you are good at what you do. I've supported you through the years, and I'm sure those that would, know what to do.
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I think the Issue is how weak political scenario in EU has become. We civilians are paying the price for a land that Europe Committee cares only for the fertile land in which was part of the economical importance not for the people. We all know that US was poking the Russian Bear behind the EU curtain & just in case you all forgot after COVID.
didn't delete your comment, it was automatically placed in the YT moderation queue
What can we say here, the author of the video, as well as its participants, are dreamers. In reality, the exact opposite is true. Russian pilots, like airplanes, are more competent and resilient. Not a single air unit of NATO countries, including the United States, is capable of such intensive work as Russian pilots, this was proven in Syria. Everything else is your imagination. and Russian pilots can carry out up to 10 combat missions per person per day, this is happening today. And NATO pilots can do this. Absolutely not .And Russian aircraft are more effective and better than the air strikes of NATO countries. This was proven by Sukhoi aircraft, which did not give a single chance of victory in 13 international exercises against such aircraft as the Mirage 2000, Typhoon Eurofighter, F15, F16, F18 and even F22A and F35. everyone lost most of the battles to Su30 aircraft, and to the stripped-down export version
Well NATO can take their time, the other guys are always Russian...
I'm an Aero Engineer. Some years ago I used to volunteer to carry out line work for a major European Airshow. Duties were to help with the general operations of the visiting aircraft. We had a Mig 29 with a fuel leak. It was a relatively minor leak but because it spent some of its time on public display it was decided to fix it once the public had left and have it ready for public display the next day. The Russian ground engineers were busy doing other things so one of the Russian pilots and myself under guidance from the Russian maintenance staff, defuelled the aircraft we fixed the leak and following an inspection from the Russian maintenance engineer we refuelled the aircraft and leaked checked it. Working with this pilot I get the impression he could do most of the operational maintenance himself. In a time of war this level of flexibility would be priceless!
sure
fake news if a russian aircraft has fuel leak, it will most certainly explode due to russian smoking habbits. But very nice propaganda anecdote.
@@gilh3947 lol right. Are those pilots even certified techs? Lol I wouldn't feel very confident flying a plane I fixed myself! If they are, good on them very different doctrines, one is woefully outdated (and mechanical), one is contemporary!
I was being sarcastic@@luciusrex
@@gilh3947 ya I know! I just continued the discussion in case somebody else missed it lol
NATO… no question. They get FAR more flight hours of first hand flight time. Not to mention we have the most realistic flight sims systems.
У меня вопрос к людям которые посмотрели часовой ролик за 3 минуты...
@@Eismeer_forever отсутствие эффективности обрекает вас
@@Eismeer_foreverThis video is for people who don’t already know the answer. 😉
What are you talking about Russian pilots are in the air non stop flying strike missions or shooting down ukranians jets, uavs, or cruise missiles that argument may have worked in the past but not any more. I'm a pilot and my multi engine rating instructor is an f35 pilot he says it's absolute garbage but he said he wishes he was a Russian pilot so he could get that combat experience. The NATO AWACS let the get close enough to let the get to actually dogfighting "ukranian" pilots. Then again the greatest military minds in history are on TH-cam comment sections
Pilo
@@sorryociffer я не буду спорить что сейчас Россия находится в упадке благодаря одному человеку, но я Надеюсь что под этим видео не будет полит срачей и люди просто признают что авиация США лучше, хотя вкс России могла бы держаться на достойном уровне если бы не наша власть!(please translate it)
That's like asking which is better: Grade A-5 Wagyu beef or 3 day old roadkill raccoon.
Uhuh but what are the sides, a decent cole slaw and real fries can go a long way, also what are we drinking. Is the the coon tenderized? What are we drinking?
Obviously Russian Guy in the Comments: But we have MORE roadkill raccoon.
@@swissarmyknight4306 That sums up Russia in its entirety actually.
Literally having a large chunk of the populace living 20-60 years behind everyone else.
@@swissarmyknight4306 Except there is the obvious counter-argument that the US, let alone NATO, enjoys a QUANTITATIVE advantage over Russia in addition to its qualititative advantage.
Lol
"Better Ingredients, Better Pizza" - NATO
Papa Johns sucks now but that analogy holds.
Amazing comment!
And a lot more of those better ingredients for a much bigger better pizza.
Yeah, it's kinda like if you fire the person that founded the company and put someone else in charge that didn't care about the company that it falls apart. Who'd of thunk it?@@Elthenar
Better experience?
For me, the defining moment for RF aviators in their all-in war against Ukraine was when two jets took off simultaneously and one immediately crashed because he turned while flying through his comrade's turbulence. In chess terms, that's losing in four moves.
Do you use the chess parallel as a move to depersonalise the fact that you refer to a dead pilot?
@@Demun1649it's an orc pilot, good riddance.
@@Demun1649 i think you're reading a bit too far into it. chill homie.
though i will say, his analogy sucked. hardly makes any sense.
@@Demun1649 typical triggered vatnik.
@@Demun1649 Maybe dont be a member of an invading army
100 F22. 1,000 F35. The tactical battle would be a bloodbath for the Russians flying "here I am!" generation aircraft.
And now you got B-21s entering low rate production. Not to mention the South Koreans, Japanese, Turkish, and Brits developing low Radar return platforms
@@fdangleshadang-a-lang7149 Plus the Japanese F-3 will be co-developed with Northrop Grumman and use an American software package. If they can build enough jets, Japan will be one of the most powerful Airforce on Earth
You have no way of proving that statement
@@ГеоргийМурзичyes, we do.
The west has over 1,000 stealth aircraft to Russia (maybe) 12, and a combined airforce 3x that of Russia’s.
It’s not rocket science to figure out who’s going to have the advantage in the air.
@@nobodyherepal3292 how many countries would send their pilots to the fight? What makes NATO strong is the amount of countries. And that's what makes this union weak either since there's no unity among them even today
There’s a key difference not mentioned: One of these has rampant corruption at every level of the force, and the other knows to not drink the booze being used as coolant in their aircraft.
The other knows not to drink it, but doesn't even have it because U.S./Nato aircraft does not use alcohol for refrigerant or hydraulic fluid. Not to mention U.S. pilots get 10X the training, and the heir aircraft and weapons are easily 20 years ahead of the bleeding edge of Russian technology. A couple old F-15 charlies could outfight a squadron of SU-37s.
Yeah and every time there were dogfight competitions americans lost and got salty
I remember reading an operational evaluation report on Russian pilots ( long since declassified) where Russian pilots were spreading alcohol based shoe polish on one side of bread, letting the alcohol soak thru and nibbling the bread on the other side. never saw any reports of vodka spilling or reaching the ground.
kdrapertrucker,
Cool Story.
@@kdrapertrucker Su-37, the prototype? Didn't know there was a squadron of those. Edit, though rather an addition: also, thinking you're easily 20 years ahead of the assumed opponent's bleeding edge is how you lose. It's one of the highest achievable levels of ignorance and complacency. Respect your assumed opponent's capabilities to not be caught off guard.
Excellent informed discussion, great expert panel, and awesome footage.
I do my best to give the russians a fair shake... but here there really isn't a contest at all.
It's like Mike Tyson vs 90 year old Grandma.
Try 20 90year old granmas.
@@20chocsadaystill not ending any other way
@@20chocsaday The US/NATO still has a massive quantity advantage, so if you really want it to be 20 grandmas there would be 40 Mike Tysons.
@@johnbean9797 The US and NATO have tiny armies. The Russian belief is most of these professionals will be dead in the first few moths leaving nothing but Conscripts. In the case of Europe there are few conscripts in most countries. We are in peril.
@@williamzk9083 "The US and NATO have tiny armies. " WRONG! The US has the largest military in the world and by a wide margin. The US have 11 super carriers and China doesn't even have 1 let alone 11. The Russians used to have a carrier but they broke it. The US has more nuclear subs tnan the rest of the world combined and the US has more fighters than Russia and China combined. Trump tried to warn Europeans but they just laughed. Europe maybe in peril but the US is just fine.
Better pilots, better aircraft, better weapons, better support. More and better. It's not even fair to compare first world and third world militaries.
Russia is second world
Russia is literally 3rd world.
As in Russia &aligned nations are 3rd world, NATO is 1st, & neutral second?
@@NM-wd7kx You have 2nd and 3rd world reversed. Soviet aligned countries were defined as second world. Hence why African countries have been described as third world.
@@whitephosphorus15 ah, gotcha.
I'll be honest, I'd grown up with 'third world' just being demeaning, so associating it with russia kinda made sense
@@NM-wd7kx because you are from ameritardia shithole and had 3rd world education unlike in developed and civilised 1st world countries.
Well done, Chris, great content. Your channel preserves the attention it gets.
Ground crews are integral to any air campaign. Short term conscripts vs professional noncommissioned technicians can make the difference in aircraft availability. Would like to see that comparison in a future video.
Sweden developed a system were a small crew of concripts and supervisors do maintenance on gripen
@@petervautmans199 Sweden doesn't maintain anywhere near the ops tempo the United States does, and could not attempt to with their current logistical and maintenance structures. The requirements on USAF and USN MX teams is something you won't find anywhere else, and while there isn't another country out there that can get a wing flying, returned, repaired, refueled, and rearmed as fast as we can, the effect on our maintenance personnel is pretty grim with very low retainability after one term.
You simply cannot train a group of people to do that or give them the necessary experience and leadership for those requirements on the timescales conscript armies operate on. One to two years just won't do it.
@@pxatm Finland has pretty much the system as Sweden does, even more conscripts even, and we train it a lot in high intensity environments, for example see the videos about dispersal in Finnish Defence Forces TH-cam channel. Of course it requires the population that is doing the conscription to have a high educational standard, but at the same time the conscription makes it easy, as you also get the best and brightest of each generation to go into the forces and pitch in their abilities. Or at this point more their ability to learn and master something quickly, then improve it and then pass it on back to the institution when they give feedback and training regimes are improved
@@Migog5 I think that the Finnish and Swedish forces are very impressive and I greatly appreciate our Northern partners, but I've been on bases that have more aircraft than the entire Finnish Air Force and, obviously, far less maintenance personnel.
The United States has maintained surge ops tempo for years and that is quite simply not something you can train for in eleven months. American MX cadre have years of experience in training, years on the line, and decades of experience in their supervisors and leadership. Outright, there isn't another country in the world capable of our ops rate and if you wanted to get there you really can't do it through conscription.
This isn't a point against our partner countries because they don't need that level of constant performance and the sheer expense of it makes it absurd for anyone that doesn't have constant demands for air power on every continent, every day.
Keep focusing on what works for your team and keep up the good work, much love.
Most technical jobs like aircraft ground crews are not actually conscripts. They are professionals. You cannot teach a conscript to do that job in the amount of time they have available. Same with air defense system operators, they are all professionals
It feels like Russia's airforce is fairly binary in their capabilities. They have a finite capacity to conduct mission types with any degree of competency. NATO airforces are much more of a continuum. With attrition, Russia will perform fewer and fewer missions of any given type while NATO will still be able to do about the same number of missions but with ever decreasing skill.
Thats the fun part. The skill of NATO pilots probably wont be decreasing that much to be a substantial factor. Overall the knowledge base for NATO would be incredibly wide as your average NATO multi role fighter pilot is versed in air to air, air to ground, SEAD, Strike Planning and coordination and so on... In addition NATO has already many multi-national programs that regularly work in training pilots of different nationalities in integrated fashion. This means that say... Finland might be under constant enemy attack and yet its new pilots are safe being trained by experienced instructors not only from Finland but from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, France or whatever somewhere in the great lakes region of Canada safe from enemy action even in an enviroment that mirrors that of Finalnd, and all it took was setting up a Command, give it a few offices and transfer some personnel and support equipment from the already massive multi-national training establishment that has also been enlarged and put into high gear due to wartime training requirements.
@@Alvi410 During the Cold War, many NATO pilots trained in the US initially because there areas of the US that have more good days for flying than anywhere in Europe, plus the training bases were well away from the front if things got hot.
I doubt any NATO nation apart from the USAF can conduct a SEAD mission. To conduct SEAD you need Stealth (F-35), jamming aircraft, Anti radiation missiles, GMLRS mssiles to clear the border areas of SAM defences and radars and a lot of ELINT aircraft.
@@Alvi410
That's. Won't. Binary? You mean bombers and air to air? Yes, the Russian Air Force has limitations. Now, there's a lot of corruption in Russia and that might have had a role in the fact that the pilots couldn't be trained properly (not enough flight hours) or the fact they lacked pilots.
@@zaco-km3su sounds like cold war era copium. Vietnam and Korea shown otherwise. so do the Houthis which "muh superior training" can't take out even a bit
These are exactly the issues we were taught and discussed when I was a NATO fighter pilot in the UK in the early 1980s. I really appreciate the specificity from Chris, Billy and Justin in this video, applying the lessons learned over the past two years. Very well done.
A few minutes into the video I was thinking "it would be interesting to hear Justin Bronk's opinion on this too". And then a wild Justin Bronk appears :D
Oh no it escaped.
Comparing pilots of the NATO and Russian Air Forces is like comparing cadets with aces. Some have seen nothing but computer simulations and the fight against medieval tribes, while others fly 300 combat missions a year and leave on a heavy fighter-bomber from three Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. Guys, meeting one-on-one with a Russian pilot is the last thing you need.
I'm convinced Justin Bronk chose that specific chair, position of the bed and the color of the bed sheet and set it all up so that it subtly reminds you of the cockpit of a fighter jet. Kinda like that cockpit VR/wallpaper background he used in past interviews. (Where it looked like he was giving the interview right out of a fighter jet's cockpit). The cheeky bugger 😉
Tbh I'm more interested in mental gymnastics and quantum math tankies in comments would use to justify order of magnitude difference in flight hours not being a clear answer to this.
The answer should be clear: corruption.
Yeah and every time there were dogfight competitions americans lost and got salty. Cope
@@haobinlu "I have no idea what I'm talking about."
Is what you're saying in short, huh? 😂😂😂
You're proud that you beat Americans that have been handicapped, restricted and blindfolded in their operations CONGRATS YOU NIMROD
Oop, Beckon and they will come.
100 hours a year versus 120 of the innocent States of America is "an order of magnitude". Interesting. A newspeak?
The only thing to add is the performance of the russian airforce in Ukraine and their armed forces overall. Their results speaks for itself.
Not sure what you're pointing at with "their results speaks for itself" US and UK media paints a picture of a incompetent bumbling Russian military, and anyone naïve to buy into active war propaganda could of course take that as "results speaking for itself" however last I checked Russia is winning, and winning against all of NATO's combined aid and tens of billions of dollars in cash aid. On the one hand the media portrays Russia as the Soviet Union 1970 as some massive superpower losing to "little" (larger than Germany or France) Ukraine, but simultaneously the media said Russia is tiny weak and has a smaller GDP than Spain. That's the problem when the propaganda contradicts itself, so which is it? Is Russia a massive superpower? Or is a shadow of the former USSR with a tiny GDP, if it's the latter it's actually performing extremely well against NATO's combined aid and Ukraine's substantial military.
State with GDP of Italy fights state with millions of conscripts and supporting industrial base and funding of USA and most of Europe. I think they are doing ok
To be fair, we are arming Ukraine with our tech and Ukraine in the air cant fight russia, they have ran out of planes.
Whats dropping russian planes is SAMs. To which even American planes fall to SAMs, they did in both iraq wars. The war is just a proxy war America vs Russia using ukrainian people as fodder to which their president and our politicians/weapons companies are cashing out.
There was nothing noble with this war, we pretty much instigated it.
@@ksztyrixHahah you think Russia is fighting against the industrial base of the west?! Are you for real?! 😂
@@NotASeriousMoose Yes, the west doesn't' have a industrial base anymore, are you for real? Germany, the US, have deindustrialized since the 1970s, more and more factories have closed, industry moved to Asia. The native US economy these days is all tech and financial speculation, banking, very little industry. The fact Russia alone, a nation with a small GDP and a shadow of the former Soviet Union, is producing more Artillery shells per year than all of NATO combined speaks for itself.
Love that you got Latvia in there with the AN2
o7
Wait...Latvia has an air force?!@@MilitaryAviationHistory
I wonder if the Chinese are still using the same Soviet ground control model and the Soviet type of pilot training. What I'd read was they had a huge wake up call a few years back, when they did a joint exercise with Gripens from the Thai Air Force and got their rear ends handed to them on a platter. Since then they've conducted a major revamp of their doctrine, tactics and training.
Yep that’s what I’d been reading/viewing. To be fair to the Chinese they are excellent at copying great inventions and doing it on the cheap. I don’t think for a moment that Russia could take on let alone sustain an air war against NATO but… China mmm I’m not so sure
@@pete2895 Don't think the Chinese are there - yet. I think the US Navy or Air Force would still make mincemeat out of them in an engagement, but they won't be a pushover and will be a lot better at ACM and air engagements in general than if they'd continued to rely on the Russian model.
@@pete2895 I think the issue is experience. They can buy, beg and steal all the technology and expertise in the world but nothing can replace the on-the-ground/in-the-air experience that hundreds and thousands of soldiers, airmen and sailors can bring home with them.
China is getting some limited experience in Africa, but they seem awfully gunshy about getting involved in anything remotely serious that would lend their military practical combat experience.
That said, never underestimate the quiet kid in class.
@@YetAnotherHeretic Don't underestimate the quiet kid, but don't always assume he's dangerous.
The cold war era soviet trained/equipped Egyptian air force got stomped on by the western trained/equipped Israeli air force to where they had pakistani air force pilots come over to adjust their doctrine and training. You'd think the russians would have already learned that their system was not a match for the western one. Guess not.
I suspect they don't change because, in personalist authoritarian systems, the primary purpose of the military is to keep the dictator in power. Other considerations, even military effectiveness, are secondary.
From the perspective of trying to maintain Putin's power, a highly centralized system in which he can reward personal loyalty makes more sense than a system that empowers individuals to think and act for themselves. After all, independent thought might lead to questioning Putin's fitness as national leader.
@@steelytemplarimagine saying that beneath a mention of Israel. Entire country made om foreign conquered soil. By means of 1930's Zionism-inspired terror. Oh, sure, forgot. D. Dimokrasi. Of ever shrinking Palestine.
that's not a good example the soviet Airforce training was usually completely thrown out the window soviet jet fighters were designed as short range interceptors to cancel out any chances of Nato air superiority in central or western Europe they were designed for short engagements in wp airspace or over the front lines the Egyptians attempted to use them in a fighter role and flow into idf airspace Migs especially early mig-21 were designed to use sams and ground based radars to there advantage and there high speeds to outmovuver enemy aircraft before contact occurred. In this regard during the war of attrition soviet interceptors had a positive kill rate to idf aircraft and it wasn't until there were lured into idf airspace there poor dog fighting performance of the mig-21 and soviet training really showed.
Early soviet planes like the mig-21 and mig-23 were designed to intercept and shoot down aircraft at the front all the ussr needed to do was contest airspace not win as long as airspace was contested the west ground forces would essentially be on there own and would be easily destroyed by soviet artillery and armored units. the Warsaw pact also manitned a fleet of combat planes that out number the west by at least 5000 combat aircraft.
As someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about, I'd say that what strikes me as the biggest difference between NATO and Russian fighter pilots, is simply the number of flight hours they get in per year. Until Russian pilots are able to get more time in the cockpit, I think that's what's going to hurt them the most, if they were to go up against NATO pilots.
Also, NATO don't use wood screws in their planes - google russian plane wood screw and you'll see what I mean.
My grandfather flew a MIG 25 for The Soviet Union. He told me that Russian pilots have nerves of steel and very patient, one false move and your dead. That's why the US developed planes that can shoot from hundreds of miles away and hidden by stealth😮
In Georgia, most of the Russian pilots who were shot down were drunk. Also, they never varied their attack routes, and the AA was concentrated along those routes after a while.
Russian pilots do not get the 200+ hours that NATO pilots do in training per year, and they do not have the integrated and professional maintenance staffs that are intrinsic to the success of missions.
and yet the drunks managed to "Georgia’s air-defenders suffered heavy equipment losses during the war with Russia. Russian troops captured or destroyed all of Georgia’s large radars, five of its Osa systems, almost all of the Buks and several anti-aircraft guns. After 2008, what was left of Georgia was all but defenseless against enemy aircraft."
Let us also make it clear that 1 NATO fighter pilot training hour >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 1 Russian fighter pilot training hour.
Why’d you stop there?
You’ve reached 400K by being watchable, non repetitive like SO many channels, bringing experts in to lend gravitas, being articulate and generally likeable and informative. A seemingly obvious recipe that’s so often botched. Bravo 👏
The differing approaches of the West spending considerable time and resources trying to train pilots to be highly adaptable and well-rounded vs the Russian approach of less intensive training supplemented by offloading a large portion of the decisionmaking workload to an external command structure reminds me a bit of some articles I've read talking about impressions each side had when examining captured airframes. If I recall correctly American crews were highly impressed by how rugged, simple, and easily maintainable the MiG-21 was (which I take to mean it was probably much cheaper to keep airworthy), meanwhile Soviet crews were highly impressed with the cockpit ergonomics of the F-5 and with how much of an effect its more carefully designed (and probably far more expensive to develop) aerodynamics had on energy retention in fights against MiGs with superior thrust to weight ratios. Overall it seems like more or less the same influences informing different decisions... On the one side, a wealthy and powerful group expending considerable energy and resources to make their people and aircraft as independently capable as possible. On the other side, a group working to make their equipment and crews as good as they can with the comparatively meager budget they have available and relying on a distributed workload to make up the difference.
MiG 21 had a pretty poor fatigue life and didn't last long.
The European NATO nations have invested everything in Fighter aircraft and neglected everything else. In reality NATO airfields will likely be mostly out of action in the first few days and won't be able to run large scale missions.
1 No decent attack helicopters: Eurocopter Tiger is a failure.
2 A pathetic number of professional troops (eg 50.000 or so for UK) and a little more for France and Germany with no conscripts. In a war with Russia half of these men will be dead in the first few months and there will be nothing but ill trained conscripts.
3 No SHORAD defeces. Rapier, Crotal and Roland are gone and retired. Russian Ka-52 were able to fire Vikhr and LMUR missile at Ukrainian tanks from out of range.
4 No long range missiles apart from the medium range SAMP/T which is much shorter ranged than Patriot leaving Europe with no hypersonic defences or to attack the launch aircraft of glide bombs.
5 Neglect of anti micro drone systems
6 Neglect of even MANPADS modernization
7 No national service leaving a tiny cadre of professionals.
8 Pathetically underfunded military in Spain, Portugal.
9 Inadaquet numbers of cruise missiles and almost no SRBM
10 No stealth aircraft possible within 10 years.
Its a pretty sad situation.
@@williamzk9083 i am sensing that this comment is throwing out completely false info
@@dirty_daaaann8619Unfortunately there are a few nuggets of truth here and there.For example : the AH part is true,the Tiger sucks.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 well that maybe true, however with how big NATO is and the ensured American response to such an attack, the Russians must be able to “blitz” half of Europe, for which they cannot do, if they can’t even blitz Ukraine in the starting days of their invasion. Dont underestimate the Russians, but we have to be realistic here
@@dirty_daaaann8619How'd you figure that out?
Only those who have never fought argue about who won and who lost - Bao Ninh
As a fighter pilot, we never underestimate anybody, because that could be a deadly mistake!
Just in the amount of year to year training IN THE COCKPIT is not even fair. Western pilots get a whole lot more and a whole lot more scenario training. The USA made it a point to capture Russian made fighter jets and secretly train against them over Nevada. It's not boasting. But if you take two boxers, and only train one half as much... well... the under-trained ones are going to mostly lose.
That assumes that both boxers are equally strong.
I wouldn't take the VKS lightly, but the superiority in training and equpiment is on NATO's side. The VKS cannot even obtain air superiority in Ukraine, let alone the rest of western Europe.
Yes, it's that pesky Soviet-era AD.
Lightly compared to what? If compared to what they claim they can do, I take them very lightly, laughably even. In a vacuum though, they do possess things few other air forces do. Their equipment is out of date but they did have vast fleets of legacy fighters and they are the only nation besides the US with a big fleet of strategic bombers.
The VKS is known for lacking pilots. They said they needed about 1000 more pilots in 2022 or 2021.
It'd be like the US not being able to control Mexican or Canadian airspace if we went to war with them. Complete embarrassment for 'the 2nd best AF in the world'.
@@Elthenar Which would be lost within a couple of weeks against the US AF alone, much less all of NATO.
Excellent Presentation You covered a lot of info quit logically and how it works great job.
Always great content and information on this channel! PS - love that bit at the end - lol!
I enjoyed this immensely. It was a very good idea to make the comparisons.
I'm inclined to think there is good reason China is hiring Western pilots to train a new generation of Chinese fighter pilots and reform its missionprocess. China doesn't want to have a 'good enough' air force limited by its aircraft, bureaucracy or pilots. It wants to be the 'best' and it has passed judgement on the Russian way of war.
Beautiful and informative presentation. Thank you.
Another good question would be: How much effort would Russia put towards pilot recovery in the case of a shoot-down? We have the classic case of the US going out of it's way to recover downed pilots compared to Japan, but what about modern Russia?
For that matter, how many Russian pilots would even want to go back there when they could ride out the war in a comfy NATO POW camp.
I'm not saying they'd get Taco Tuesdays, but that shouldn't be out of the question if they pony up with some good intel for us 😉
Compared to Japan?
@@Gridlocked OP means during WW2.
@@steelytemplar But why go that far back when there are also plenty of recent examples?
Pilot recovery almost doesn't matter anymore.
1. If you are behind enemy lines, they are extremely hard to recover. Iraq was one of the few exceptions due to the massive uninhabited deserts. In a European scenario, its unlikely you'd get to them before local troops get the pilot.
2. Aircraft are nearly as rare as pilots, and often rarer. Most militaries have more pilots than active aircraft, so it isn't like there is another F22 or F15 waiting for the pilot if they are brought back.
3. The time to make aircraft is measured in multiple years and often a decade. Modern air forces go into battle with what they have and even those in storage probably won't restored, serviced, and brought to the front before any war is likely to be over.
4. It is likely many aircraft will be hit on the ground with long ranged missiles. Thus, you will likely have a pilot surplus fairly quickly.
5. Modern weapons tend not to leave the pilot alive. Unlike movies, S400s and many air-to-air missiles have extremely large fragmented warheads.
6. Pilots who might be recoverable could easily be injured -- the combat itself, ejections, cute/landings, etc. before rescue.
I'd say in a modern European war, airframes, runways, and initial precision munition supplies would be the major limiting factor. Both sides would probably need to expend these fairly quickly. It is highly likely that a significant number of aircraft would be lost within the first few days or weeks. NATO would almost certainly slaughter Russia given their numbers, training, vast depth (fighters in France, Germany, UK, etc. are virtually immune to Russian conventional attacks) while Russia is effectively fighting within easy flight (or missile) range of most of European airfields. I'd expect more of the Russian air force to be gone within days.
Outstanding overview. Thank you.
Since the captions don't match the sound, I'm going to have to watch this twice.
This is one of the best evaluation videos I've seen on Utube. No AI (Almost Insane) generated creepy voiced, rah rah patriotism, incorrect planes and click bait titles.
What particularly interests me concerning this and numerous other topics, is what systematic and expectational changes NATO/Western nations and their potential adversaries would need to make in the second phase of a peer-peer or near-peer high-intensity conflict. It seems reasonable to assume that, despite superiority in weapons platforms and operators, NATO/Western nations would need to replace losses in such a conflict more rapidly than in any operations they've experienced since 1945. How rapidly could industries respond, how rapidly could remaining pilots train up a new cadre of novice pilots, and what effect would the time constraints of such a conflict have on the doctrines of the potential adversaries?
I'd love to see a discussion of this topic.
I don’t see why there would be such high attrition rates. Russia hasn’t demonstrated the capability to do that to the Ukrainian air force.
NATO air forces would aggressively attack air defenses and air bases, something that Ukraine is not currently capable of doing with their current aircraft.
There would be some need to step up procurement of weapons. Some of those additional production capacities are already being increased.
@@kwonekstrom2138 I basically agree with what you wrote, and I wasn't suggesting that NATO air forces would experience a particularly high rate of attrition. It would, though, seem reasonable to assume that NATO would suffer some degree of attrition during the sort of operations you describe.
Low levels of attrition in the course of attaining complete air superiority would not pose a problem if the attainment itself was enough to end such a conflict. However, should the conflict continue after air superiority was gained, unreplaced losses would cause an ongoing degradation of the ability to exploit air superiority.
The questions I posed weren't really about NATO vs. Russia, they were more about NATO vs. a high-intensity conflict that lasts for more than two years.
@@andieslandies You specifically mentioned 1945…. maybe you’re unaware which war that was and the attrition rates there. You also use the current Ukraine war as an example.
If the air losses of BOTH forces in the current war were combined as “NATO” losses, it is still within (half) the current production of Lockheed Martin’s current rate of 180 aircraft a year. Which is only one manufacturer.
China’s total number of J-20 for example is expected to number about 200. Over 1,000 F-35’s has been produced. Less than a wing of SU-57.
@@kwonekstrom2138 Thanks for your reply. I specifically mentioned 1945 as the start of a period because the attrition rates prior to that date are not relevant to the comparisons made in the video we are commenting on; they are also irrelevant to the questions I raised.
I did not use the Russo-Ukrainian War as an example of anything. I am not trying to draw any conclusions, take a position on any topic, or disagree with anyone. I was only attempting to describe a topic that I would like to see discussed in the sort of detail that this channel is so good at presenting.
@@andieslandies Okay…. Picking an arbitrary date has no bearing on future attrition rates. The Korean war is AFTER 1945 and we lost close to 3,000 aircraft. For comparison this would be almost all NATO fighters today.
There’s absolutely no reason to assume prolonged high attrition rate. This is because air defense is expensive. The Ukraine war is an outlier in that Ukraine doesn’t have standoff capability and Russia is too conservative to risk their aircraft.
Air defenses can be easily overwhelmed, since they are expensive, can’t move fast, and cover large areas. The Ukraine war’s lessons are extremely limited because of the lack of air power by both sides.
As for China, a prolonged air war there will be mitigated by the south china sea. They import the fuel needed for operations and those ships would be outside the range of their air fields.
If it’s an airshow: Russian Pilots
If it’s literally anything else: NATO Pilots
The Su-57 howl at airshows is sick tbh.
The VVK will never embrace the NATO model because of the political system it operates for.
Individual responsibility?!! No! Now, I can hear people saying ‘Well the Nazis were totalitarian but Luftwaffe guys were allowed to use the tactical initiative’
Hmm.. really? As doctrine, I would contend they were has hamstrung as the USSR.
The Western Allies LEARN.
They have to because if they screw up lots of young men and women will die for no discernible reason and their ultimate bosses - the people - will look rather dimly upon that outcome.
Great vid (as always) Chris. 👍
I disagree that it was any more totalitarian pilot to pilot. I think on the fighter pilot level they certainly were allowed a great deal of flexibility. Certainly doctrine was negatively affected.
I'd argue ingenuity is suppressed that allowance for initiative has little value. Some countries populace don't have initiative for example and are hierarchical- like Japan. Inherently collectivist cultures do also trend towards authoritarianism- even modern germany has the same issues.
I think you put the cart before the horse. China doesn't struggle with originality because its authoritarian imho but both a symptom of culture.
It's basic order and chaos I suppose- essentially a tamed wild beast will fight fiercer than one subdued from birth.
Confucius really screwed a large fraction of the world's population with his patriarchal, hierarchical social philosophy. And to this day few people recognize that Confucianism is inherently authoritarian; many things he was a wise sage on par with Lao Tzu and Bodhidharma. Daoism and Zen are wonderful traditions which have transformed my life. The analects of Confucius? Not so much.
Never met a fighter pilot who would sit in a sim for a single minute. My wing had a bazillion-dollar sim facility. I was investigating an incident, so I visited the sim to recreate the incident. The technician asked me to sign the logbook. Mine was only the second signature--the first was a VIP tourist. No actual pilots had used the sim in years.
Thank You, love from New Zealand!
Better Equipment, Better Training, Better Staff... USAF
The top-down approach to command and planning is the only approach that is compatible with an authoritarian regime like in Russia or China. Encouraging independence, free thinking and planning capabilities is only feasible in a open democracy where the authorities don't have to fear losing their grip on power (because losing power is an accepted part of the game and likely to happen after the next election anyway).
Russian pilots had their asses handed to them by the Israeli's in the 70's on multiple occasions over the Suez canal in engagements they initiated flying for Egypt. Forget NATO, the Russian doctrine and pilot training model would lead to a strategic defeat in a conflict with Israel.
Chris, fantastic piece, thank you ❤layered
great summary - to underestimate your enemy is the biggest mistake.
Russia has already demonstrated in a peer level war that it has massive limitations. The number of sorties per day that the Russians have been able to generate is awful. Low hundreds, if that. The utter rigidity of their command has also been exposed. Flexibility and quick response time have been shown to be utterly axiomatic to winning in this war. With a massive preponderance of resources in the air they have managed stalemate at best.
In a NATO war Russia would be the one outnumbered. If stalemate is all they can manage with vastly more resources why should anything substantive besides massive defeat be what they manage when they are the ones with smaller numbers?
They might learn a bit..
NATO is arrogant and also living in the past. Russia not flying high numbers of sorties is a active choice and comes directly from late 1980s Soviet theory. Modern air defenses are extremely capable and not something NATO has *ever* faced in a actual peer conflict. The fools who think a conflict with Russia would be like Yugoslavia 1999 or the first gulf war are incredibly ignorant as to the technological and numerical capability of air defenses involved. The fact is the US and NATO have never faced a concentrated layered modern air defense network of systems like the S-300-S-400. This is exactly why the Soviet doctrine of the late 1980s was to hold air power in reserve and using artillery and cruise missile strikes, air power would be rear guard only until enemy air defenses were ground down. This is exactly what we see Russia doing doctrinally, so it really proves nothing about the capability of the Russian air forces, it only shows the overall strategic choices of the Russian military when facing modern air defense networks. Running SEAD missions against Russian frontlines isn't going to be like a video game, or shooting at a handful of SA2 sites in Iraq/Yugoslavia.
I'm not even Pro Russia, I'm a Ukrainian American, but the chest thumping pro NATO braggarts are just as foolish as the pro Russian ones. Too much arrogance and ignorance in equal amounts.
I won’t deny that modern air defenses are much more intimidating than their predecessors.
However, fighters and their doctrines have not stoped their evolution. An integrated SAM network is scary- but so is an F-35 with four AARGMs.
@@atomf9143 Yet that F-35 is also detectable, trackable and lockable by modern radar, that's a lesser known little talked about fact of stealth technology. Radar has improved right along with stealth, radar cross sections the size of F-22, F-35, SU-57 are all vulnerable to modern radar and anti aircraft systems. Stealth is great marketing for defense contractors and it's not useless, it provides a massive benefit against aircraft radar systems, so any Gen4 or earlier jet is going to have massive issues fighting against stealth aircraft, but it doesn't provide the benefit you think it does against modern ground based radar. NATO would be in for a rude awakening losing F-35 right along with F-16.
@@-Zevin- do tell: how exactly would these Russian defences cope with multi-axis attacks? How would they cope with having to defend every bit of border airspace from the Caucasus to North Cape? How would they cope with attacks coming in from the Pacific? THAT is what you would face with NATO in a full-blown conventional war.
Russia is simply too big to defend everywhere and even if they do have a skin of air defences somewhere round the entire edge all that has to be found is one weak point to punch through that skin. Once that happens NATO assets pour through into the interior of Russia and wreak havoc.
Russian air defences have also proven to be singularly ineffective against NATO stand-off strike weapons. Ukraine has struck airfields near Moscow and blown up Russian strategic bombers. NATO can easily do that.
Russian air defences would certainly extract a significant toll. To suggest that they can stand up against the most powerful air forces in the world is simply ludicrous given their demonstrated performance in the war so far.
Good episode. Thoughtful. Straightforward. Well researched. (And hilarious "anti-marketing" bit at the end!) Danke.
Great commentary!
Thanks!
You are simply great at what you do and have interesting guests. No need to feel guilty because you focus on that and forgets all the thank you's and marketing spiel. The viewer are the ones who should thank you instead, so: This video was great and very much appreciated.
After the SR-71, I've always thought the Flanker was the next sexiest aircraft.
While the flanker family does look quite nice. My love for cold war US naval aviation means that I'll always love the F4, F14, F/A-18 more.
A most well explained primer to a topic that is only the surface level of a greater discussion on organizational force structure and doctrine. Things are always more complex.
Excellent as always. Well researched and organised and fair to both sides. Rare on the interweb. Pip pip
As an Australian all lve seen is evidence of Russian superiority in a number of areas also this includes Russian pilots who are combat effective as a fighting force, as a posed to Western in milk runs like Afghanistan etc. etc
Nordic Airforce coloration is just going to be Epic! 4 Nations with very similar mindset and very similar goal ops Finish and Swedish joining of NATO is just going to be huge for the North Flank
Superior equipment, superior training.. this isn’t even a debate
the russian pilots can define what a woman is so imma have to side with them lol
Arkady Babchenko once likened Russian pilots to trained bears who were taught to ride bicycles, in contrast to Western pilots who often hold multiple STEM degrees.
Are you ready to believe some Russophobe Journalist? Babchenko is an ordinary journalist, not related to aviation, how can he be trusted? ?
That "its too much of keep up or drop" is actually problem in MANY places. And not only among military. Very good point.
Excellent breakdown. New sub. And you're right, self promotion sucks, that's why there are people who make a living promoting other people's channels.
Just a guess, but I’ll bet that the NATO pilot actually get to fly the hours paid for instead of some Russian General selling off half of the fuel and pocketing the difference..
NATO hasn't thrown away our best pilots in a special military operation. Pretty much a no brainier
During the first 10sec I was about to write :"Dumb question, all you have to do is listen to Dr Justin Bronk for 2min"
I guess we will 😂
This is how you fish for Russian Trolls.
You don't fish for trolls, you look under the fucking bridges. Omfg.
@@ReichLife as if we care what a wehraboo thinks
@@yomama629 Said a weeb. Way to prove that guy correct.
😂😂😂😂 i like ya- just fishing 🎣 throwin out that bait 😂😂
@@AndrzejBak-ty7fs imagine equating liking anime to being a fan of the Nazis
I saw another documentary that said another problem with Russian aviation training is that their higher ranking pilots (the ones more likely to be on the ground planning, not executing their missions) are the ones who get most of their limited training time whereas NATO focuses more on training the pilots who will be actually executing missions.
The biggest issue for NATO vs Russia, is the time to train new pilots in a conflict. Russia would have a much easier time to train up new pilots, but most likely lose more of them, so as long as they can keep getting new airframes, their capability won't diminish from the low level it has. i.e it will keep consistent. NATO on the other hand requires highly trained pilots, which could take 5 years to train. This is not like getting new spitfire pilots in WW2. So the main issue, which I think Justin eluded to, is NATO needs to train a larger cadre of pilots ready for war, before the war happens. Budgetary increases need to be spent on the forces that take time to train up. So in this order Airforces, Navies (though it is easy to argue that at the current rate, NATO forces have sufficient to battle both Russia and China, depending on how China can actually raise a maritime force in the coming years), armoured forces (tanks), then finally increasing infantry. As Ukraine has shown, you can build foot forces relatively easily compared to all other troops.
A plausible analysis....
Realistically western pilots could receive less training and still be better prepared and trained than russian pilots.
In modern war you fight with what you have. RuAF wouldn't last very long at all. All levels of command and control, radars, airfields, and fuel storage/transportation would be under constant assault from H-hour with hundreds of 5th gen air superiority missions a day. Once the airwar is won, no ground force could hold out against thousands of attacks, 90% hitting what they aimed at, per day. Whatever is left gets to face the best equipped and trained ground force in the world.
@@drawingdead9025Did you just wilfully forget Nukes exist?
@@mamba101 No,I didn't. Roughly half of Russia's nukes would work and some of those would get through, it would devastate the US. 98% of the US ones in return would work and Russia would cease to exist.
Great analysis. Terrific research. Justin Bronk is a brilliant guest.
The entire issue with Russia's model is you take out a level and it cripples the entire operation. Same with Stealth, ground control can't do much if first thing they see SU-35s going down and incoming HARMs.
This is a unique take, and a decent one. Russia can't really imitate most of its roles with other airframes- it has Su-25 and 35 for ground attack, Su-30 for occasional SEAD and escort missions, and Su-35 and MiG-31 for A2A. Oh, and the Su-57 for parades. If its ground-pounders are knocked out or turned away, Russia doesn't have alternatives.
Anyone who's been paying attention to how Ukraine's been knocking russian planes out of the sky lately is probably pretty aware of how one sided it would be in a NATO vs russia air war.
Not so long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the entire Russian frontline fighter regiment was decorated because all of its pilots completed 60 hours in the air in a year.
And who told you about this? Let me guess, CNN?🤣🤣🤣
@@redfortress7777 You could improve at guessing.
@@redfortress7777it’s already know if a Russian pilots can get more then 150 hours he’s lucky. You can find it in Russian doctrine.
@@redfortress7777Russia said this. See Sandbox's review of the Russian air force. He cites his sources.
Always interesting, thank you.
So the title is about a large group of Countries vs One
i guess that already gives you an answer
Well, everything in the video might be true, but NATO air forces never fought against enemy with similar opposing force. And, as Billie Flynn said, operations usually don't go exactly as planned. Russians are well known for their asymmetric countermeasures, so in open conflict between NATO and Russian federation the result might be very surprising for NATO. Or the Russian army fails terribly. Let's hope we will never have an opportunity to find out this in real life 😉
You know what's so interesting to me, when you're seeing these footage of pilots prepping for flight or interacting with the ground crew, the NATO pilots just seem so much more relaxed and confident. Like they have a laid back swagger. Meanwhile, the Russians always look concerned or disinterested. Maybe it's just because I'm more used to western mannerisms, but I just feel like the Russians don't have the confidence that comes with having more flight-hours and competent, volunteer ground crews.
Oh Chris, 40 min vid, this particular one I know the answer... but not from NATO vs Russia, this one I learnt when Iraq went vs Iran.
Wins the pilot who has the longer reaching missile, that locks the faster and avoids ECM the better.
As for the first sentence, Iraqi pilots would see Iranian jets appear, and knowing they were F-14's armed with the Earth-to-Pluto-ranged Phoenix missile, they immediately turned around.
So: Know what you got, what they got, and what to do in consequence. That's all. You rock Chris. Btw tell Bernhard not to look so serious in you guys' books' pics 🙂.
I think it would be a lot like desert storm... Token air resistance from Russia but quickly overwhelmed by huge technical advantages and sheer numbers.
During Korean war, Soviet pilots shot down many American planes and generally proved to be way better.
In 1992. Russian pilots flying Su-27UBs visited American airbase and conducted simulated dogfights with F-15s. According to them, American pilots were beaten heavily and were left in amazement, some even angry about the performance of the Flanker…
In the early 2000s Indian airforce Su-30MKIs trashed American F-15s and F-16s…
In 2015. Indian Sukhois also trashed British Typhoons…
A year earlier, Malaysian Su-30MKM pilots (trained by both Russian and Indian pilots) faced American F-22, F-18 Super Hornet and F-15C. According to all Malaysian pilots (btw some of them were ex F-18D and MiG-29N pilots), they could handle any American plane, especially in close combat, including F-22s…
well, NATO nations tend to be first world countries with airframes that twice as long as Russian airframes and get way more flying hours and a ton of professional instruction... Russia, China, most middle east countries have 'paper' militaries. they look good on paper and to edgy teens, but that's it.
source: my uncle was a flight instructor for the RCAF and RAF, flying f.3's (flew F.3 in the first gulf war, combat) and the CF-18, he then flew alpha jets for a contract company that did advanced training called 'top ace'.
This was a great video. Thank you for sharing.
Is it fare to say, that whenever NATO equipment and doctrine has faced off against the Russian?Soviet equivalent, NATO has overwhelmingly shown itself to be superior? Fascinating video, I do hope that once Ukraine becomes properly equipped it can put this to the test and show it to be true, or better still, NATO air forces become directly involved.
No It's not fair at all. I'm not pro-z but I'm a realist.
1 The west has no SHORAD to of sufficient range to defend its Armour against long range attacks by Russian Attack helicopters firing LMUR and Vihr missiles.
2 Russian V370 DIRCM is jamming Stinger missiles because no action was taken to upgrade the mechanical scan rosette seeker in 2016.
3 Western Europe has pathetic SAM defenses. CAMM/Sky Sabre and IRIS/T are short-medium range missiles that are developments of fighter missiles. SAMP/T is not widely deployed and limited and few nations operate late model Patriot PAC-3 MSE.
4 Russian navy has some amazing nuclear aircraft.
5 We may mock Kinzhal but nothing other than Patriot can stop it.
We dod have some good weapons but tiny numbers that are generally out of mass production.
@@williamzk9083 this was about air forces, not air defences. Historically NATO equipment and doctrine has come out on top when they have faced each other.
@@mandalorion NATO has never fought a war. Some member states of NATO has fought wars against Soviet Client states equipped with 2nd tier weapons.
@@williamzk9083 I said "NATO equipment and doctrine" please don't reply again.
@@williamzk9083With that logic Russia is fighting a former Soviet client state with “2nd tier weapons”.
I'm going to point out a kind of big deal, the narrator keeps saying how NATO pilots have 120-180 flight hours. The minimum annual standard for NATO is 180. USA is averaging 121 flight hours annually. UK was averaging about 81 but they raised it up to 120. Germany had to report to NATO that almost 50% of it's pilots fail to meet flight hour goals due to their aircraft not being maintained and ready for service. Yet they don't actually disclose how much flight time the other 50% received. The French are hitting 147 hours, Hungary is hitting 30-40 hours (no joke) Slovak is doing about 100 hours... I think you get the point... I don't know where the 120-180 hour average came from, but 180 is the minimum standard and nobody is hitting it in NATO, not even the USA.
So lets look at the other aspects discussed in this video. NATO has geared itself towards the Jack of All Trades, master of none philosophy with it's multirole aircraft. With the F-35 roll out, the concept of dog fighting is significantly reduced in importance and that's okay because it fits the new doctrine that's being envisioned. Aircraft like the F-35 are going to be more like a conductor of a symphony with all the instruments being played by drones under the direction of the F-35. So even if the Russian pilot has more skill in dog fighting, they'll find themselves in a 12 on 1 dogfight which doesn't end well for the Russian pilot.
and they wont even know they are there,,,, sim hours are also to be considered
continued use of aircraft degrades what you have
most squadrons will know where they areand whats needed
russia lost an AWACS -- the first time in history that an AWACS had ever been shot down -- and they tried to blame the kill on "friendly fire".
For some reason I doubt that NATO fighter pilots would be hearing Vordt's theme song in a dogfight against Putin's partially armed heavier-than-air flying machines.
Russia is considering future AWACS and sigint missions to carry POW's for 'protection'.
They’ve lost at least 2. One was wrecked on the ground in Belarus by a Ukrainian drone.
@@nobodyherepal3292 that on-the-ground one was... weird. the drone footage left a lot to the imagination, and while it may have been damaged it likely wasn't to a severe extent. Unless there's some footage I missed, and if I sound crazy please link something below.
So how is the recruitment and retention of NATO pilots. Are Russian planes such as SU 57 easy to maintain, and are becoming more efficient on fuel. Mach 2.
NATO forces have always had air superiority in the US conflicts, but still had losses, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan.
So facing more superior anti aircraft missiles systems, and then add in 5th gen fighters jets.
What is the life span of a NATO pilot
Hi Kris! Thank you for this video. It's very interesting toppic.
You can analyse two interesting cases: Polish Air Force and Romanian Air Force.
Poland made very good job and huge effort to swith training and mentality from soviet to NATO philosophy. PolAF built entire F-16 system influding organisation, tactics, logistics, language, navigation aids, command, communication and training.
All polish F-16 squadrons are certificated by NATO (TACEVAL). Polish training system is certificated by USAF and it's equal to IFF training on T-38.
Poland has own national ability to train pilot from zero to combat ready status accirding NATO standards domestically. Poland also has MRO alibity to maintain F-16 including depot level service and repair. They make it even for USAFE F-16s.
On the other hand we have Romanian Air Force which bought second hand F-16 but they are sill flying and fighting like on MiG-21s.
Poland has over double the GPD of Romania.
They aren't a threat if you look at technology but don't underestimate your foe.
NATO has more advanced military equipment and capabilities
"Grumble, grumble, grumble ... I suck at this marketing spiel. I shouldn't have to do it, anyway. You're all grownups! Don't you know it's you all's responsibility? C'mon! Human up! Slackers..."
😆
If Russia cannot win the air war in Ukraine, what chance do they have in a larger war?
a much bigger one sadly...why are soo many noobs in the comment section, should be the bigger question...no offense, but civilians ...are civilians.
Russia has taken tiny air losses in Ukraine, compare the same 2 year period to numerous 2 year stretches in the Vietnam war and see how many aircraft the US lost. Meanwhile Ukraine has no functional airforce. This tells us more about a active strategic choice by Russia. Modern air defenses are extremely capable. They aren't "losing" the air war as much as they are not even fighting a air war, they are holding it in reserve, and using artillery in lieu of airstrikes. Why do people think artillery has been so important?
@@-Zevin- the US had air superiorty and dominated from the air == with thousands of sorties per year
Russia has NO such superiority and is afraid to strike deep into Ukraine
if they can;t win in Ukraine, what would happen against NATO?
@@slamin2095 When has the US faced a modern peer S-300/S-400 network? I'll answer for you it's never. The last time the US faced a even moderately peer air defense network was in Vietnam, remind me how many air losses did the US suffer in Vietnam? This is exactly in line with Soviet 1980s doctrine for a peer conflict, ground the air force and hold them in reserve, only using them for long range cruise missile strikes outside of air defense range, defense, and very limited probing attacks/CAS. This is exactly what we see in Ukraine, Against S-300 and patriot missiles the Russian's simply aren't even trying SEAD missions because they believe it to be too risky and not worth losses, instead relying on artillery and cruise missile strikes, saving their air forces. This is a deliberate strategic choice.
So finally I ask again, how many air losses did the USA suffer in Vietnam? I want specifics, I want you to write it here in your reply.
@@-Zevin- Iraq was highly rated - strong regional power
Certainly was considered well above the Ukraine AF
and Russia is fighting its next door neighbor
Vietnam was half a world away, as was Iraq
Another great video. Thank you very much. I appreciate that not only do you explore the aircraft but the doctrine / systems approach that a particular state or institution follows along with financial complications and workarounds, such as 'hubs' as the west tends to do by off setting through out sourcing.
If I may introduce an observation that you and your team might be able to explain, the re-imaging of fourth generation fighter, whether it be east or west it appears to go beyond just tweaking and upgrades. Hence, I use the term 'Re-Imagine'. Case in point, the Lockheed Martin's offering to India of the F16, re-imagined into the F21. And yet it's now a fifty year old design.... It would be interesting to see your exploration into this subject.
Thanks again for another great video.!!
With drones and cheap SAMs, air forces don't make much sense anymore. They're like the battleship.
That would be incorrect. You still need an air force to do tactical and strategic airlift, ISR, and carry out air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. Drones currently are not capable enough to do all of these critical tasks that an air force does to support the war effort.
@mr_beezlebub3985 I'm not saying there's no use for an air force at all, but just not in the way we've been using them for the last 60 years. Their cost just doesn't make sense anymore.
I'd rather not find out, but thanks for asking.
The Battle of Britain is a good example of which is better. The Luftwaffe had the numbers and recent combat experience where their combat tactics were honed. The RAF were on the defensive but had a good defensive set up. The aircaft were roughly equal in overall capabilities. So, on paper the RAF should have lost, but as they got the majority of the strategic breaks and so won the battle. The outcome of the Battle of Britain leads to one conclusion, we can't say whether the NATO or Russian air forces are the better until the bullets start flying.
Finally someone who isn't just engaging in nationalist wanking one way or the other.
1. The bullets ARE flying. Russian pilots are fighting in a peer conflict high intensity war. They are failing in that war. The best they can do with overwhelming numbers is a stalemate. That is a massive failure.
2. The bullets are flying. In case you hadn't noticed RAF and USN pilots are currently bombing enemy targets. Now to suggest bombing the Houthi a little bit is anything like dealing with Russia is ludicrous. But equally to suggest current NATO force crews don't have any combat experience is also ludicrous.
3."we can't say whether the NATO or Russian air forces are the better until the bullets start flying" is a patently ridiculous assertion. The bullets are flying and even were they not the assertion would still be ludicrous. Russian methods are doctrinally inferior and have been proven to be so every time a Russian-trained force has come up against a NATO-trained one. The Russian trained forces have lost EVERY time. That includes when Soviet pilots went directly up against American pilots during the Korean War.
Now would Russia be able to inflict losses on NATO? Certainly. Dismantling Russian air defences over the front line would be a costly and messy job. It would be completed however. That, of course assumes air attacks by NATO forces would remain just over Ukraine. NATO forces could come in at any point from the Caucasus to the North Cape from over home territory. Add in aircraft carriers and that means the threat axis gets longer in the Arctic and suddenly exists in the Pacific. How does Russia deal with attacks on Vladivostock or Kamchatka by naval strike aircraft?
The answer is it can't. It doesn't have the assets. It doesn't have the doctrine. It would lose and lose badly.
@@davidpnewton and in which directions are these bullets flying? In Ukraine they are targeting a nation that until very recently was part of the Warsaw Pact and use senior military leadership will be very familiar with the standard Soviet doctrine (just because the Soviet Union is now a part of history doesn't mean that the Russians have changed their basic tactics).
The Houthis are not the Russians - so not a good comparison. So we can say that NATO pilots are getting some on the job training in bomb dropping, they are not getting any on the job training in ACM, which would be useful in a shooting war with the Russians.
In the Korean War the Soviet pilots had restrictions put upon them that limited their combat effectiveness. So, again, not a good comparison.
In 1939 the RAF had some experience in dealing with tribesmen in various parts of the Empire but ni recent air combat experience. The Germans on the other hand, had recent air combat and bomb dropping experience against some, at the time, fairly capable aircraft.
I'm just pointing out that on paper only, you cannot determine which side is better. There are just too many intangible factors as the Russians are learning the hard way in Ukraine, as the Americans did in Vietnam and the British did in Ireland.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 on paper only you CAN make that determination if the gap is big enough. The gap between NATO and Russia is big enough.
Russia is a country fighting an enemy without a navy and Russia is losing that naval war badly. Russia is a country fighting an enemy with a considerably smaller and less well-equipped air force and at best Russia has an air war at stalemate. Russia is a country fighting an enemy which began with smaller army forces equipped less well and lost to those forces badly in the opening campaigns. They are still making essentially zero land campaign progress against this enemy and suffering huge casualties in the process.
THIS is the country you deludedly assert we cannot tell the quality of air forces of when compared to NATO forces. Why do you make this assertion which is patent nonsense?
NATO air forces vastly outnumber Russia. They have vastly better equipment than Russia for the most part. They have pilots with more and better training than Russia. Yet you assert we "cannot determine" which side is better.
The Russian air force would be blown out of the sky extremely quickly by NATO forces. The Russian navy would be blown out of the water extremely quickly by NATO forces. Russian air defences would take more time to crack and there would be a considerable cost involved. Nevertheless crack they would. At that point Russian soldiers would start to die by the multiple thousands each day. The Russian Army in Ukraine would quite literally be wiped out. They would all either be dead or captured. THAT is what would happen in a conventional war between NATO and Russia.
That is without NATO ground forces getting directly involved. If NATO ground forces come directly into the fight in concert with NATO air power then on quite a few days you would not have thousands of Russian dead per day but tens of thousands. Ask the Iraqis from 1991 about what happens when NATO standard air power gets unleashed on a Russian doctrine army. Remember that although there are now considerably fewer aircraft in NATO air forces than back then that the NATO forces would be fighting from home ground or close thereto and ALL of the aircraft would be dropping precision-guided munitions. Targets per aircraft NOT aircraft per target: a huge increase in lethality.
@@davidpnewton welfare not comparing Ukraine vs Russia BUT NATO vs Russia and yes, we cannot determine which would be better on any grounds but paper strengths. Another example of this was the Falklands War. The UK with only 2 aircraft carriers with fewer than 30 Sea Harriers defeated the much larger and better equipped Argentinian Air Force.
It's so sad that you can't get this concept into your jingoistic head.
Western equipment need highly maintenance! It would be difficult in war time.
I find modern jet tactical aircraft incredible and unbelievable in what they and their pilots can do.
Chris... you may suck at the marketing, but never change, you are good at what you do. I've supported you through the years, and I'm sure those that would, know what to do.
Very interesting! Thank you