Ukraine loses air superiority and faces crisis

Russia intensively bombs major cities and infrastructure through joint attack with early warning aircraft, fighter jets, and missiles



Ukraine, which was recently preparing to acquire F-16 fighter jets by sending pilots and operators to European countries, suddenly made an absurd request to the United States. Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the ‘Supreme Rada’, the Ukrainian National Assembly, requested the United States to improve the performance of the F-16 at the end of November. The core of Ukraine’s performance improvement request expressed by Rep. Ustinova is to install an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.

The fighter aircraft that European countries decided to donate to Ukraine is the F-16AM/BM version, an improved version of the F-16 produced in the early 1970s in the mid-1990s. The existing F-16 was an older model with lower performance than the F-16 introduced by the Korean Air Force through the ‘Peace Bridge’ project. European countries succeeded in transforming the old F-16 to a level equivalent to the new KF-16 through extensive performance improvements. Of course, the KF-16 was also the latest model when it was introduced in the late 1990s, but it is now technologically very behind.

US Air Force F-16 fighter jet. [뉴시스]

The reason Ukraine requested the United States to install an AESA radar is because the detection range of the F-16 radar is too short to respond to the long-range air-to-air combat recently used by the Russian military. The F-16AM/BM fighter jet being donated to Ukraine will be equipped with the APG-66(V)2 pulse Doppler radar. It is capable of detecting a target the size of a regular fighter jet, that is, an aircraft with a frontal radar reflection area of ​​about 5 m2, from a distance of 92 km. Among the air-to-air weapons that can be operated in conjunction with this radar, the AIM-120B ‘AMRAAM’ medium-range missile has the longest range. Unlike the latest version, the maximum range is only 75 km. Ukraine is concerned that it will be significantly outgunned in air-to-air combat against the Russian military with fighter jets equipped with outdated radars and weapons. Therefore, they are persuading the United States that the fighter jet needs to be upgraded before being delivered. However, at this point, the likelihood that Ukraine’s demands will be accepted is close to zero. This is because it is a project that requires a huge budget and is difficult for the United States to accept.

Taiwan introduced the F-16A/B fighter jet, which has slightly lower performance than the F-16, in the 1990s. Recently, a project to improve all of these aircraft to the latest V specification was completed. The budget for improving the performance of 141 units was 110 billion Taiwanese dollars (approximately 4.6 trillion won), with a huge amount of money invested at 32.6 billion won per unit. It should be seen that a similar amount of budget is spent on upgrading fighter jets requested by Ukraine. Considering the extreme conflict currently taking place in the U.S. Congress over approval of the budget for military aid to Ukraine, this is a level that the U.S. cannot accept.

As the possibility of F-16 performance improvement becoming abortive grew, Ukraine dispatched a special envoy led by Presidential Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak to Washington. The special envoy also included Supreme Rada Chairman Ruslan Stepanchuk and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who met one after another on December 6 with White House National Security Council adviser Jake Sullivan and US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson. According to local Ukrainian media reports, Director Yermak requested the United States to provide F/A-18 fighter jets. If it is difficult to improve the performance of the F-16, ask for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which the U.S. military has in large quantities, or the retired F/A-18 from the Australian Air Force, which the U.S. private military company has decided to purchase. Australia’s retired F/A-18 is an aircraft with greatly improved performance and has a much longer radar detection range than the F-16.

The reason Ukraine is so obsessed with fighter jets equipped with AESA radar is because the war situation is so desperate. Recently, the Russian military has been making fierce attacks on various parts of Ukraine. The volume of Russian artillery fire increased sharply, and ground attacks using the air force and attack helicopters also increased significantly. In the fierce battle areas of Audiuka, Bachmut, Kutyansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhia, Russia is fiercely bombing Ukrainian military positions using Su-25 attack aircraft. The fact that the Russian military is bombing without much resistance on the front line is proof that the Ukrainian military has almost lost air superiority.

After the Russian military recently attacked large cities and energy infrastructure with suicide drones, the Ukrainian military concentrated its air defense assets on populated areas, power plants, and crude oil storage facilities. As a hole appeared in the field unit’s air defense network, Russia began bombarding the Ukrainian ground forces with air power. Ukraine also tried to respond by dispatching a large number of fighter jets, but ran into an unexpected difficulty. This is the ultra-long-range air-to-air interception tactic that Russia has adopted.

The fighter jets currently operated by the Ukrainian military are the Su-27 and MIG-29, which were manufactured during the former Soviet Union. These fighters are equipped with radars with a shorter range than the F-16 APG-66(V)2. In the case of medium-range air-to-air weapons, the older R-27 Alamo series is also used. The Alamo missile, which has a range of 60 to 80 km, has another critical weakness in addition to its short range. It is a semi-active radar guidance (SARH) method that requires the fighter to maintain aiming until the missile hits. This type of guided missile cannot maintain aim if the mosquito is attacked and makes an evasive maneuver. Even if you try hard to fire a missile at an enemy plane, it flies to the wrong place. Of course, Ukraine is not sitting idle. Ukraine succeeded in improving the Su-27 and MIG-29 radars and increasing the maximum detection range from the existing 70 km to 100 km. However, the maximum range of the missile is only 80 km, and even this does not solve the fundamental problem of the SARH method.

Russian Air Force MIG-31 fighter jet. [뉴시스]

The weapon that the Russian military has recently used to target these weaknesses and neutralize Ukraine’s air force is the A-50U ‘Mainstay’ early warning aircraft. The former Soviet military also had early warning aircraft, but they were not operated organically as a ‘sky command post’ like the US military or NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) military. Early warning aircraft were simply perceived as ‘airborne radars’ to detect enemy bombers or cruise missiles from a distance. This operational concept was also applied to the Russian Air Force. However, recently Russia suddenly began operating early warning aircraft in the same style as the United States or NATO. The A-50U and MIG-31 fighters were linked via data link and deployed to the front line. It is a long-distance aerial combat tactic in which the MIG-31 fires an interceptor missile when an early warning aircraft detects a target from a long distance.

The A-50U can detect fighter-sized aerial targets at a distance of up to 650 km. It is equipped with a high-performance AESA radar and data link system that can simultaneously track more than 60 targets and guide attacks. The Russian Air Force, which did not know how to properly use an early warning aircraft with such excellent performance, underwent a complete transformation. Recently, the Russian Air Force has mounted the R-37 long-range air-to-air missile on the MIG-31 and is operating it jointly with early warning aircraft. When the A-50U floating in Russian airspace detects a Ukrainian fighter jet at a distance of 500 to 600 km, the MIG-31 in its own airspace, which is also safe, rains down long-range air-to-air missiles R-37, which can fly up to 400 km.

The R-37 is a Mach 6 class hypersonic missile that is incomparably faster than ordinary air-to-air missiles. Compared to the speed of the US Sidewinder series at Mach 2.5 and the AMRAAM at Mach 4, this is an incredibly high speed. However, its disadvantage is that it lacks agility, making it difficult to catch rapidly maneuvering fighters. However, this level of performance is powerful enough against the Ukrainian Su-27 or MIG-29, which have poor electronic equipment performance. While the Ukrainian fighter was busy avoiding the R-37, a Russian MIG-31 approached at high speed and closed the distance. If the R-77, an active radar-guided intermediate-range air-to-air missile, is launched from a distance of 100 to 150 km, there is no way for Ukrainian fighter jets to avoid it.

Ukrainian troops are training. [뉴시스]

When Russia began using these tactics, the activities of the Ukrainian Air Force began to decline sharply. The Ukrainian Air Force, which had been performing an average of 10 to 20 sorties (the number of fighter sorties) a day until October, has rapidly disappeared from November. In December, a once-successful air raid mission was featured in the media. Ukrainian fighter jets virtually disappeared from the battlefield. The Ukrainian military, which lost air superiority, began to fall behind the Russian military on almost all fronts starting in late November. Audiuka, a strategically important site that had held out for more than a year and a half, was in danger of falling, and Marinka, which had held fast from the beginning of the war, had already fallen into Russian hands. The Russian military is carrying out a large-scale offensive in Bakhmut, which Ukraine has partially recaptured with enormous force. The bases around Lobotyne and Velika Novosilka, where the Ukrainian army launched an offensive to drive out the Russian army from the southern part of its territory, are also falling one by one.

Air superiority tactics using early warning aircraft, high-performance fighter jets, and ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles are not limited to the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield on the other side of the world. On December 2, the People’s Liberation Army of China announced through the propaganda media ‘Liberation Army Newspaper’ that it is operating several domestically produced fighter jets equipped with ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles PL-17 and long-range air-to-air missiles PL-15. If this claim is true, China has also succeeded in introducing ultra-long-range air-to-air tactics. The PL-17 air-to-air missile is reported to have a range of up to 400 km, and the PL-15 is known to have a range of 200 to 300 km. It has a range that is two to three times longer than the latest AMRAAM fighter jets operated by the Korean military or the U.S. Forces Korea. China has more early warning aircraft than Russia, many of which are deployed at coastal bases facing the west sea of ​​the Korean Peninsula. If the Korean Air Force does not hurry up with countermeasures, it could suffer great damage from China’s ultra-long-range air-to-air interception tactics in an emergency like Ukraine.

The only way to respond to the threat of long-range air-to-air missiles is to create and deploy missiles with longer ranges or to acquire electronic warfare capabilities that can disrupt enemy missiles. Currently, the best option for the Korean military is to introduce electronic warfare aircraft such as the EA-18G Growler or modernize the jamming equipment of each fighter jet. We must closely analyze the background that led to the Ukrainian military losing air superiority and being pushed into crisis to devise measures to preserve the Korean military’s air power in the event of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula.

Source: Donga

Mark

Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.