And, 300k without artillery, tanks, air support, and logistics isn't an overwhelming force. Does Russia have the rest of what it takes to make them an effective force?
Like my favourite defense analyst likes to say “war is contingent”.
They have less than 800 multipurpose and attack planes combined (because i don't want to explain it in another comment: they have air superiority, so their fighter plan count isn't relevant).
If we consider Russian hardware as well maintained as France or US, it means 650 available planes max for offensive operations. A bit more than 50 planes are confirmed destroyed, so I'll round it up to 600. That means 300 sortie a day max (if each plane have 2 maintenance crew fulltime). But as the long-range air defense is effective, you cannot penetrate too deep, and that limit the efficiency.
Ukraine is like twice the size of Irak, with more population and vegetation. Russia do have air superiority but they cannot action it.
Hopefully for the conscripts, Putin just want to defend and wait it out . In this case, manpower is effective.
Another way to use manpower is to assault continuously WW1 style, supported by artillery fire. This would be stupid.
Air superiority during WW2 meant that your fighter+recon force is dominant in the 3rd dimension. You can have air superiority and suffer more from air interdiction than the enemy (and usually that's how it goes btw, see WW2 and Korea war).
Air superiority is needed to be able to send your attack planes in enemy territory overtly, which the russian do. Not much, but they do.
Like i said, i took fairly large numbers to explain why the airforce didn't do much (i don't remember the comment but it should be something like 200 outing per day on average, when in the first gulf war, the US managed 800 outing a day on average for 43 days, on a smaller country with better terrain).
Now, the real number? I think that of their 800 attack planes, they only have 300 to 400 available, because of what we've seen of their equipment and the rampant corruption.
I don't think they have enough mechanics to prepare more than a hundred planes a day originally, and they stupidly lost some their mechanics during the first week of the war (encamped in a Ukrainian airport on the frontline). I think this is the reason whay the outing are so reduced compared to the early days in fact.
