Six of Russia’s Most Modern Fighters Were Lost in Three Days

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Ukraine reports that six of Russia’s most modern fighters were shotdown over three days.

The Russia-Ukraine war is an intense war of attrition, where both sides are losing a lot of equipment and personnel.

Nextbigfuture has previously reported on the Russian and Ukrainian air force losses.

Russia has now lost about 88 modern fighter planes.

Russia had about 310 more modern fighter planes (SU-30, SU-34 and SU-35) mostly built in the last 20 years. The older SU-27 and MIGs tend to be 25-40 years old. The older planes were used a lot in previous wars. Russian planes can only fly for a few thousand hours before they need new engines and basically need to be almost rebuilt.

Extra flying hours is also costing Russia about 70-100 planes. Michael Bohnert, RAND analyst, calculates Russians have burned through more of the expected life span of their aircraft more quickly than anticipated. Russia will have to rebuild its air force after the war. Newer Russian aircraft are designed for between 3,500 and 4,500 flight hours, with some as high as 6,000.

All of the Soviet-era aircraft were designed to be in the air only 2,000 to 3,500 hours. Even if the Su-24, Su-25, Su-27, MiG-29 are not shotdown, those old planes will be used up. All of the Soviet era tanks are also being destroyed or used until they break.

The Ukrainian side has also lost most of its air force but is getting about 61 F-16s from the US and allies.

Russia is tripling its pre-war military budget. Most of the spending is going into ammunition and tanks for the army. In dollar terms, spending on the Russian army will rise by approximately 2.6 times compared to the pre-war level: from $46 billion to $115–120 billion.

7 thoughts on “Six of Russia’s Most Modern Fighters Were Lost in Three Days”

  1. I am very dubious about ANY claims made by either side. They’re just claims without any evidental backing.

    In wars you will lose equipment. The US lost over 10,000 aircraft in Vietnam. The US admitted to 75 aircraft lost in Gulf War 1 and this was against mostly antiquated air defense systems. Also this was over a period of 1 month!

    • Most of the ten thousand in Vietnam were helicopters and most of them were not due to enemy action. The US lost fourteen aircraft during Operation DESERT STORM.

      • Not according to wiki:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_air_campaign

        75 aircraft ‒ 52 fixed-wing aircraft and 23 helicopters

        Note: As Elon pointed out, Wiki is generally biased towards the “western narrative”. The actual number is likely much higher.

        Having said that, this is case and point as to why you can never trust any claims coming from either side.

        • Because you are counting aircraft in that number that are NOT US! The number I provided is accurate.

          There were dozens of nations in the gulf coalition.

          • This Wikipedia article claims:
            “The Americans lost 28 fixed-wing aircraft and 15 helicopters”

            It is however based on permanently dead link. Do you have better source that could be used there?

  2. The SU25 is the ground support/attack plane supposedly in the class of the A-10 Warthog, the plane built around a cannon, which the pork ghouls wanted to retire in favor of the F35. It kinda makes sense to be losing SU25 since they’re doing ground attack in a theatre with a lot of SAMs. The SU34 would probably be a good plane in its all-weather strike role, but aren’t they using it for ground attack? I’m sure we’d lose A-10s by the drove had we used them without full control of the airspace. We lost a lot of planes in Vietnam – this limited scope war stuff is tough! Doing ground attack with Mach 2 jets is dumb. Obviously, Russia fears NATO because they should target foreign arms shipments to Ukraine with extreme prejudice. Russia should have never pulled back from Kiev in 2022 – this would be over.

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