Russia’s “Air Force” Is a TOTAL Joke. Even U.S. Can’t Believe How Bad It Is.

It’s no secret that Russia’s air force is nothing short of a disaster, but now, even America’s top generals can’t help but laugh at the sheer incompetence on display.

How bad is it? The shocking truth will have you wondering how this military powerhouse ever fooled anyone into thinking they were a global threat.

Prepare to be shocked 👇

Russia’s air force is collapsing—right now.

In real time.

Warplanes are failing mid-air.

Engines   are shutting down.

Bombs are falling off aircraft  during takeoff.

And in some cases—Russia is losing   jets without Ukraine even firing a shot.

This  is the air force that was supposed to dominate   the skies.

Instead, it’s breaking itself.

And  that’s what makes this such a historic failure   Putin can’t hide.

Because when Russia launched its  so-called “special military operation” in February   2022, the outcome in the air seemed inevitable.

Western analysts expected Russian air superiority   within days.

The Russian Aerospace Forces entered  the war with around 1,500 combat aircraft—more   than 12 times Ukraine’s pre-war fleet.

It fielded  advanced fighters like the Su-35S, Su-30SM,   and Su-34, backed by long-range air defenses,  strategic bombers, and airborne radar systems.

By most estimates, Ukraine’s air force wasn’t  supposed to last a week.

To make matters worse,   Ukraine’s fleet was a patchwork of aging  Soviet-era aircraft, many poorly maintained   after years of underfunding.

But a funny thing  happened on the way to air superiority.

Russia has   actually done much worse than expected, with its  air force deteriorating from month to month during   the four years of the war.

You see, the Russian  Air and Space Forces (or VKS) entered this war   with a fundamental problem: its entire military  doctrine was built around a defensive model.

Russian pilots were trained to operate under  constant guidance from ground controllers,   intercepting incoming threats rather than  leading complex offensive campaigns in contested   airspace.

When forced to fly deep penetration  missions over a country armed with modern
surface-to-air missiles, MANPADS, radar networks,  and increasingly capable Western fighter aircraft,   Russian aviation revealed structural cracks that  no number of planes could paper over.

Unable to   suppress Ukrainian air defenses, Russian jets  retreated to standoff tactics, but the missions   never stopped.

And that relentless tempo is now  eating the fleet alive.

The clearest window yet   into the VKS’s deteriorating condition came  in March 2026, when the Ukrainian OSINT group   OsintFlow published a classified Russian military  flight safety report covering just three weeks of   operations from December 29, 2025, to January  18, 2026.

The document had not been officially   acknowledged by Moscow, but it bears all the  hallmarks of genuine Russian military internal   reporting.

Notably, even the Russian air force’s  own unofficial Telegram channel, Fighterbomber,   which regularly debunks Ukrainian claims, did  not attempt to dispute the document.

What the   document reveals is striking.

In a span  of less than three weeks, Russian military   aviation logged 24 separate incidents across at  least 18 airfields and bases.

But these weren’t   combat losses from Ukraine, making bold efforts  to launch drone strikes deep into Russia.

Instead,   they were almost universally mechanical failures,  crew errors, and structural problems that brought   aircraft down without a single Ukrainian missile  being fired.

And the most prevalent problem? Basic   engine failure.

Indeed, nine of the 24 events  logged involved the same two cockpit warnings:   “metal shavings in oil” and “low oil pressure,”  followed by throttle reduction, engine shutdown,   and single-engine emergency landings.

The affected  aircraft ranged from the Su-34 and Su-30SM to the
Su-35S and even transport aircraft like the An-124  and Il-76.

The same failure mode, across entirely   different airframes, at different bases, with no  common mission type.

The pattern bears all the   hallmarks of systemic maintenance and industrial  collapse throughout the Russian air force.

The most damning single entry in the document  involves Su-30SM2 tail number 91.

On January 4,   2026, the aircraft triggered the “metal shavings  in oil, right engine” alert mid-flight, shut down   the right engine, and landed at Millerovo air base  with only one engine running.

Five days later, a   report on the same aircraft showed it experienced  the same problem: The same engine, the same alert,   the same single-engine landing at Millerovo.

It’s fair to say that Russia botched repairs and   returned the aircraft to supposedly active service  without fixing the underlying fault.

Aviation   expert Anatolii Khrapchynskyi had flagged broader  issues in a 2025 interview, explaining that   Russia’s loss of access to Ukraine’s Motor Sich  and Ivchenko-Progress engine manufacturers in 2014   severely impacted parts of its aviation sector,  particularly transport and helicopter fleets,   and its import substitution program has struggled  ever since.

The repeated failure of Su-30SM2 tail   91 is instead a stark illustration of maintenance  and sustainment challenges within the force.

Then   things went from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On January 3, 2026, a Su-34 conducting a combat   mission against Ukraine experienced something  that sounds almost impossible: a FAB-500 guided   glide bomb fell off the aircraft at the moment  of wheels-up without being commanded.

The bomb,   equipped with a UMPK guidance kit, landed a  few hundred feet ahead of the runway in the   direction of takeoff.

Even more shockingly,  the pilot continued the mission anyway as if   they didn’t just lose one piece of munitions that  would be used to strike Ukraine from afar.

This   wasn’t even an isolated event.

Monitoring outlet  Astra has tracked at least 10 Russian aerial bombs   falling on Russian or Russian-occupied territory  in 2026 up to March 5, after noting at least 143   such incidents in 2025 and 165 in 2024.

It turns  out that glide bombs, which are arguably Russia’s   primary offensive weapon, are spontaneously  dropping onto its own territory at a decelerating   rate.

The report also documents a Mi-8 helicopter  returning to its base at Dzhankoi in occupied   Crimea on January 2, 2026, after a night combat  mission when there were two loud bangs near the   tail boom and a complete loss of yaw control.

The  crew brought it in on the third approach using   the fixed-wing technique, which is a harrowing  recovery normally reserved for aircraft with   completely inoperable tail rotors.

Post-flight  inspection found a nearly foot-by-foot hole in   the tail boom, severed cable runs, a destroyed HF  radio antenna, and a flat metal fragment roughly   the size of a sheet of printer paper found in  the cargo cabin after it had punched through   the sliding door and struck the armored plate of  the cockpit.

OsintFlow assessed the damage profile   as consistent with a fragment from a Russian air  defense missile, not combat contact with Ukrainian   forces.

In other words, Russian air defense may  have shot down its own helicopter.

Just let that   settle in for a moment.

Russia at this point is  widely considered to have one of the most advanced   anti-air systems in the world after investing  decades into creating programs that could go   toe-to-toe with American designs.

And even if  anti-air systems didn’t exactly perform as well as   expected, shooting allied planes is a real low.

Of  course, there were plenty more so-called incidents   during the three-week window in the OsintFlow  report, including: An Su-35S that clipped its   own hardened shelter gate while taxiing out,  damaging its Khibiny electronic warfare pod; A   MiG-31BM that blew a main landing gear tire after  its drag chute failed; A Ka-52M attack helicopter   that suffered a complete hydraulic system failure  during a night combat sortie made a forced field   landing.

And a Tu-134A transport that cracked  its commander’s windscreen just 13 minutes into   flight.

Considering their severity and apparent  commonalities, it’s safe to say that Russia’s air   fleet is trying to perform and make sorties  under conditions it was never designed for.

Case in point, the Russian Air Force has actually  been flying its aircraft at extreme tempos since   its Syria campaign in 2015, and that pace has  multiplied several times over since February   2022.

According to the RAND Corporation analysis  from 2024, the VKS was flying its aircraft at   roughly two to four times their intended annual  flight hours.

Now, under normal peacetime usage,   an aircraft like the Su-35S would have its Saturn  AL-41F1S engine undergo a full maintenance check   after approximately 1,000 flight hours.

But in  actual wartime scenarios, the plane has to fly   in low-altitude and follow terrain to avoid radar,  repeatedly use the afterburner to hightail it out   of Ukrainian territory after delivering the glide  bomb, and maneuver out of enemy anti-air defenses.

The “recommended” maintenance interval suddenly  constricts from 1,000 to just 700 or even 500   flight hours.

RAND estimated that overuse alone  was costing Russia around 26 aircraft per year in   so-called “imputed losses,” meaning aircraft  not destroyed in combat but permanently or   semi-permanently grounded from metal fatigue and  wear.

By late 2023, those imputed losses already   numbered around 60 airframes.

By now, that figure  is considerably higher.

And it gets worse for   Russia.

Open-source intelligence organization Oryx  has visually confirmed the destruction or capture   of at least 40 Su-34s, up to 8 Su-35s, at least  170 fixed-wing aircraft in total, and around 170   helicopters.

Even Russia’s higher-value assets  have not been spared.

Ukraine has shot down at   least two Beriev A-50U radar planes, each worth  approximately $300 million, using a combination   of U.S.

-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missiles  and a Soviet-era S-200 long-range missile system   operating in unconventional radar-off missile  engagement modes.

These A-50s are essentially   irreplaceable since Russia doesn’t have the  industrial capacity and the ability to import   the necessary parts due to sanctions.

The “coup  de grace” came in June 2025, when Ukrainian   drones struck five Russian airbases housing active  strategic bombers deep inside Russian territory in   a single night, destroying or heavily damaging at  least two Tu-22M and four Tu-95 strategic bombers.

Not only are these assets worth hundreds of  millions of dollars each, but they are also   one of the primary ways Russia was projecting  force through nuclear deterrence.

Operation   Spiderweb reportedly damaged or destroyed around  40 military aircraft in total, targeting not just   finished aircraft but Russia’s production capacity  itself.

Ukraine’s ability to strike these targets,   but more importantly to defend itself against  a numerically superior enemy, has also been   vastly enhanced by the steady arrival of Western  aircraft.

Before 2024, Ukraine was flying an aging   Soviet-era fleet of MiG-29s, Su-27s, and Su-25s,  platforms that Russia knew inside and out and   whose tactical limitations were well understood.

But the delivery of F-16s from the Netherlands,   Norway, Denmark, and Belgium started to change  that equation.

The Netherlands alone completed   delivery of 24 F-16s in May 2025, with Norway  contributing 14, Denmark committing to 19,   and Belgium pledging 30 more by 2028.

France then  sent six Mirage 2000-5 aircraft throughout 2025,   and Sweden announced a letter of intent in October  2025 to explore the export of up to 150 Saab JAS   39 Gripen-E aircraft.

In particular, the F-16 and  Mirages have already been used operationally to   intercept Russian cruise missiles.

These aircraft  gave Ukraine NATO-standard avionics, radar,   and beyond-visual-range missile capability that  Soviet-era jets apparently couldn’t match.

Russia,   for the first time in the war, found itself facing  jets it had no real knowledge of countering.

That uncertainty, combined with Ukrainian point  defense networks using Patriot, NASAMS, and IRIS-T   systems, has made Russian pilots increasingly  reluctant to push into contested airspace at all.

But if you want to learn more about how exactly  Western equipment and tactics are making waves   in Ukraine, make sure to subscribe to The  Military Show.

We post daily videos which cover   every development in the war as well as global  geopolitics updates.

Beyond Ukraine’s advancement   in avionics, Russia’s doctrinal response has  basically been a point of contention for Western   analysts.

With no way to exert air dominance over  Ukraine after failing to do so in the opening   months, when the opportunity was greatest, Russia  leaned ever more heavily on glide bombs.

These are   Soviet-era FAB-500, FAB-1500, and even FAB-3000  bombs fitted with simple guidance and wing kits   that let aircraft release them from 20 to 30  miles away and return immediately to safety.

After   starting with a steady cascade of a few dozen  bombs per week in early 2023, the most recent   estimates suggested Russia used as many as 100  bombs per day across the front by the end of 2025.

The strategy has been militarily effective in  terms of hitting Ukrainian positions.

But glide   bomb sorties don’t eliminate flight hours.

Takeoff, transit to the launch zone, weapons   release, and return to base still accumulate wear  on every component.

Russia might have found a way   to reduce the risk to its pilots while maintaining  the operational tempo, but it hasn’t found a way   to reduce the wear on its engines.

The leaked  flight safety report makes this tragically clear:   nine engine failures in three weeks, in aircraft  being used primarily for glide bomb delivery runs,   is the direct result of flying a degraded fleet  at unsustainable rates.

And Russia’s ability to   replace or repair those aircraft is collapsing  alongside the fleet itself.

A November 2025 report   by the Royal United Services Institute titled  “Vulnerabilities in Sukhoi Production” laid   out the manufacturing crisis in detail.

Russia  produced just 9 Su-34s in 2022, rising to 13 in   2023, with a target of only 17 for 2025.

Su-35S  deliveries reached 10 out of 12 ordered in 2024.

As such, the annual production of Su-30, Su-34,  and Su-35 aircraft combined is around 20 aircraft   per year.

Based on the cadence of Oryx reports,  that’s barely enough to offset confirmed combat   losses, let alone the imputed losses accumulating  from overuse.

But the real problem is this:   Russia’s increasing isolation.

Production  depends heavily on foreign machine tools,   specialized electronics, and skilled engineers,  many of whom have emigrated.

Sanctions have   disrupted access to the precision manufacturing  equipment that keeps production lines running:   Japanese CNC machines from Sodick at one  critical facility were installed in 2017   and are guaranteed accurate for 10 years.

Russia  can no longer legally obtain replacements or spare   parts for them.

The clock is already running out.

The defense industry crisis described by Defense   Magazine in November 2025 goes deeper still.

Russian defense enterprises are operating in what   internal documents describe as “manual control  mode” — a euphemism for companies managing debt   crises by crisis rather than running sustainable  operations.

The United Aircraft Corporation,   which oversees production of every Russian  combat aircraft from Su-35s to Tu-95 bombers, is   entangled in hundreds of court cases from unpaid  contractors.

Defense contracts are being fulfilled   at prices fixed in 2019 while component costs have  risen, in the words of internal correspondence,   by “tens or even a hundred times.

” Companies  are taking guaranteed losses on every delivery.

Workforce mobilization for the war has drained  technical workers from production lines.

And   the export market that historically subsidized  below-cost domestic deliveries to the likes of   India, Egypt, Algeria, and Vietnam has nearly  vanished.

As a result, Russia’s arms exports   collapsed by an estimated 92 percent between 2021  and 2024, according to the Jamestown Foundation.

Egypt cancelled its Su-35 contract.

India chose  the French Rafale over the Russian Su-57.

Even   countries still nominally interested in Russian  aircraft are starting to second-guess the choice,   since it’s become quite clear that Russia can’t  guarantee delivery timelines or spare parts.

The Su-57’s export prospects have all but  evaporated.

The Su-75 Checkmate light stealth   fighter, supposedly Russia’s answer to the  F-35, has attracted essentially no buyers,   with its most likely customer being Belarus  — hardly a premium market.

Then there’s the   issue of China.

For two decades, China was  one of Russia’s best customers, purchasing   Su-30MKK fighters and struggling to master jet  engine technology it didn’t yet have.

Today,   China produces the J-20 fifth-generation stealth  fighter and the export-oriented J-35 and is   actively marketing its fourth-generation fighters  abroad.

So far, only Pakistan has taken delivery   of the J-10C, while countries like Iran, Egypt,  Indonesia, and the UAE have shown interest or   explored potential deals.

For countries that once  turned to Moscow for affordable, capable jets,   Beijing now offers the same value proposition,  all the while its supply chains are unaffected   by Western sanctions.

Russia’s position as the  world’s affordable alternative to Western military   aviation has been comprehensively undercut,  and with it, the export revenue that funded   next-generation development.

Russia’s civilian  aviation industry reflects the same breakdown,   and the two sectors are more intertwined than  they appear.

The United Aircraft Corporation   governs both military fighter production  and civilian airliner production, meaning   that management decisions, budget allocations, and  workforce assignments ripple across both.

In 2022,   the Russian government announced a bold target  of more than 1,000 new civil aircraft for Russian   airlines by 2030.

In the three years since,  Russian factories have produced thirteen   civilian aircraft in total.

In 2025, Russia  delivered a single commercial aircraft out   of 15 planned.

Production targets for 2024 and  2025 were slashed from 171 aircraft down to 21,   and then cut again due to what officials described  as “financing challenges.

” The 1,000-by-2030   goal has since been quietly revised in the  Kremlin’s public agenda, with updated plans now   targeting just under 1,000 domestically produced  aircraft as timelines slip under the weight of   sanctions and production challenges.

Meanwhile,  Russia’s civilian fleet of over 700 aircraft,
predominantly Airbus and Boeing models, is now  dependent on grey-market component sourcing,   and Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service  has assessed that Russia could lose nearly   30 percent of its civilian aircraft by 2030 as  sanctions strangle the spare parts supply.

We’re   already seeing some of that collapse start, such  as with the An-22 heavy-lift transport that broke   in half and crashed near Moscow in December 2025,  killing seven people.

The plane was reportedly   flying a year past its intended retirement  date.

This was likely the last An-22 in Russian   service.

Here’s how it all adds up.

The leaked  maintenance report, the imputed loss projections,   the production numbers, the export collapse, the  industrial debt crisis, the workforce shortage,   and the civilian aviation breakdown.

Russia’s  fleet has managed to start losing a war, but not   primarily due to its opponent.

Ukrainian pilots  aren’t better at launching more missions.

Instead,   Russia is pushing every airplane well past its  breaking point, all in an attempt to close out   the war that basically ground to a halt by the  end of its second year.

Russian President Vladimir   Putin can’t hide this collapse indefinitely.

With each engine failure or downed aircraft,   the losses will continue to accumulate, and  Ukraine’s intelligence services have become   adept enough at spotting them to make sure they  get accounted for.

The only question now is how   much of the fleet is left by the time the war  ends.

But the real reasons Russia is collapsing   go beyond its air force.