We've seen enough T-90s to know that they're not holding them back, they just have a lot less of them than expected. The Armata is still in trials. The Russians did a big restructuring after Chechnya, I believe, and this is their first time fighting a real war with it, so even if it's not incompetence, it's growing pains.
As for the air force, Well, let's do some math. Russia has a lot of border to defend, and they can't afford to completely drop their guard along the Arctic, especially with the heightened nuclear tension these days. Let's be generous and say that Russia pulled 50% of their claimed 1000 operational combat aircraft for operations in Ukraine. Now let's assume that maintenance for the air force has been just as shoddy as it is in the army. The
World Directory of Modern Military Aricraft considers 80% to be an "excellent" standard of readiness, so let's start there, but say that another 5% turn out to be unsafe to fly when somebody actually gives them a real look-over because oh, shit, we actually have to send someone up in it. Now you've gone from 500 planes to 380, and that's before anything has even gotten of the ground to move to the staging zone.On the flight over to the border, let's say that 1% of these aircraft turn out to actually have serious problems, and be grounded upon arrival. Then they conduct training missions while waiting for the Go from on high, and let's assume they come out of that with a pretty good 95% of their aircraft ready and raring to go.
Now we have 357 aircraft conducting operations on D-Day, 36% of the supposed Russian strength. After that, we tack on combat losses. These are going to be impossible to nail down, but there are two big factors that make this look potentially bad for the Russians. Firstly, the Ukrainians' mobile AA systems are still combat effective, if significantly reduced, and with the Russians appearing to run low on guided munitions, any attempt to hit something smaller than a city will require the plane to fly low enough to be attacked by man-portable AA weapons. Once again, let's play it safe and call it 20 aircraft downed, written off, or grounded due to damage. Now of the 337 aircraft that made it this far, how many of them are having the equivalent of sun-baked tire syndrome after the first several days of round-the-clock action? Oh, and by the way, Poland has nearly 100 combat aircraft of their own and nothing better to do with them than go "fuck your NATO, I'm going in".
And that's why the Russian air force isn't showing up a whole lot these days.
