While Russian pilots were managing to support land operations in the south of Ukraine, they were doing so “without decisive operational effect,” the British Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence update on Monday.
To compensate, Russia was sending adapted free-fall bombs into Ukrainian territory. However, these had “yet to demonstrate consistent accuracy,” it added.
“Over the summer, Russian tactical combat aircraft have typically carried out over 100 sorties a day, but these are almost always restricted to operating over Russian-controlled territory due to the threat from Ukrainian air defenses,” the update said.
…
Neither Russia nor Ukraine has been able to gain air superiority in the war so far despite Russia’s vastly larger air force. But a military expert previously told Insider that the “advantage is with defense.”
I’m open to the general idea that maybe it’s hard to put an exact price tag on aircraft in Russia’s specific situation – I mean, maybe nobody is in the market for Russian military aircraft these days or something and if Russia doesn’t intend to use them for something else, maybe you could make some kind of argument that the value is much-lower than one might expect.
But in general, I think that it’s generally pretty hard to argue that a manned fighter jet is a good trade for a surface-to-air-missile.