Unsupported Speculation

One rather interesting thing about Russian FLIR systems on their aircraft is that they tend to only point forwards, and that they do not tend to be the gimbal types used by western aerial platforms.

The reason isn’t necessarily because of ‘Protected Gimbal Technology’ that the West is guarding jealously from Russia, but instead a difference in military doctrine stemming from the different primary goals the militaries of the West and Russia have.

You see, Russia is primarily concerned with defending its 11 time zones, and so Russia’s military doctrine is that of a Front War. In the event of either an offensive to expand Russia’s territory, or an invasion of Russia itself, then the military will mass in that area while also stretching to the sides into a front, and their military will do its best to prevent loss of territory with a mix of a large number of offensive and defensive assets along the front.

This means when it comes to Russia’s FLIR targeting systems which only look forwards, that these aerial platforms are intended to be flown from within the protection of the substantial friendly anti-ground and friendly anti-air weapons both on the ground and in the air behind their front. Then these aircraft can fly towards the front while safely behind the lines, identify enemy targets on or behind the enemy’s front from their elevated position, engage them, and then turn around before traveling to far into the range of their enemy’s anti-aircraft defenses.

This explains the behavior of Russian attack aircraft and helicopters in the first year of the war in Ukraine, when they would fly in low towards their targets, and then pitch up and lob rockets, before quickly turning around and heading back before anti-aircraft fire could hit them.

We are habituated in the west to seeing more Vietnam-style aircraft operations, with helicopters and aircraft flying pretty much anywhere they pleased. We also saw this in the recent wars in the Middle East. If we call this an ‘Asymmetric’ style of air-war, this means that the enemy is dispersed, and so attack aircraft are free to roam looking for them.

This also means that both in Vietnam and especially in the Middle East that the enemies of the US didn’t pose much of a threat to US aircraft, and thus US aircraft were free to fly anywhere and attack from any direction they pleased, and that means that the two forces in those conflicts were unequal in power.

These things are what drove the technological need for FLIR systems mounted on gimbals for the West: They were flying everywhere, so they needed to be able to look around. Because of the small, safe conflicts of the post-Cold War, Western doctrine began to assume that they would always be able to operate everywhere, and attack any place from any direction.

This changes however when both sides of a conflict are equal in capability, which is why we’ve seen the war in Ukraine seem to devolve into a front and trench war like World War 1. This isn’t quite the reality, and the truth is that freely roaming the battlespace is impossible with buildups of equally matched military forces such as in Ukraine.