“Contested Airspace” — Russian Air Attack Lacks Su-57 Stealth, Can’t Defeat Ukraine’s Air Defenses

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Many might wonder what the mystery may be behind Russia’s inability to achieve air superiority over Ukraine, given the sheer size and reported sophistication of their Air Force.

Global Firepower reports a massive discrepancy in air power between Russia and Ukraine; Ukraine is reported to operate 69 fighter aircraft, compared with Russia’s 772. Russia is known to operate a sizeable fleet of 4th-generation fighter jets and of course is already producing its 5th-Gen Su-57 stealth fighter. However, the Pentagon still reports that the airspace above Ukraine is “contested.”

“It’s still very contested airspace,” a senior Pentagon official reporters, according to a Pentagon transcript.

Initially, there are several known and widely discussed reasons for this, to include the tenacity with which the Ukrainians are resisting Russian attacks and, perhaps most notably, the success of Ukrainian air defenses. This may be one key reason why senior Pentagon officials say Russian airplanes simply “don’t spend much time in Ukrainian airspace.”

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“They don’t spend much time in Ukrainian airspace. They get as close as they need to get to, to drop, and now that they’re dropping more dumb bombs, they’ve got to get much closer. And then they deliver their payload and they go back. And they go back home into Russia,” the official said.