| They do have air superiority, it's just not the air superiority we use to see when the US is involved in a war. Air superiority during WW2 meant that your fighter+recon force is dominant in the 3rd dimension. You can have air superiority and suffer more from air interdiction than the enemy (and usually that's how it goes btw, see WW2 and Korea war). Air superiority is needed to be able to send your attack planes in enemy territory overtly, which the russian do. Not much, but they do. Like i said, i took fairly large numbers to explain why the airforce didn't do much (i don't remember the comment but it should be something like 200 outing per day on average, when in the first gulf war, the US managed 800 outing a day on average for 43 days, on a smaller country with better terrain). Now, the real number? I think that of their 800 attack planes, they only have 300 to 400 available, because of what we've seen of their equipment and the rampant corruption. I don't think they have enough mechanics to prepare more than a hundred planes a day originally, and they stupidly lost some their mechanics during the first week of the war (encamped in a Ukrainian airport on the frontline). I think this is the reason whay the outing are so reduced compared to the early days in fact. |