IGOR GIELOW
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
Russia announced this Wednesday (20) the loss of another unit of the Sukhoi Su-34, a tactical attack aircraft that is one of the biggest technological stars of its Air Force.
The fighter-bomber crashed near its base during training in Voronezh, in south-central European Russia, in an episode that has not yet been explained. The two pilots managed to eject and are fine, according to the Ministry of Defense.
This brings to 21 Su-34s lost since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February last year. Of these, 4 fell in non-combat related accidents, according to the account of the Dutch website specializing in monitoring military losses confirmed by Oryx georeferenced images.
This is equivalent to 18% of the pre-war aircraft fleet, here in the calculation of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), the highest rate among combat models used in the war.
Numerically, only more Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft have been lost, 30 so far, 3 of which in accidents.
In relation to the pre-war Su-25 fleet, it is a high rate of 16%, but here it is a model that entered into operation in the Soviet Union in 1981, with more obsolete technology, although considered a “war horse ” by its operators, due to its high resistance to enemy fire during ground support missions at subsonic speeds.
The supersonic Su-34 came into conflict with the reputation of being a deadly aircraft, a result of its use in Russia and its characteristics. It began to be developed as a larger and more powerful version of the Su-27 family of fighters, known by the code name Flanker in the West, in the throes of the communist empire.
The chaos following the Soviet dissolution led to delays, and the plane only entered service in 2014, with high technology on board. It saw action from the following year onwards in Putin’s intervention to save the dictatorship of ally Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, but its reputation was built without having faced anti-aircraft defenses or opposing fighters.
In total, according to Oryx, the Russians have already lost 91 of 1,172 combat aircraft from their pre-war fleet. This does not consider replacement, which is slow. Data from UAC, the state-owned company that produces Russian fighters and bombers, shows that at least 10 Su-34s were delivered throughout 2022, but it is not known how many of them are operational.
Ukraine, in turn, lost 72 of 124 pre-war planes according to available data, but it is necessary to take into account that there is less public information about the country’s casualties because they occur on its territory. The country has already received an uncertain number of Polish and Slovak MiG-29 fighters, and is fighting with the West to receive the promised American F-16 models.
The first shooting of a Su-34 in Ukraine occurred in the first month of the war, when the Russian Air Force was still operating in several areas of the invaded country. With the failure to conquer Kiev and the reorientation of the war to control eastern and southern Ukraine, Moscow changed its strategy.
To avoid risks to its planes, the focus was on firing long-range missiles from Russian territory. To this end, Tupolev strategic bombers, models Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22, are used. MiG-31K interceptors, in turn, launch the feared Kinjal (dagger) hypersonic missiles, in very limited numbers.
Meanwhile, tactical aviation continued to operate, but was more confined to the battlefronts near the territories occupied by Russia. The Su-25 and Su-34, fewer in number, fly missions every day in these regions, where Russian air defenses are prevalent.
The bulk of the actions that have so far contained Kiev’s counteroffensive in these areas, however, are carried out by Ka-52 and Mi-35 attack helicopters.
Russian military analysts suggest there are economic and strategic implications to Moscow’s decision.
First, cost: a Su-34M, the most recent version of the model, costs no less than around R$250 million per unit. In comparison, the old Su-25, which stopped being produced in 2017, costs perhaps R$50 million per piece.
The other aspect is the fact that Putin is apparently working on a long-term war.
More pessimistic observers say that he needs to save his most sophisticated equipment in view of not only this, but a possible conflict with NATO (Western military alliance) forces, which currently support Kiev without actively participating in the war.
Furthermore, more immediately, long-distance attacks and also with swarms of suicide drones have managed to cause a lot of damage.
According to an assessment by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, Moscow managed to overcome initial difficulties in obtaining more advanced chips for its missiles, due to Western sanctions, and the next winter in the Northern Hemisphere should see a renewed campaign to degrade its neighbor’s energy infrastructure.
The post Putin has already lost almost 20% of the Air Force’s star fleet appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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