On February 24, Russia launched a sudden all-out offensive against Ukraine. While the Russians were rapidly advancing into the interior of Ukraine, the Ukrainian side sent out very dramatic news - a Su-27 fighter of the Ukrainian Air Force was confirmed to have fled to Romania after takeoff.
Judging from the subsequent photos, the Su-27 was loaded with two R-73 short-range air-to-air missiles and six R-27 medium-range air-to-air missiles, and it is clear that the pilot of the aircraft did not take off during ordinary patrol missions or when he was not allowed to flee, but refused to carry out orders and chose to avoid battle after being ordered to take off and survive. This flight, which was absolutely disgraceful, became the most profound impression left by the Ukrainian Air Force on the first day of the war.
In addition, the Ukrainian Air Force was almost inactive after the Russians began to attack. Because the Russian army attacked the main bases of the Ukrainian Air Force such as Sdakovskyv, Odessa, and Vasilikiv at the first time, there is almost no record of the Ukrainian Air Force's aircraft taking off. Ukrainian officials confirmed that a Su-27 was shot down on the evening of the 24th, and other news said that a MiG-29 of the Ukrainian Air Force took off and engaged in an exchange of fire with fighters of the Russian Air Force, and an An-26 transport aircraft crashed outside Kiev, killing 5 people on board.
At present, the only confirmable record of the Ukrainian Air Force is that the Su-24 and Su-25 air strikes against the Russian troops attacking the Antonov machine factory. On the first day of the war, the performance of the Ukrainian Air Force can be evaluated as bad, although there is a huge disparity in the military strength of Russia and Ukraine, and the Russian offensive has rapidly compressed the reaction time of the Ukrainian army, but the main problem should still be in the Ukrainian Air Force itself.
The Ukrainian Air Force, after becoming independent from the Soviet Air Force and the Air Defense Force, has had no "fresh blood" for thirty years, which has led to the Ukrainian Air Force being among the largest in the world in terms of size and technology at the beginning of its establishment, but has now declined into an extremely limited combat force.
According to the statistics of foreign researchers, the combat aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force before the war included 37 MiG-29s, 12 Su-24s, 17 Su-25s and 32 Su-27s, transport aircraft including 22 An-26s, 1 An-70, and 7 Il-76s, trainer aircraft were 47 L-39s, and helicopters were 15 Mi-8s. Among the above-mentioned models, except for the An-70, which is produced and entered service after entering the 21st century, the rest are old models produced in the Soviet era, and so far not only are the technology extremely aging, but also the aircraft is too old, and some aircraft have been overdue.
The more serious problem is that the combat aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force are the products of the Mikoyan Design Bureau (later reorganized into the MiG Group, now integrated into the Russian United Aviation Manufacturing Group) and the Sukhoi Design Bureau (later reorganized into the Sukhoi Aviation-Industrial Technical Consortium, which is now integrated into the Russian United Aviation Manufacturing Group), and there is no production plant for combat aircraft in the country, which makes its maintenance very difficult.
After the 2014 coup d'état in Ukraine, the Ukrainian side lost the technical support of Russia's original factory, and the maintenance of its combat aircraft became more difficult, even if it is optimistic that after eight years of lack of technical support, its proper rate will not reach 50%. It can be said that in the absence of effective maintenance for a long time, it is not easy for the Ukrainian Air Force to have combat aircraft take off in wartime to meet the battle itself, and it is difficult to require it to be able to confront the Russian Air and Space Force, or to carry out the task of attacking the incoming Russian ground forces.
Obviously, even without this Offensive Operation of the Russian Army, the Ukrainian Air Force basically has no effective combat capability. Considering the sophistication of the fourth-generation fighters, it can even be said that in another three or five years the Ukrainian Air Force will face the risk of not having any combat aircraft that can be used, becoming an "existential air force" that can only maintain its activities with trainers and transport aircraft, and the destruction of the Ukrainian Air Force has only accelerated the pace of its decay to some extent - which may seem too cruel to say, but for the Ukrainian government after 2014, The recovery of the losses caused by the previous armed conflicts with the eastern part of Ukraine will be the top priority for the development of military strength, and the mechanized equipment and supplementary personnel training of the army have already consumed most of the military expenditure of this already poor country, and the slow and costly expenditure of changing the air force to new equipment can only be slowed down.
Ukraine was not without efforts to salvage its air combat forces before the war. In 2018, the U.S. Air Force's F-15 fighter jets went to Ukraine for visits and joint training, and the following year the Ukrainian Air Force sent pilots to the United States for F-15 flight training and issued the "Air Force Medium-term Development Concept Plan". According to the "Concept Plan for the Medium-term Development of the Air Force", the Ukrainian Air Force should purchase a squadron of new fighters and complete the supporting personnel training and infrastructure modification by 2025, realize the rearmament of two combat aviation brigades by 2030, and complete the replacement of four combat aviation brigades by 2035, completely replacing the old combat aircraft. At that time, it was widely believed that Ukraine was likely to purchase second-hand F-15 fighter jets to replace active combat aircraft, but then the Ukrainian side did not have any follow-up.
In fact, the Ukrainian plan is far more radical than the purchase of second-hand fighter jets, and can even be said to be somewhat unrealistic. The aircraft included in the development plan of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine include the F-15EX, F-16V, F/A-18E/F, JAS-39E/F, Rafale, and also intends to produce the F-35A jointly with the United States.
The Ukrainian Air Force, on the other hand, has become interested in the relatively inexpensive J-10 and FC-1 because of the limited actual budget. However, Ukraine only intends to pay $8.6 billion for this, and it is uncertain whether this amount of money can achieve the cost of at least 100 fighters and supporting projects at a time when the price of combat aircraft is rising. What's more, Ukraine can't even pay this amount of money - when France marketed "Rafale" to Ukraine, the Ukrainian side said that it could only pay a down payment of 15% of the total procurement cost, and this kind of business that clearly intended to "hit the white strip" could be done strangely.
So after the end of this Russian offensive operation, can the Ukrainian Air Force usher in a new life? The answer to this question is probably hard to say optimistic. The fundamental reason for the development dilemma faced by the Ukrainian Air Force for a long time lies in Ukraine's polarized geopolitical environment - Ukraine, sandwiched between Russia and Europe, has repeatedly jumped around on the question of "going left or right" since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has led to repeated changes in the development strategy of Ukraine's military power.
With no clue as to whether to target the basic question of whether to target active or passive defense, the Ukrainian Air Force simply cannot have a clear development plan, which means that even if it is well funded, it will inevitably face repeated changes in development plans. The Financial and Material Resources Invested by the Ukrainian Government are seriously insufficient, but this problem is magnified.
At present, if the Ukrainian Air Force can re-emerge as an air force with practical combat capabilities in the future, the only possibility is for Russia to reconfirm the basic strategy and development plan of the military by supporting pro-Russian forces that can stabilize the government for a long time after the military operation and reconfirming ukraine's international political positioning as a Russian ally.
If this does take shape in the future, the Ukrainian Air Force will likely recover quickly – Russia currently has a large number of mothballed tactical combat aircraft, which, although no more advanced in technology than the main aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force, are in good condition, can receive technical support from manufacturers, and are fully in line with the Long-term Equipment System of the Ukrainian Air Force.
If Russia launches offensive operations with the aim of militarily only "demilitarizing Ukraine" and does not intend to rebuild Ukraine's military power, the future fate of the Ukrainian Air Force will be in jeopardy. Perhaps the most likely material basis for the existence of the Ukrainian Air Force is the often overlooked L-39 trainer aircraft – a high-level trainer aircraft that is currently lagging behind, but reliable, easy to maintain, and a considerable amount of equipment in the Ukrainian Air Force, and it is very likely that some of the flight capabilities will be maintained after the war. In this regard, the Afghan Taliban authorities can be used as an example of the L-39 introduced in Afghanistan long before the pro-Soviet regime was overthrown, and after a long period of high-intensity use and losses caused by the war, the few that were already lost and the few that remained were useless. But after the Taliban returned to power, the L-39 was restored to use due to proper maintenance, and three still have flight capability. For the once brilliant Ukrainian Air Force, it is of course a disgrace to maintain the survival of a few trainer aircraft, but in the case of survival, I am afraid that this is the only option suitable for the Ukrainian Air Force in the future.