Modern Combat System
In 1991, the multinational forces led by the United States launched the Gulf War against Iraq . After this war, people have realized that the information combat system of sea, land and air trinity is the direction of future military development.
Among them, Air Force As a service that can directly launch "justice from heaven" strikes, its status in the three-dimensional combat system is unquestionable. It can be said that the emergence of the Air Force has transformed the battlefield from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.
Currently, the top three air force powers in the world are the United States, China, and Russia. However, in the previous Russia-Ukraine war, Russia, as the top three air force powers, almost couldn't hold on due to excessive battle losses. What lessons does Russia’s lesson teach China?
Before that, we must first find several important factors that determine the air force's battle losses. The Air Force first entered the battlefield during World War I. The aircraft at that time undertook the tasks of "ground bombing" and "air combat" at the same time. There was no such distinction as bombers and fighters.
People soon discovered that if the aircraft were allowed to perform a single mission and different crews cooperated with each other, would improve the combat efficiency of the soldiers. Therefore, even starting from World War II , the Air Force began to differentiate into bombers, fighters, and transport aircraft. and other different models of troops perform different tasks.
However, although this system has greatly improved combat efficiency, it also has a drawback - the protection capability of a single fighter aircraft is very weak. Therefore, this system must remain stable enough , otherwise, once one link goes wrong, , other fighters in the system will suffer great threats when performing missions. This is also the reason why modern air combat often has an exchange ratio of 0 to dozens.
The difficulties of the Russian Air Force
I have to admit that the performance of the Russian Air Force in the Russo-Ukrainian War is very difficult to be satisfied with . In just four months, the Russian Air Force lost 32 fourth-generation fighters and 43 armed helicopters .
According to estimates by the US military intelligence agency, the Russian Air Force lost about 10% of its air force in the Russo-Ukrainian War. This is undoubtedly a very ugly record for a country that is known as the top three air force in the world.
Why is the war like this? This can actually be seen from the state of the Russian Air Force when it attacks. In a photo of a Russian Air Force sortie, it was discovered that the Su-34, Russia's most advanced fourth-generation aircraft, was carrying untimely ordinary bombs on its mission. This is a very bad sign.
For a fighter aircraft with excellent performance such as the Su-34, only by using the precision-guided weapon can its beyond visual range combat capability be maximized.
So why doesn’t Russia equip precision-guided weapons? You must know that Russia has unique achievements in the field of precision guided weapons. The KAB-250 guided bomb and the X-59MK2 air-to-surface missile are both advanced weapons that can use both satellite guidance and laser guidance. However, they are not suitable for There is only one flaw for the Russian Air Force, and that is that is too expensive .
In fact, this is also a pain point for precision guided weapons. Even the U.S. Tomahawk missile, which has been developed for more than 30 years, costs as much as $1.5 million per missile. However, Russia's national military expenditure is only one-tenth of that of the United States. It is obviously unrealistic to want to use precision-guided weapons as unscrupulously as the Americans do. It can be said that "lack of money" has become the biggest pain point restricting the combat power of the Russian Air Force.
Due to the inability to use precision-guided weapons for beyond-visual-range strikes, Russian pilots can only carry out air strikes against the fierce anti-aircraft firepower of Ukrainian forces. Even though the performance of the Russian Air Force's fighter planes is excellent, "how can you often walk by the river without getting your shoes wet?" The more risks you take, the risk of being shot down will naturally increase.
Enlightenment to Chinese Air Force
From the Russia-Ukraine war, China, as a country that is good at learning lessons from other countries, has also gained many lessons and inspirations about air combat in the new era. The first and most important thing is to ensure that the powerful air force has an equally strong economic foundation. Modern war is actually fought with financial resources and technical strength. The two complement each other and are indispensable.
At this point, China’s advantage is quite obvious. As the second largest economy in the world today, China's military expenditure level is naturally quite abundant. China's military expenditure level is equivalent to 3 to 4 times that of Russia. Relying on the solid economic foundation of , the Chinese Air Force is not only not as stretched as the Russian Air Force, but can also upgrade a large number of old equipment to achieve an upgrade in combat effectiveness.
The second step is to ensure the high-level application of new weapons technology. The purpose of developing weapons is to test them on the battlefield. If the country spends huge sums of money to develop new weapons just for show, what is the point of developing weapons?
Therefore, to determine whether a weapon is excellent, we should not only look at how advanced its performance data is, but also whether the army can bear the consumption of using this weapon.
The last step is to improve the trinity combat system of sea, land and air. Although the paper data of the Russian Air Force are excellent, in actual combat, the cooperation between the Russian Air Force, ground forces, and naval forces is very loose, and it is completely unable to annihilate the enemy's effective forces.
The loose cooperation is because the information exchange platform of the Russian army is very backward, and some officers even use mobile phones to issue combat orders. Therefore, the key to the three-dimensional combat system lies in the efficient and safe information exchange system.
Through the summary of the Russian Air Force’s lessons, I believe that the Chinese Air Force can make more progress in combat thinking based on the above summary, thereby improving the Chinese Air Force’s adaptability on the modern battlefield.
