The conflict in Ukraine can offer many lessons to the careful observer. The three-year conflict has shown the effectiveness of unmanned aerial systems, the deadly force of rocket artillery, and even the immense volume of munitions necessary to sustain offensive and defensive operations on the modern battlefield.

These and many more lessons from Ukraine are available to military and intelligence observers. But a lesson of particular value is air power operations in a contested battlefield, which has proven to be one of the decisive forms of combat in Ukraine—and has often made the difference between victory and defeat.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many inside and outside Ukraine believed that the smaller country would quickly crumple under the immense weight of the Russian invasion force. Moscow, after all, could field one of the most advanced militaries in the world, one powerful enough for the U.S. military to consider it a near-peer adversary. 

Instead, Russia’s forces quickly proved to be a paper tiger. The Russian military failed to achieve any of its primary objectives—capturing Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and the Donbas region, among other goals—and its losses in the opening months of the war were extremely heavy. A major reason behind the Kremlin’s failure to achieve its initial war objectives was the Russian Aerospace Forces’ failure to immediately establish air superiority over the battlefield, and Ukraine’s subsequent opportunity to punish advancing Russian columns from the air.

On paper, the Russian Aerospace Forces were numerically and qualitatively superior to their Ukrainian adversary. The........

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