Quote Originally Posted by poop
They don't seem very sophisticated if they have to get close enough to get shot down to identify their targets.
We surely don't disagree that they have the technical capabilities to identify targets from high altitude? There was apparently a command plane shot down. Was that flying too low? It shouldn't be, it doesn't drop bombs, it's a flying HQ. Such a plane should be at very high altitude, and you would have less valuable aircraft at lower altitude for surveillance and attack.

So it's not that they lack the sophisticated technology, rather it's that they were tactically inept. How easy do you find that to believe? That a Russian colonel makes such a basic tactical error while an English shit talking stoner thinks "wtf"? The Russians understand chess, they basically hung their queen.

It doesn't really add up to me.

The question is whether they could easily scrape together enough operable planes after a year at war with Ukraine getting their asses shot off, concentrate them, and use them effectively.
It shouldn't take longer for aircraft to fly from Ukraine to Moscow than for a convoy to drive it. If this threat is real, then they have no choice but to immediately redeploy resources from Ukraine to Moscow. The capital is a great deal more important than Ukraine.

So far all they've done is send in one or two choppers at a time, get them blown up, then send in another one or two.
Which is clearly ineffective and a tactical blunder. Obviously Russia can do more than this. Any banana republic in the world could muster up a greater force than that.

Also, a lot of their air force is on paper only.
Well the ones active in Ukraine certainly are not, and they had time to respond. This convoy was days away from Moscow when we were hearing about it.

Saying they were exceptionally capable because they managed to kill a lot goat herder "terrorists," seems a bit of an exaggeration.
Well maybe, but that was still proxy war between Russia and the West. Not on the scale we're currently seeing, but Russia have succeeded in keeping Assad in power, to this day.