A report by the British Defense Ministry Secretary Ben Wallace found that Russian fighter planes were using rudimentary GPS receivers that were reportedly “taped to the dashboards” because their built-in navigation systems were simply horrible. This may be one of the primary reasons why the Red Air Force is absent in Ukraine.

“‘GPS’ receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian Su-34s, so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems,” Wallace said.

“The result is that whilst Russia have large amounts of artillery and armor that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms maneuver and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages,” he added.

We believe that this is why the Russians are largely unable to operate in Ukraine. It is notable that there were no large-scale sorties reported during the first portion of the Russian advance toward Kyiv. More so, there are also no reported wide-scale air offensives in the Donbas region as well. Though this is not to say that no aerial combat has been happening between the two nations, just that everybody could notice that Russia clearly does not have air superiority in the region.