Re: To quote a fictional
It's debateable how much Russia actually uses, or needs Bears, how many were destroyed and what (if any) the strategic or tactical advanatges for Ukraine actually are
Russia uses its Bears pretty heavily. They, and the Backfires, are one of the main vehicles for lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine. They've got other aircraft to do the same job, although the bigger missiles won't fit on the fighter aircraft. Aren't they using old stocks of things like AS-4s (which maybe only the Backfires can carry)? Anyway, some aircraft's got to do it. Everyone's racking-up the airframe hours and maintenance in a war - so you want to spread out the wear-and-tear over the largest fleet you can. Lest chunks of your fleet age out.
Ukraine said they hit 41 aircraft. They're now claiming they destroyed 13. That doesn't seem unreasonable. I read an article yesterday which confirmed 11, with 2 of the airfields not had a cloud-free commercial satellite pass yet. Which makes Ukraine's claims look pretty good - unusual because their claims for aircraft destroyed have tended to way over the top - almost as hyperbolic as Russian claims. Whereas their claims for things like artillery, tanks and APCs have been within 10-20% of the open source figures I've seen - and therefore pretty credible.
One of those confirmed destroyed was an old AWACs plane with a weathered radome and missing engines, and I think one maritime patrol aircraft and a heavy lift transport one. For airframes where the lines are closed, that's still a small win. They're needed for spares.
The bigger win is more likely to be the changes it forces on Russia's operations. Going on the offensive is needed, to make the enemy react to you. For both sides though, doing it on the ground means heavy casualties.
For Ukraine though even destroying 20% of the active Bears is a good - it imposes further costs on Russia, it reduces the active fleet, increases maintenance woes, saps enemy morale, increases their own. Maybe forces Russia to relocate pressure air defence assets away from the front line.
If they hit maritime strike aircraft it annoys Russia, they're possibly the most heavily used of the Bears, and probably the hardest to replace. Even if it benefits us more than Ukraine. All the more reason to give them more weapons. Good return on investment. We should arm Ukraine, because it's the right thing to do. But foreign policy rarely works like that. So we should also do it, because it's in our interests.
But it's still producing more strategic bombers than we are, and has rather more of a head start. Like where's the design for the EUroBomber? Or how many B-1s are the US manufacturing right now,
What's your metric here? Is Russia better than Europe because it might be able to produce bombers? I could counter that Europe is richer, because it doesn't. Also I don't really see the need. But Russia hasn't demonstrated the ablity to produce anything at scale except updates of the Su27 series. I'll believe the Tu160 when I see it - and the Su57 is looking a bit stalled out too - like they need more customers to get the budget to do it, and India weren't interested.
Meanwhile Europe are producing the Gripen, Rafale and Eurofighter, A400M and A330MRTT and the SAAB AWACs aircraft. Russia have theoretical programs for some of those support aircraft, but none producing anything yet. The US can't make more B1s, because they're replacing all of those with B21 stealth bombers - in large numbers. Europe will have a flying demonstrator for the GCAP/Tempest next year or 2027 - which is the large multi-role you'd like - and it'll have stealth and range.
There's no Eurobomber, because nobody wants one. I suspect that Russia really needs tankers, rather than a nuclear long-range strike bomber. But they're short of those.
We don't get to choose whether there's an arms race or not. Russia and China already made that choice for us years ago. We just (in Europe) refused to join in, and decided to rely on the US. Both of which were poor decisions. We invited China into the global economic system - the fact we're falling into a Cold War with China is because the Chinese Communist Party chose to appoint another dictator for life - a lesson we thought they'd learned from Mao. And he wants to conquer Taiwan, and dominate (and sieze territory from) several other neighbours. Our choice is to have a Cold War, or do nothing and lose a hot war. If we're lucky we'll keep the cold one from turning hot. Similary with Russia, given what's happened in Ukraine, you'd have to be stupid to not worry Russia will have a go at the Baltic States, if it thinks we can't defend them. So we should either arm up, or kick them out of NATO and admit we don't care.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
