The Significance of Air Superiority: The Ukraine-Russia War

Abstract：The conduct of the war in Ukraine to date has been a lesson in two distinct parts on the importance of air superiority. The first is the failure of the Russian Air Force to establish air superiority and overwhelm Ukrainian forces to achieve a decisive victory at the start of the conflict. The second part concerns the difficulty of establishing air superiority with insufficient resources and capabilities—a situation the Ukrainian Air Force has lived with for over three years as Ukraine has endured costly attacks on its territory. The lethal air defenses on both sides are denying each air force the ability to penetrate the opposing battlespace—a condition in which no force has control of the air. Unfortunately, without the advantages that air superiority ensures—namely freedom from attack and freedom to attack—this attrition-based conflict will be won by the side with the most warfighting personnel and materiel—Russia.