What next? A look at Russian bombers. Stir crazy.

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Bob Homans piece that I posted earlier answers a significant question. Why hasn't Kyiv been more damaged by cruise missiles? His answer: "… Russia is relying on cruise missiles.  Many, but not all of these, have been destroyed by Ukraine’s air defenses.  Some have caused significant damage."

Presumably the reason I hear more bangs from the area of Brovary and Irpin is that they have fewer missile defenses, among other things.

Another question I had was, where are the bombers? Why isn't Kyiv being bombed? I found an article that addresses the way the Russians used bombing to subdue Grozny in Chechnya and how the example applies to Ukraine.

The situations of Grozny and Kyiv are quite different. Kyiv's population is 10 times as great. Grozny was a part of Russia itself. The insurgents were a local militia of under 10,000 people. They had no air defense. Despite all that, it took from December 1999 to February 2000 crush the Chechens. They only gave up when the entire city had been totally flattened, at a cost of perhaps 100,000 civilian lives.

Russia's bomber fleet is made up of the same equipment that they used in Chechnya a quarter century ago. Russian Air Force has contracted for more modern bombers to be delivered starting in 2023. Is unlikely now that that will happen.

Bomber speed, refueling capability and range don't matter as far as Kyiv is concerned. Let's take a look at what they have in terms of the relevant statistics.  Those factors would seem to be payload, how many tons they can carry, and ceiling, whether or not they are beyond the range of antiaircraft missiles. I include the service date just as a measure of the likelihood that they are obsolete, although modern air forces update their aircraft all the time.

A huge caveat. I compiled this table with information available from the Internet. The inventories, totaling perhaps 250, are prewar. Bob Homans reports that 97 fighters and bombers have been destroyed during the war. No indication of which were bombers.

In every Air Force a significant portion of the inventory is out of service at any given point in time: waiting for spare parts, under repair or whatever.  Russians undoubtedly have far fewer bombers available than are shown in this table. How many is anybody's guess.

At one month into the war, therefore, we have not seen any widespread bombing here in Kyiv. If the Ukrainians have used their high-altitude air defense missiles, I have not read about it. We know that Ukraine possesses Buk antiaircraft missiles because of the controversy about who shot down flight MH17 in 2014.

Since the Russians have not shown restraint in much of anything else, it is unlikely that they are doing so with respect to the use of bombers in Kyiv. The reason they have not been deployed to this point is probably because:

(1)    Their use would be primarily against civilians, as it was in Chechnya, and the level of world outrage would increase severalfold. If that is possible.

(2)    Kyiv is 10 times larger than Grozny, which took two months to flatten.

(3)    Unlike the case in Chechnya, the bombers would encounter antiaircraft missiles and perhaps fighter aircraft attacks.

(4)    The bombers, and especially their electronic countermeasures, may not be up to a confrontation with modern antiaircraft missiles and the NATO provided AWACS that seems to have suppressed the Russian Air Force through the first month of the war.

Getting totally parochial, I would observe that if the Russians do start to bomb Kyiv, they will probably target the more densely populated areas first, where they can do maximum damage.  We would not be the first to be hit. At this point I would have to go with Homans' guess that Putin will not use bombers. But inasmuch as common sense has not played much of a role so far in this war, I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, on the oatmeal front, Marianna crawled on my lap to ask for oatmeal yesterday morning. I let Grandma take her a way to feed her something supposedly healthier. That done, she came right back over to get on my lap again and asked once more for oatmeal. Grandma relented. Marianna had her fill – she still had quite a bit of room – and left contented. Later in the day, as I was eating ice cream, I gave Marianna a couple of tastes from the tip of the spoon. Grandma grimaced but let it pass.

Among the untold stories of this war is how families are coping with their exile in Western Ukraine, Poland and elsewhere. It has to be crowded, uncomfortable and expensive in most cases. We will hear shortly, as Vadim comes back for a couple of days to move his bees and Anna the headmistress comes back to pick up her parents in law to bring them west.

German blogger Eugyppius posted this article yesterday about how the Ukrainian refugees really, really do not want the clot shot. Mine was one of the first comments, to the effect that Ukrainians here certainly don't want them, and I got 103 likes already. The Germans have more common sense than their government.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where even the strong men's nerves are getting a bit frayed, the women keep talking about going someplace else, and the children are getting stir crazy hanging around the house.

Graham