Three real keys:
"I don't know anything about your Zatoka bridge," the retired
Air Force official says, "but so many of the targets I've looked
at are marginal." He says that the Russians are 30 years behind
the U.S. "They aren't prepared for this sustained level of operations,
haven't grasped the importance of effects-based targeting [as opposed
to physical destruction], don't seem to have good BDA [battle damage
assessment] and certainly don't have any kind of dynamic targeting."

"Gain control of the skies to protect American soldiers from air
attack," the officer says. "it is one of the ten commandments.
But it is also essential to degrading enemy capabilities, as we
did in 1991 and in 2003."

"For now, one unintended consequence of the Ukraine air war is
doubly disastrous for Moscow. No one who can afford otherwise will
want to buy Russian weapons in the future. Russia is the world's
second largest arms exporter after the United States, and nothing
about the course of the war augers well for its future in this space.

from
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-russias-air-war-ukraine-total-failure-new-data-show-1709388

(Go to the above citation for pictures etc.)

Exclusive: Russia's Air War in Ukraine is a Total Failure, New Data Show
BY WILLIAM M. ARKIN ON 5/25/22 AT 5:00 AM EDT
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Russia has fired more missiles in the Ukraine war than have been fired
by any country in any other conflict since World War II—a record,
according to air-warfare experts and new data obtained exclusively by
Newsweek, that has failed to pay off for Moscow.

"Just think of this terrible figure: 2,154 Russian missiles hit our
cities and communities in a little over two months," Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky said last week. "The Russian bombing of Ukraine does
not cease any day or night."

But the bombing campaign has done little to help win Putin's war,
exposing key lessons about the future of warfare.

Two bridges tell the story: one in North Vietnam 50 years ago and one
from last week, in the Ukrainian beach resort of Zatoka on the Black Sea
coast.

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Russia's Air War in Ukraine

A Ukrainian soldier examines a fragment of a Russian Air Force Su-25 jet
after a recent battle at the village of Kolonshchyna, Ukraine, Thursday,
April 21, 2022. Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the leaders of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member states at the
Kremlin in Moscow on May 16, 2022.
EFREM LUKATSKY/AP / ALEXANDER NEMENOV/GETTY
Control of the Skies

Russia's dubious world record in accumulating missile strikes comes as
President Zelensky announced that his country destroyed their 200th
Russian airplane, an embarrassing result for an air force that is 15
times larger than that of Ukraine.

The global commentary on this milestone lauded Ukraine's defenders while
noting Russia's failure to take advantage of its overwhelming numerical
advantage, Moscow's misstep in not establishing air superiority in the
skies over Ukraine, and Russia's dwindling supply of precision-guided
weapons.

In the face of all of this, Russia retaliated on Sunday by announcing
that it had destroyed 165 Ukrainian aircraft since the beginning of its
"special military operation." That would be almost three times the
number of flyable fighter jets that Ukraine even possesses.

"The Russian Air Force (VKS) still shows no sign of running a campaign
to gain air superiority," says retired British Air Marshal Edward Stringer.

"Campaign" in this context means a methodical effort to destroy
Ukraine's air defenses—particularly the early warning and communications
paths that are needed to cue surface-to-air missiles and to enable
defenders to know when and from where planes are coming.

The United States set the gold standard for such a campaign in the first
Gulf War, "a well-worn tactical process," Stringer says, that it is
assumed to be essential in any war.

"Blind the enemy, disrupt their ability to talk, shoot down their
fighters, disable their airfields, blunt their SAMs [surface-to-air
missiles] on the ground," says a senior retired U.S. Air Force general
who oversaw American air wars in Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

Exclusive: Putin's Captured War Plans Show His Ukraine Ambitions Shrinking
READ MOREExclusive: Putin's Captured War Plans Show His Ukraine
Ambitions Shrinking

"Gain control of the skies to protect American soldiers from air
attack," the officer says. "it is one of the ten commandments. But it is
also essential to degrading enemy capabilities, as we did in 1991 and in
2003.

"Yes the army took the spoils [in Iraq]," says the officer, who
requested anonymity in order to discuss operational issues. "But it
never could have done so were it not for airpower paving the way."

Russia's failure to follow this path has become a significant feature of
the Ukraine war—one that confuses Western observers. After 48 hours of
attacks on Ukrainian air defenses in the opening salvo of the war,
Moscow seemed to give up on pursuing this American war prerequisite. The
Russians attacked airfields and air defense sites on the first two days
but mostly didn't follow-up. Ukraine's small air force was largely
grounded, but Kyiv was given an opportunity to adjust, especially in its
dispersal of air defense missiles, in particular shoulder-fired ones.
This created what Stringer calls "poor man's air superiority."

Then, threatened by Ukrainian SAMs, Russia flew fewer and fewer bombing
aircraft beyond its own army's front lines, just over 10 percent of the
total number of sorties flown, according to U.S. intelligence numbers
examined by Newsweek. Long-range strikes on so-called "strategic
targets" continued, but they were undertaken by a combination of air,
sea, and ground-launched missiles. The attacking fighters and bombers,
supplemented by ground launchers and ships and submarines also firing
missiles, all delivered their weapons while never entering Ukrainian air
space.

In other words, Russia did adjust. It found a way to hit the target. Or
did it?

Tale of Two Bridges

Sixty kilometers south of Odesa on the Black Sea coast lies the sleepy
beach resort of Zatoka, spreading out on two narrow spits of land that
form the mouth of the Dniester river, Europe's third longest river
outside of Russia. The bridge connects Odesa with a region known as
Budjak, the southern part of historical Bessarabia, an Ottoman outpost
that was acceded to Russia in 1812. With a population of 600,000, Budjak
is the country's southern gateway to Romania, accessible only over the
Zatoka bridge. (A second crossing, 30 miles to the north, crosses the
international border into Transnistrian territory in Moldova, with all
of the restrictions and dangers associated.)

Connecting the two spits at the mouth of the Dniester estuary is a
distinct 500-foot long rail and road bridge, a vertical lift iron
monstrosity built by the Soviet Union in 1955. The center is lifted as
many as five times a day to allow river traffic to pass in and out of
the Black Sea.

Russia took its first shot at the Zatoka bridge on March 3, the eighth
day of the war, attacking a nearby military installation. It was the
first documented use of air-delivered cluster bombs in the war, and
Ukraine reported that it had shot down the attacking Russian plane, the
pilot ejecting to save himself. On March 15, twelve days later, Russia
returned to Zatoka, this time with warships opening fire with ship-based
artillery on it and targets in three other nearby coastal towns.

The two attacks on Zatoka, 60 km (37 miles) south of Odesa, many
commentators said, augured possible preparations for an amphibious
landing. But the truth was simpler: the route to Romania provided a
transit corridor for cargo no longer able to use Black Sea ports that
once handled 70 percent of Ukraine's trade.

ukraine russia invasion military refugees casualties
The effort to destroy the Zatoka bridge revealed Moscow's weaknesses.
ODESA JOURNAL

On April 26, on day 62 of the war, Russian returned at 12:35 p.m., this
time attacking the bridge itself with three cruise missiles. According
to U.S. intelligence, one missile technically failed and landed in the
water. A second missed the target; a third hit the eastern edge of the
span, causing minor damage. The next morning at 6:45 a.m. the Russians
were back, again with a cruise missile attack. Odesa region military
spokesman Serhii Bratchuk declared the bridge destroyed. Moscow said the
attack was part of another of its "campaigns," this time to destroy
railroad chokepoints and airfields that were being used bring western
arms into Ukraine. The day after, traffic was restored.

On May 3, Russia returned to the bridge, again launching three cruise
missiles. "The bridge is completely destroyed and cannot be operated,"
Bratchuk stated. Russia had just announced that it was seeking to take
all of southern Ukraine, including Odesa region, putting a new spin on
the reason for the third direct strike. A week later, on May 10, they
were back. "The enemy continues attacks on the already damaged bridge
across the Dniester estuary," said Ukrainian Operational Command South.