USAF AND RUSSIAN AIR FORCE A COMPARISON

MAY 19, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

USAF and RuAF Fleet strength

The US Air Force has since the end of the second world war been regarded as the supreme air force of
the world, but with its increased spending in the middle east and the Russian military budget having
increased a lot over the last two decades, how does the air forces look compared to each other? In this
article we will take a look into the two biggest air forces in the world: USAF and Russias Air Force!

Air force

United States

Russia

Fixed wing aircraft

5414

2176

Fighters/Multiroles

1840

1319

Bombers

162

181

Early warning (radar aircrafts)

52

21

Transport

805

255

Tankers

476

23

Trainers

1193

263

Additional

886

114

Rotary wing aircraft

218

885

Attack

412

Search and rescue

103

Additional

115

473

(Notice: The table only shows vehicles of the Air Force. Navy, Army etc not included, to read about the
air forces of all of these departments, read this article: US and Russian military aircraft - full
comparison)

US and Russia defense spending

Now what can we deduce from the table? Well first of all we can obviously see that the US has more
aircraft over all, actually more than double the amount of Russia. But why is there such a huge
difference? One of the reasons is military budget. To show this i have here a graph showing the military
spending of Russia and the US over the last 22

years.
Even though the
graph does not exclusively show the air forces spending it does show the amount of money that the
US and Russia has spent on their military the last couple of years. This gives us an understanding of
how much more money the US military budget consists of and is a vital ingredients to why their air
force is the biggest one in the world.

The real differences in strength

American Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit Bomber

But even though the United States spends more money on its air force than Russia there are a lot of
things to contrast between the two. For instance the fact that Russia has more bombers than the US is
rather interesting. One of the main reasons for this is that Russia has many old bombers still in service
that are cheap, instead of spending their money on new, costly projects to create the bombers of
tomorrow. Russias main bombers are still the Tupolev 95(Introduced in 1956), Tupolev 160
(introduced in 1981) and the Tupolev 22M (introduced in 1972). Even though many of them has been
upgraded since they came in service, the cost can not be compared to both the development cost as
well as the unit cost of some of the extreme US projects like the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bomber.
As an example the unit cost of an Tupolev 160 is about $40mill while the one of the Northrop Grumman
B-2 is over $2 billion each (unit cost USD 737m total program cost as of 2004 USD 44.75b with only
21 aircraft produced).
The same idea goes with the fighters but here the US really flexes its muscles by having not only more,
but also more expensive jet fighters than Russia has. The most recent US multirole fighter is the
Lockheed Martin F-35 lightning II (first flight 2006) and the Russian is the Sukhoi-35 (2008). While the
cost of the F-35 is around $125 mill, the Su-35 only cost $50 mill. So the fact that the USAF has more
expensive and at the same time almost the double amount of jets than Russia has, could explain why
the United States military budget is so comparatively high Look at the table below for more
information about the different concepts of the air forces.
Early Warning aircraft, or as many call it Eyes in the sky are aircraft with the capability to scan the
area around itself looking for incoming aircraft, like a mobile radar station. Since you usually have
permanent radar stations on ground, the early warning aircraft are only (almost) used with aircraft
carriers and amphibious warfare ships. Because the US has 19 aircraft carriers compared to Russias
only one, and 31 amphibious warfare ships in contrast to Russias two there is an obvious reason to
why the USs need of AEWACs is much greater than Russias currently is.
Transports and tankers are used by all nations, but they are obviously not used as much if the country
uses a big part of its military force as a defense as if it operates a lot in another country or on another
continent. Because the US maintains a world-spanning network of military bases, protects trade routes
worldwide and with the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq they need to transport their troops and
supplies great distances, which is why they have such a bigger number of transports and tankers than
Russia has.
Trainers are used as can be easily figured to train pilots. There is basically only one reason why the US
Air Force has so many more training airplanes: the extreme amount of personnel. The Russian air force

has approximately 140 000 persons involved at the moment, while the USAF has almost 700 000! This
means that the latter has to train a lot more persons and therefore needs a lot more training jets.

The Russian Mi Mil 26 lifting a Boeing CH-47 Chinook.

When we now come to the rotary wing aircraft the reason to why the two countries have such big
differences are mainly two things. The first one is that the United States use most of their helicopters
as a part of the navy/army and the second one is that Russia has put much more effort and money in
their helicopter business which is proven for instance by the worlds heaviest lifting helicopter the
Russian Mi Mil 26.
Now to conclude this comparison there are some things that are needed to be said. The USAF spend
such enormous amounts on their military each year that it is almost impossible to compare it with
another country. But since Russia has the second greatest air force in the world there can be some
conclusions drawn of how the air forces compare to each other as can be seen above. USAFs idea is to
develop airplanes that cost a lot, while Russia instead focuses on making many cheap aircraft, just like
Josef Stalins famous quote (some say it was actually used by Lenin before):

Quantity has a quality all its own.

This is a comparison made not to show the best air force but instead to point out what the countries
has spent their money and time on and how this has shaped them into what they are today, and how
surprisingly different they are when you look deeply into it.
Additional Resources:

Nice article about cost of military aircraft

US and Russian military aircraft Full Comparison
Mikoyan fighter jets the backbones of the Russian Air Force
5th generation fighter jets US, Russia and China
Sources:

World Wide Aircraft Carriers (information acquired 18/5-2014)

Sipri.com (information acquired 18/5-2014)
IISS 2010, p. 225 (information acquired 18/5-2014)

Newsland.ru. Retrieved 2014-02-12 (information acquired 19/5-2014)

World Air Forces 2014 December 5 2013 Flightglobal.com (information acquired 19/5-2014)
http://wiki.baloogancampaign.com (information acquired 19/5-2014)
Air Force Magazine, May 2012 (information acquired 19/5-2014)
B-2 Spirit. United States Air Force. (information acquired 19/5-2014)
Picture sources:

Defesabr.com. (information acquired 19/5-2014)

Af.mil . (information acquired 19/5-2014)