For anyone interested in a factual look at air defense in the Ukrainian War and the odd situation where both Russia and Ukraine have air defenses so effective against the other sides aircraft that both sides have resorted to flying manned aircraft at very low altitudes where they are vulnerable to MANPADS, Perun put out another of his excellent videos on just this topic the other week.
The short of it is that they both inherited Soviet-era air defense systems that are very effective when not suppressed against non-stealth aircraft and can cover huge areas for aircraft that risk flying at anything but low altitude, and the Soviets also devote immense efforts to low level capable, but by necessity shorter ranged air defense systems. While Russia in theory inherited Soviet-era anti-radiation missiles and SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) tactics, the Soviets never placed anywhere near the kind of emphasis on SEAD that the West in general and the US in particular did. Add to that the general clusterfuck of corruption and ineptitude that the Russian Federation’s military is, and Russia has been unable to even achieve air superiority over a foe that it dramatically outnumbers in terms of combat aircraft even after 8 months. Russian pilots didn’t even in theory get anything close to the number of flight hours that NATO pilots get, and no aircraft squadrons are specifically dedicated to SEAD.
By contrast, the very first thing the US and NATO plan to do in any air war is to carry out heavy, extensive, sustained SEAD to destroy their enemy’s ability to effectively conduct just the sort of air defense that both Ukraine and Russia are putting up. Pilots are trained in SEAD, and entire squadrons and their equipment are dedicated exclusively to the task. Contrary to what our resident comrad thinks, air defenses have long been multi-layered and integrated affairs, Soviet-style ones in particular. The term is IADS, Integrated Air Defense System. Iraq had a Soviet-style IADS back in the 1991 Gulf War, which was the first target of the air war, and we all know how that turned out.
One consequence of this is that the US and NATO haven’t placed anything like the kind of emphasis on surface to air missiles for air defense as the Soviet Union and Russia have, and they are often intended as much for missile defense as for defense against manned aircraft.