Hi guys,
Long time lurker, first time poster here. I have been reading these boards since early March and I have to say that this is the single best source on the internet I have found to find out what is actually going on on the ground in Ukraine. I also really respect the way you guys generally keep it civil and the community you have built with things like the laptop for Haiduk. So massive respect to you all from me.
One question I have, if I may. Something I have not seen a lot of discussion of recently is that early in the war the Ukrainians were terrified of the Russian Air Force. There was a lot of pressure to "close the skies" and a lot of debate about how NATO trying to run a no-fly zone / SEAD mission could easily escalate into war. But we have not heard much recently on this front. The Russian Air Force are absent. My question is, why? What turned the tide?
I know the Ukrainians managed to disperse their fighter jets and miraculously are still flying six months later using highways to take off. So that is one threat. And there is the MANPAD threat and those MANPADs are all over Ukraine now. We have the British Starstreak system went in. And we saw in July that the US announced some NASAMS systems (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) that went in.
But is that it? If you guys have time I would be interested in your take on what exactly turned the tide in the air war here. Apologies if this topic was previously addressed in some of the posts on here (it is a challenge to read it all).
Anyway thanks again for all the hours you put in making sense of this conflict to the extent that you can in the midst of the fog of war.
Slava Ukraini!
