[Goose]

I guess I don't understand your point. Ukraine is regularly flying low altitude combat missions with their Su25s, in spite of Russian long range SAMs and any A-50s operating in Russia or Belarus. We see videos of this every few days. If Russia could stop this they would've by now. Ukraine doesn't have a ton of these planes after all.

Not sure why it would be any different in a Kherson counterattack.

As I pointed out in my post, you are indeed correct that before a week ago we saw no involvement by Mainstays. Given their employment in Syria, that seemed a bit strange. I conjectured that perhaps they were not using them (and the Donbas is right next to Russia) because they believed that NATO would then do the same thing from NATO airspace. Russia couldn't expect less if they did this. They might have expected that they didn't need to do so, but given exactly what you point out, that may have changed. They may now think they need to do so. They may be preparing to do this, thus the recent activity. Whether this is true only time will tell. We know they used them in Syria to task fighters against Turkey. In theory, they can target missiles. Whether they can or not is TBD.

[Goose]

I guess I don't understand your point. Ukraine is regularly flying low altitude combat missions with their Su25s, in spite of Russian long range SAMs and any A-50s operating in Russia or Belarus. We see videos of this every few days. If Russia could stop this they would've by now. Ukraine doesn't have a ton of these planes after all.

Not sure why it would be any different in a Kherson counterattack.

As I pointed out in my post, you are indeed correct that before a week ago we saw no involvement by Mainstays. Given their employment in Syria, that seemed a bit strange. I conjectured that perhaps they were not using them (and the Donbas is right next to Russia) because they believed that NATO would then do the same thing from NATO airspace. Russia couldn't expect less if they did this. They might have expected that they didn't need to do so, but given exactly what you point out, that may have changed. They may now think they need to do so. They may be preparing to do this, thus the recent activity. Whether this is true only time will tell. We know they used them in Syria to task fighters against Turkey. In theory, they can target missiles. Whether they can or not is TBD.